fortdick
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Folks, this was a disappointing season, no doubt. As everyone tries to figure out what went wrong and who is to blame, I see a lot of criticism of Romo, Garrett and Phillips. The real reason that this season was a bust is the injuries. I know that sounds like an excuse, but reality says that when you have as many players out as we did, thing are going to break down.
Newman missed about half the season, so we had to rely on rookies and Pacman. Scandrick and Jenkins looked promising but made rookie mistakes. Pacman hurt the team at a crucial time with his behavior. I think if Newman had been healthy all season the secondary would have been solid with everyone knowing their role.
Roy Williams (38). Losing him hurt us more than we care to admit. He isn't good in coverage but he does provide a great deal of run support and the Ravens game showed how much we missed him. We were short at safety all season; starting Killer and Ball on occasion. This injury was more important than we want to admit.
Kosier was a huge loss. I think everyone will admit that he is a solid part of this line, especially now that we see what this line was without him. Holland getting hurt after one start really killed us. Proctor just wasn't up to the job.
Marion Barber getting hurt at the end of the season was a back breaker. After losing Felix Jones early, our running game got thin. Although Choice looked good, he is MBIII light. He is not a break away threat and he doesn't pound a defense like Barber. What was one of the real strengths of this team became a weakness after losing the #1 and #2 RB's. We became one dimensional that allowed some pretty good defenses to just tee off on us. With Kosier out our line could not keep the pressure off Romo and his desire to make plays resulted in forcing passes and getting manhandled in the backfield.
Losing McBriar was huge as we saw late in the season. Most people don't realize how important a punter can be until you lose a great one. Field postion constantly turned against us because of this. You can't give away field positon like we did and expect to win, especially when you don't have your best team on the field.
Finally, the injury Romo took put us in a hole we could not climb out of. We should have won all three of the games he missed. That's 11-5 and the team would be confident going into the playoffs. Add in that Romo's passes lacked accuracy and velocity after the injury and you can see how big this injury was.
Whenever you want to complain about Romo, think back to where we have been. 61% completion rate, 3448 yards, 26 TD's vs. 14 interceptions, with a passer rating of 91. Would you have taken this when we had Carter, or Henson, or Bledsoe behind center? And this was Tony's worst season.
Garrett became one dimensional at the end. Everyone knew it and were ready. But in his defense, look at what he had to work with at the end. A third string rookie running back, a third string guard. An injured QB and his receivers trying to decide his game plan for him.
Injuries are part of the game. You get them and move on. But at some point, you run out of depth as we did. You lose a few games as a result and then the team starts pointing fingers, just like we are here. That will rip an organization apart.
We have been lucky over the last few years not to get bit by the injury bug. Well, it caught us this year. No one is saying that the Patriots are junk because they failed to win it all this year, and that is because of one injury - Brady. We had numerous key injuries and all of the sudden this team is junk. Go figure.
I guess that NE fans are just a little more tolerant than we are.
Newman missed about half the season, so we had to rely on rookies and Pacman. Scandrick and Jenkins looked promising but made rookie mistakes. Pacman hurt the team at a crucial time with his behavior. I think if Newman had been healthy all season the secondary would have been solid with everyone knowing their role.
Roy Williams (38). Losing him hurt us more than we care to admit. He isn't good in coverage but he does provide a great deal of run support and the Ravens game showed how much we missed him. We were short at safety all season; starting Killer and Ball on occasion. This injury was more important than we want to admit.
Kosier was a huge loss. I think everyone will admit that he is a solid part of this line, especially now that we see what this line was without him. Holland getting hurt after one start really killed us. Proctor just wasn't up to the job.
Marion Barber getting hurt at the end of the season was a back breaker. After losing Felix Jones early, our running game got thin. Although Choice looked good, he is MBIII light. He is not a break away threat and he doesn't pound a defense like Barber. What was one of the real strengths of this team became a weakness after losing the #1 and #2 RB's. We became one dimensional that allowed some pretty good defenses to just tee off on us. With Kosier out our line could not keep the pressure off Romo and his desire to make plays resulted in forcing passes and getting manhandled in the backfield.
Losing McBriar was huge as we saw late in the season. Most people don't realize how important a punter can be until you lose a great one. Field postion constantly turned against us because of this. You can't give away field positon like we did and expect to win, especially when you don't have your best team on the field.
Finally, the injury Romo took put us in a hole we could not climb out of. We should have won all three of the games he missed. That's 11-5 and the team would be confident going into the playoffs. Add in that Romo's passes lacked accuracy and velocity after the injury and you can see how big this injury was.
Whenever you want to complain about Romo, think back to where we have been. 61% completion rate, 3448 yards, 26 TD's vs. 14 interceptions, with a passer rating of 91. Would you have taken this when we had Carter, or Henson, or Bledsoe behind center? And this was Tony's worst season.
Garrett became one dimensional at the end. Everyone knew it and were ready. But in his defense, look at what he had to work with at the end. A third string rookie running back, a third string guard. An injured QB and his receivers trying to decide his game plan for him.
Injuries are part of the game. You get them and move on. But at some point, you run out of depth as we did. You lose a few games as a result and then the team starts pointing fingers, just like we are here. That will rip an organization apart.
We have been lucky over the last few years not to get bit by the injury bug. Well, it caught us this year. No one is saying that the Patriots are junk because they failed to win it all this year, and that is because of one injury - Brady. We had numerous key injuries and all of the sudden this team is junk. Go figure.
I guess that NE fans are just a little more tolerant than we are.
