3rd and Long and Tony Romo

khiladi

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I think with the play of Tony Romo making something out of nothing, especially on 3rd and longs, on a consistent basis early in the season had some negative effects on the team. It seemed to create certain psyche in the way Dallas approached the games. If they got penalized, no need to worry, because Tony will do something crazy and make a play.

Our offense generally did not seem to be that systematic in how it attacked defenses. We ran plenty on 2nd down for no gains, leaving us with major chunks of yardage on 3rd down. But that didn't seem to phase us, because of the nature of our offense and it being vertical. I think became too vertical as an offense.

Most teams took note of that, simply dropping men back into coverage knowing that the WRs were run deep routes. It became rather predictable, and we didn't seem to adjust by the end of the season. Maybe that is one of the reasons our OL play just started deteriorating. The longer you hold the rush for your WRs to go downfield, the more difficult it becomes to protect the QB.

It became obvious in the last game that Tony reverted to a habit of holding onto the ball way to long. That seemed to be a product of our approach as well. Throwing short slants and quick outs would make Romo think about getting the ball out quicker. Romo is highly accurate, so I find no reason why we didn't do this consistently.

I know Jason is primarily a product of Norv, but Norv use to run the slant even for Emmitt. Against the Colts, he did a great job of deploying the screen pass, catching the Colts off guard. The Colts couldn't even get close to either of the Chargers' QBs.
 

thekavorka

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I agree. I was disappointed by the lack of more screens, draws, slants, and overall short passes.
 
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