2007 set us back a decade

[CyberB0b]

I used to belong on another Cowboys board and posted this before, and wanted to get your guys' reaction. I am kind of disappointed I spent so much time on that board, as this one is superior in just about every way. Anyways, here it goes.

Preseason:

Bill Parcells quits after trying to strong arm Jerry into paying him more and we hire Wade Phillips. Jerry had already hired Jason Garrett as the OC, so it seemed likely we were getting a defensive minded head coach to take over. This was an odd move, as usually the HC picks his own staff.

Season

We got the AFC East and NFC North that year, which ended up being one of the easiest schedules in the league. The AFC East, was absolutely terrible, with the exception of New England.

We opened the season in a shoot out against the Giants on SNF. I remember the game vividly. I was excited to see the new "attacking" style defense of Wade Phillips, since we heard so many complaints about how vanilla the Parcells 3-4 was. It was one of the most exciting regular season games I have ever watched. After that game, we knew Romo was the real deal.

After that game, we had a bunch of cupcake games. The Bears were defending NFC champs, but they weren't very good. The Rams, Dolphins, Bills were the worst teams in the league, and the Vikings were mediocre.

In hindsight, we beat up on a bunch of bad teams, which allowed some individual players to play at a level that was not representative of their true potential.

Pro Bowl Players

This is where the "talented roster" talk started to happen. It seems like commonplace now, but in 2006, no one was praising the talent that is on this team. Now, every year, we hear the pundits claiming the Cowboys have enough talent to win the Super Bowl, but it just isn't true.

Romo
MBIII
TO
Witten
Flozell
Davis
Gurode
Ware
Ellis
Newman
Hamlin
Roy Williams
Folk

What is interesting is that Gurode was terrible this year at snapping. He was a decent interior blocker, but he had a ton of bad snaps, some of which were comical, like against the Rams.

It would be proven in the next year that a large majority of these guys were flukes who padded their stats by playing terrible teams.

2008 Season

Jerry truly believed we were really close to getting to the Super Bowl since we did so well in the 2007. This lead to Jerry giving away our 2009 draft for Roy Williams, who ended up being a complete bust.

The 2008 season was a complete disaster ending in a pure embarrassment as we closed out Texas Stadium with a loss and got destroyed by the Eagles.

2009 Season

The Cowboys and Wade Phillips looked to be on the ropes, until the miracle win over the Saints happened and we managed to sneak into the playoffs. We managed to beat the Eagles in a playoff game and this secured Wade Phillips' job.


Anyways, the point of this thread is that 2007 is where all the "talent" BS started being spewed around and probably extended Wade Phillips' time here as a coach by at least a year and a half. I believe this directly correlates with bad drafting (drafting for depth and lack of competition) that we saw from 2007 - 2010.

 

[The Emperor]

No, it didn't.

 

[JoseyWales]

So we're not going to do anything until 2018? Well, crap. That sucks.

 

[CowboyMike]

I wouldn't call winning the NFC East and 11-5 in 2009 "sneaking" into the playoffs.

And 2009 was when we drafted the dirty dozen of special teams players, after out subpar 2008 season, NOT after our good 2007 season. That draft was Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins. We didn't acquire Roy Williams until halfway through 2008.

 

[The Emperor]

I wouldn't call winning the NFC East and 11-5 in 2009 "sneaking" into the playoffs.

And 2009 was when we drafted the dirty dozen of special teams players, after out subpar 2008 season, NOT after our good 2007 season. That draft was Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins. We didn't acquire Roy Williams until halfway through 2008.

Way to ruin a good narrative. You just love mediocrity. It's fans like you that are the reason we haven't won a playoff game in 16 years.

I'm going to go have a taco to calm down.

 

[Hostile]

A decade just ain't what it used to be. Seems that one that set us back only last 2 years. This year we start the long swing up to stay at the top for a stretch.

 

[TheCoolFan]

I used to belong on another Cowboys board and posted this before, and wanted to get your guys' reaction. I am kind of disappointed I spent so much time on that board, as this one is superior in just about every way. Anyways, here it goes.

Preseason:

we hire Wade Phillips.

That's all we needed to know

 

[Tricericon]

Leaving aside the other flaws with that assertion...

In today's NFL, there is no such thing as "set back a decade".

Seriously, with good management, good drafts, and a little luck on gameday even the worst in year X could EASILY contend in a big way in year X+2.

 

[Cowboys&LakersFan]

Didn't know 5 years = a decade.

 

[KJJ]

The lack of strong leadership at HC and bad drafting has hurt the Cowboys. It's been pretty much the same problem since Jimmy left. Parcell's helped right the ship by bringing in some much needed talent and keeping Jerry from hand picking players during the draft. He found the Cowboys a solid QB and a great pass rusher which the Cowboys had wasted several high draft picks through the years trying to find. The game had passed Parcell's by but he put the Cowboys in position talent wise to be a contender for years with Romo, Witten, Ware and Austin. Wade softened the team during his 4 year tenure with his cupcake reputation and he left the team in shambles after the players quit on him.

Had the Cowboys had a SOLID HC who the players respected the team could have very easily been a 12-4 to 13-3 team every year since 07. I'll never forget how Wade just sat there during the 09 draft as Jerry kept trading down he looked like he was about to nod off. You could tell he wasn't involved he just went along. That 09 draft was one of the worst in franchise history and it clearly set the team. The 09 season was the last season the Cowboys made the playoffs.

 

[ChronicCowboy]

Yeah not a decade, maybe a few years though. Point taken, results in 2007 were very skewed and everyone should have known that when we lost to NY in the playoffs.

 

[Dave_in-NC]

I used to belong on another Cowboys board and posted this before, and wanted to get your guys' reaction. I am kind of disappointed I spent so much time on that board, as this one is superior in just about every way. Anyways, here it goes.

Preseason:

Bill Parcells quits after trying to strong arm Jerry into paying him more and we hire Wade Phillips. Jerry had already hired Jason Garrett as the OC, so it seemed likely we were getting a defensive minded head coach to take over. This was an odd move, as usually the HC picks his own staff.

Season

We got the AFC East and NFC North that year, which ended up being one of the easiest schedules in the league. The AFC East, was absolutely terrible, with the exception of New England.

We opened the season in a shoot out against the Giants on SNF. I remember the game vividly. I was excited to see the new "attacking" style defense of Wade Phillips, since we heard so many complaints about how vanilla the Parcells 3-4 was. It was one of the most exciting regular season games I have ever watched. After that game, we knew Romo was the real deal.

After that game, we had a bunch of cupcake games. The Bears were defending NFC champs, but they weren't very good. The Rams, Dolphins, Bills were the worst teams in the league, and the Vikings were mediocre.

In hindsight, we beat up on a bunch of bad teams, which allowed some individual players to play at a level that was not representative of their true potential.

Pro Bowl Players

This is where the "talented roster" talk started to happen. It seems like commonplace now, but in 2006, no one was praising the talent that is on this team. Now, every year, we hear the pundits claiming the Cowboys have enough talent to win the Super Bowl, but it just isn't true.

Romo
MBIII
TO
Witten
Flozell
Davis
Gurode
Ware
Ellis
Newman
Hamlin
Roy Williams
Folk

What is interesting is that Gurode was terrible this year at snapping. He was a decent interior blocker, but he had a ton of bad snaps, some of which were comical, like against the Rams.

It would be proven in the next year that a large majority of these guys were flukes who padded their stats by playing terrible teams.

2008 Season

Jerry truly believed we were really close to getting to the Super Bowl since we did so well in the 2007. This lead to Jerry giving away our 2009 draft for Roy Williams, who ended up being a complete bust.

The 2008 season was a complete disaster ending in a pure embarrassment as we closed out Texas Stadium with a loss and got destroyed by the Eagles.

2009 Season

The Cowboys and Wade Phillips looked to be on the ropes, until the miracle win over the Saints happened and we managed to sneak into the playoffs. We managed to beat the Eagles in a playoff game and this secured Wade Phillips' job.


Anyways, the point of this thread is that 2007 is where all the "talent" BS started being spewed around and probably extended Wade Phillips' time here as a coach by at least a year and a half. I believe this directly correlates with bad drafting (drafting for depth and lack of competition) that we saw from 2007 - 2010.

 

[strongbomb3]

i cant wait when dallas wins the superbowl this year so people like you will shut up.

 

[KJJ]

Didn't know 5 years = a decade.

Well hopefully he's not clairvoyant.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

A decade? WHAT? We've had success since 2007 lol.

 

[The Emperor]

i cant wait when dallas wins the superbowl this year so people like you will shut up.

Well, I'd say I'm more optimistic than folks like Risen Star and Hoofbite and more sane than folks like KJJ and Gemini Dolly that blame Romo for everything, but I can tell you we won't. We don't have the trench play to do it, even if we get DeCastro. Furthermore, we don't have the coaching staff to do it. We don't have that system and stability that Super Bowl-caliber teams have.

But I'll say we're going to the conference championship this year. That, I think we will do. We're not a Super Bowl contender yet.

 

[jobberone]

Way to ruin a good narrative. You just love mediocrity. It's fans like you that are the reason we haven't won a playoff game in 16 years.

I'm going to go have a taco to calm down.

Yeah the fans are the cause we lose or win games. I always knew if I approached every game in a positive way it would affect the outcome of games.

I believe my first impression of you was the right one. And you absolutely remind me of a poster who disappeared for awhile.

Of course maybe you weren't really being serious in which case neither was I.

 

[strongbomb3]

Well, I'd say I'm more optimistic than folks like Risen Star and Hoofbite and more sane than folks like KJJ and Gemini Dolly that blame Romo for everything, but I can tell you we won't. We don't have the trench play to do it, even if we get DeCastro. Furthermore, we don't have the coaching staff to do it. We don't have that system and stability that Super Bowl-caliber teams have.

But I'll say we're going to the conference championship this year. That, I think we will do. We're not a Super Bowl contender yet.

if we go to the nfc championship, how are we not superbowl contenders?

 

[Cowboys&LakersFan]

Well, I'd say I'm more optimistic than folks like Risen Star and Hoofbite and more sane than folks like KJJ and Gemini Dolly that blame Romo for everything, but I can tell you we won't. We don't have the trench play to do it, even if we get DeCastro. Furthermore, we don't have the coaching staff to do it. We don't have that system and stability that Super Bowl-caliber teams have.

But I'll say we're going to the conference championship this year. That, I think we will do. We're not a Super Bowl contender yet.

If you think we're gonna make the NFC Title game then that definitely makes us a SB contender. DeCastro is just like Tyron pretty much except he's a guard obviously. Kid is gonna be dominant for a long time to come. If we get him we are definitely a legit contender.

 

[Eskimo]

I do think there is some merit in the OP's original claim that the team may not have not have been quite as good as the 12-1 start would indicate.

JJ thought we needed just that one player to put us over the top and he went for "wow" in the draft with Felix in the first when we could have really used help in the trenches. Ditto for drafting another backup TE in the 2nd round. The last part of this trifecta was the desperate trade for RW11. We wasted 3 high picks on backup players instead of rebuilding our trenches despite all that age on the OL and the fact that we still only had one good pass rusher on the roster at DE/OLB.

The other set of mistakes that came from that overestimation of the 2007 talent were bad contracts: Flo, TNew, Hamlin and Barber immediately come to mind. This was followed by the disastrous RW11 trade which wasted cap dollars and the two premium 2009 draft picks that then snowballed into the disastrous 2009 draft.

Now all these bad decisions gave us a lot of mediocre, aging players that were an anchor on the roster which had to adjust but couldn't find the cap room to do it without gutting the team. We still had the talent to pull off a good 2009 season but the age finally caught up to us in 2010 with the disastrous defense and pathetic OL.

Now we have Garrett in charge and he made a lot of good moves in 2011 to right this franchise. These were painful decisions as we gutted the OL and put in scrubs. We also didn't fill in the holes on a pathetic 2010 defense hoping that a change of scheme would work miracles. I was hopeful after the first half of the season but then we collapsed at the end of the year and I had to face the reality that we probably overachieved in the first half and then showed how far away we are from the contenders in the second half. We can beat anyone when we protect Romo because we can score points but the problem is good DLs still tear our OL apart - look at the two losses to the Giants and Eagles for evidence of this. Also look at what the Cards did to us. The Dolphins also would have beat us except for a few miraculous plays from Romo.

I really think we are still a year away from contending. We have done a good job of getting our salary and age structure of the roster back into balance but we now face the issue of an aging core with Rat about to hit the wall and Witten really starting to slow down. Ware is a beast and can probably beast a few more years but he has to be wearing down from the opponent throwing 2 blockers at him every down because no one else in the front 7 is feared anymore. Romo can play until the OL gets him killed.

I do think we have done well the last two years but after 3 subpar drafts from 2007-9 we don't have that wave of players that should be coming into their peaks now as the vets start to decline. For that reason we need to hit two more homerun type drafts to prevent the natural decline of age from setting into this roster as our old core ages now.

I really hope Garrett, Ciskowski and the scouts have done a good job. I also hope they have the courage to trade down in a deep draft and fill all the cracks that are present in this roster with special focus on interior OL, CB and pass rusher (either DE or OLB).