jday
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Since the moment the Cowboys drafted Zeke, I had a sense that the Cowboys fan base was in for a very entertaining year. It might not ultimately yield the results that everybody wants (Championship), but when compared to 2015, it would at the very least be watchable again. I shouted it from the rooftops, if ever there was a season to tune in and watch Cowboys football, 2016 would be it.
This, of course, hinged on the health of Romo…but, keeping Romo healthy, I reasoned, was doable with a great running game featuring a running back that is also great at picking up the blitz. After all, how many times have we seen Romo miss time simply because the running back whiffed on his blocking assignment? Zeke doesn’t miss. During his college career, out of over 1 hundred such instances where his responsibility was to help keep the pocket clean, he only surrendered one pressure…or so I read somewhere. So, with that in mind, I thought these Cowboys were in for a very, very enjoyable to watch year. Outside of predicting a definite spot in the playoffs, that is as far as I was willing to project for the 2016 season. So far, so good…but we didn’t get to this point without potential season-sinking adversity. Three plays in to the third game of the preseason, Romo’s back was once again injured (no relation to previous injuries, mind you).
I remember exactly where I was when the news broke (no pun intended). I was grilling up some burgers for the in-laws when my wife’s sister piped up on that fateful day following that game at Seattle that the MRI revealed a fracture in Romo’s back and he would be out 6 to 10 weeks. I merely shrugged my shoulders and asked, “Have you been watching? Dak will win enough games to keep the Cowboys in contention; I’m not worried at all.”
Say what you want about it “just being preseason,” to be the top passer coming out of those first three games in the league says something about the player. If you watched, you understand that the passes he was making with the accuracy he was making them and the touch he was throwing them was simply on another level from the typical rookie. In fact, Dak was doing things with his eyes, his legs and his arm that few quarterbacks in this league come close to being able to duplicate. When I said I wasn’t worried, I honestly and truly meant it. In fact, a part of me was actually a little excited at the prospect of seeing Dak do Dak in the regular season. Sorry Romo…I am not immune to the shiny-new-toy effect, I am only human after all.
But this is not another Dak over Romo contribution. I’ll say it, just in case you missed the numerous times I have intimated this belief before, that despite my love and respect for Romo and the fact that he has earned another chance, it just simply doesn’t make sense to change what we know is working (and working really well, mind you) for something we hope works better. Keep in mind, we are not just simply changing QB’s when we throw Romo back in; the entire offensive scheme, game plan and approach (that has been working really well so far) changes along with the signal caller. If your argument to that is the change will be for the better, I obviously have nothing I can say to refute that without the benefit of seeing it unfold one way or the other. Admittedly, it very well may be better with Romo. It’s the flipside of that coin that concerns me. And at the end of the day, making this switch to me is like winning a coin toss and then telling your opponent, “best 2 out of 3.” Who does that?
But again, that’s not what this is about.
I’ve said it before; winning in the playoffs and the Super Bowl is more about how many different things a team does well as opposed to how well they do one thing. That is why, prior to the preseason even starting, I felt comfortable predicting the Cowboys will be in the playoffs and simultaneously uncomfortable claiming anything beyond a playoff spot. I honestly felt it would be much like 2014, with the Cowboys riding their ground & pound game into the playoffs but falling short due to their shortcomings on defense. I am backing away from the assertion now. These Cowboys now may very well be the team to beat in the NFC.
Why?
So glad you asked, otherwise the following would have been unsolicited.
Because the Cowboys now don’t do just one thing very well; they do a few different things very well. They control the ground on offense and the air on defense. This combination of control on both sides of the ball, simply put, makes the Cowboys extremely difficult to beat. Sure, I’d feel a heck-of-a-lot better if they could add just one more pass rusher in their current mix but as 31 other team’s will all agree, you can’t have it all…and the Cowboys have no room to complain about a lack of talent.
By now, we all know that Zeke is leading the league in rushing yards with 703 yards; that was to a certain degree expected, though, admittedly leading the league was somewhat of a pleasant surprise. That is the Cowboys identity. But, they don’t live and die by the run as much as they did in 2014. This offense actually lives and dies by playing mistake free football…above all. The Cowboys coaches understand that with the weapons they have at their disposal, the points will come. Patience is the key, though. They cannot force it. They must let the points come to them…which is another reason I fear the return of Romo. The best and worst thing about Romo is he does not know when to give up on a play and that makes him a liability to this offense given its current construction. You need only consider his decision to run when that play against Seattle broke down 3 plays into action of a contest that meant absolutely nothing other than an effort to knock off rust.
Dak, on the other hand, standing behind one of the (if not the) best offensive lines in football, has already demonstrated an understanding of the importance behind living to play another play. He will throw the ball away, if all else fails because quite simply he recognizes that if not this series, the next….either way, one way or another way, this team will find the endzone. By ground, by air, or by merit of Mr. Clutch Dan Bailey himself, this team will score on Sunday and will do so repeatedly. No Dez, no problem. He’s making fringe-receivers look like Pro Bowlers. If the opposition is not prepared to put up at minimum three touchdowns in any given game, they are not prepared to play the Cowboys. Point Blank.
The cardinal rule of the Cowboys defense is to not surrender the big play. Allow the dink & dunk the teams can accomplish up and down the field, but deny the quick score and if possible force the field goal once a team has crawled into the redzone. This accomplishes several things for the Cowboys. One, with their rotation, after a series of 8 plus plays, they expect to be in better condition to fight than the offensive opposition; which often times is the difference between 7 points and 3…if any points at all. Second, with each play a team must run in an attempt to keep pace with the Cowboys offense, the opportunity for mistakes the Cowboys defense can capitalize and use to their advantage increases. This is particularly true when a team is playing from behind in the second half, because time then becomes a factor, removing the ground game as an option which in turn makes a team one-dimensional and all the more susceptible to a game-losing error.
The Cowboys defense is much better than what they are given credit for. The problem is this fact is hidden from the typical stat guy. The typical stat guy simply looks at the yards a defense allows to determine how a defense compares to 31 other teams. If this is your measuring stick, you are wrong; by design, this Cowboys defense allows yards and therefore on the stat sheet may look as though they are struggling…when in all actuality they are not. They are merely forcing the team to eat up clock and ideally eventually make a mistake.
Last Sunday’s game against the Packers is a microcosm of what I am talking about. The Packers scored points throughout the game making it seem as though they were staging a comeback, however, in the end their mistakes outweighed their efforts, their efforts only served to eat up clock and they fell well short of their mark. In fact, the game was over the moment Brice Butler tapped his two feet inbounds for a Touchdown right before the end of the first half.
The key stat that the football watching world should be looking at is expressed in the following formula:
Average Points Per Game minus the average points allowed. This formula, while not perfect, grants the viewer a better telling picture of the combined offensive and defensive ability of a team which otherwise would be described as their scoring differential. This is the mathematical expression of SCOREBOARD! And at the end of the day, is the only thing that truly matters in a given game.
Of teams in the NFC that have played 6 games, the Cowboys currently rank #1 with 8.7. That is to say, the Cowboys are presently averaging 26.5 in games while surrendering 17.8 per game. If you take in consideration that those numbers are skewed by the 1 point loss to the Giants in game 1 of this season, you should be able to make a leap in projecting that as the season progresses the separation between the Cowboys and the pretenders of the NFC will become more pronounced…and that is particularly true of the teams in the NFL whose identity is established on the defensive side of the ball. Based on what we have seen, the defensive powerhouses of the NFC picked the wrong year and the wrong side of the ball to be dominant in and on. They will not stop our Cowboys.
The Falcons, on the other hand, are a different story. This is the one team that really concerns me because they can keep pace with the Cowboys offense. That game will be about which defense does a better job on that day should that game transpire in the Play Offs, which is very likely at this point. Falcons aside, though, these Cowboys are going to be a force to reckon with. In my mind, the only thing that could possibly change that is a change at the quarterback position…but that’s just my opinion. For those who are ready to exclaim, “But a rookie has never won a Super Bowl before,” all I can say in response is: That wouldn’t be the first first for Dak this season (first Rookie to throw 176 passes without an interception) and it most likely won’t be the last.
This, of course, hinged on the health of Romo…but, keeping Romo healthy, I reasoned, was doable with a great running game featuring a running back that is also great at picking up the blitz. After all, how many times have we seen Romo miss time simply because the running back whiffed on his blocking assignment? Zeke doesn’t miss. During his college career, out of over 1 hundred such instances where his responsibility was to help keep the pocket clean, he only surrendered one pressure…or so I read somewhere. So, with that in mind, I thought these Cowboys were in for a very, very enjoyable to watch year. Outside of predicting a definite spot in the playoffs, that is as far as I was willing to project for the 2016 season. So far, so good…but we didn’t get to this point without potential season-sinking adversity. Three plays in to the third game of the preseason, Romo’s back was once again injured (no relation to previous injuries, mind you).
I remember exactly where I was when the news broke (no pun intended). I was grilling up some burgers for the in-laws when my wife’s sister piped up on that fateful day following that game at Seattle that the MRI revealed a fracture in Romo’s back and he would be out 6 to 10 weeks. I merely shrugged my shoulders and asked, “Have you been watching? Dak will win enough games to keep the Cowboys in contention; I’m not worried at all.”
Say what you want about it “just being preseason,” to be the top passer coming out of those first three games in the league says something about the player. If you watched, you understand that the passes he was making with the accuracy he was making them and the touch he was throwing them was simply on another level from the typical rookie. In fact, Dak was doing things with his eyes, his legs and his arm that few quarterbacks in this league come close to being able to duplicate. When I said I wasn’t worried, I honestly and truly meant it. In fact, a part of me was actually a little excited at the prospect of seeing Dak do Dak in the regular season. Sorry Romo…I am not immune to the shiny-new-toy effect, I am only human after all.
But this is not another Dak over Romo contribution. I’ll say it, just in case you missed the numerous times I have intimated this belief before, that despite my love and respect for Romo and the fact that he has earned another chance, it just simply doesn’t make sense to change what we know is working (and working really well, mind you) for something we hope works better. Keep in mind, we are not just simply changing QB’s when we throw Romo back in; the entire offensive scheme, game plan and approach (that has been working really well so far) changes along with the signal caller. If your argument to that is the change will be for the better, I obviously have nothing I can say to refute that without the benefit of seeing it unfold one way or the other. Admittedly, it very well may be better with Romo. It’s the flipside of that coin that concerns me. And at the end of the day, making this switch to me is like winning a coin toss and then telling your opponent, “best 2 out of 3.” Who does that?
But again, that’s not what this is about.
I’ve said it before; winning in the playoffs and the Super Bowl is more about how many different things a team does well as opposed to how well they do one thing. That is why, prior to the preseason even starting, I felt comfortable predicting the Cowboys will be in the playoffs and simultaneously uncomfortable claiming anything beyond a playoff spot. I honestly felt it would be much like 2014, with the Cowboys riding their ground & pound game into the playoffs but falling short due to their shortcomings on defense. I am backing away from the assertion now. These Cowboys now may very well be the team to beat in the NFC.
Why?
So glad you asked, otherwise the following would have been unsolicited.
Because the Cowboys now don’t do just one thing very well; they do a few different things very well. They control the ground on offense and the air on defense. This combination of control on both sides of the ball, simply put, makes the Cowboys extremely difficult to beat. Sure, I’d feel a heck-of-a-lot better if they could add just one more pass rusher in their current mix but as 31 other team’s will all agree, you can’t have it all…and the Cowboys have no room to complain about a lack of talent.
By now, we all know that Zeke is leading the league in rushing yards with 703 yards; that was to a certain degree expected, though, admittedly leading the league was somewhat of a pleasant surprise. That is the Cowboys identity. But, they don’t live and die by the run as much as they did in 2014. This offense actually lives and dies by playing mistake free football…above all. The Cowboys coaches understand that with the weapons they have at their disposal, the points will come. Patience is the key, though. They cannot force it. They must let the points come to them…which is another reason I fear the return of Romo. The best and worst thing about Romo is he does not know when to give up on a play and that makes him a liability to this offense given its current construction. You need only consider his decision to run when that play against Seattle broke down 3 plays into action of a contest that meant absolutely nothing other than an effort to knock off rust.
Dak, on the other hand, standing behind one of the (if not the) best offensive lines in football, has already demonstrated an understanding of the importance behind living to play another play. He will throw the ball away, if all else fails because quite simply he recognizes that if not this series, the next….either way, one way or another way, this team will find the endzone. By ground, by air, or by merit of Mr. Clutch Dan Bailey himself, this team will score on Sunday and will do so repeatedly. No Dez, no problem. He’s making fringe-receivers look like Pro Bowlers. If the opposition is not prepared to put up at minimum three touchdowns in any given game, they are not prepared to play the Cowboys. Point Blank.
The cardinal rule of the Cowboys defense is to not surrender the big play. Allow the dink & dunk the teams can accomplish up and down the field, but deny the quick score and if possible force the field goal once a team has crawled into the redzone. This accomplishes several things for the Cowboys. One, with their rotation, after a series of 8 plus plays, they expect to be in better condition to fight than the offensive opposition; which often times is the difference between 7 points and 3…if any points at all. Second, with each play a team must run in an attempt to keep pace with the Cowboys offense, the opportunity for mistakes the Cowboys defense can capitalize and use to their advantage increases. This is particularly true when a team is playing from behind in the second half, because time then becomes a factor, removing the ground game as an option which in turn makes a team one-dimensional and all the more susceptible to a game-losing error.
The Cowboys defense is much better than what they are given credit for. The problem is this fact is hidden from the typical stat guy. The typical stat guy simply looks at the yards a defense allows to determine how a defense compares to 31 other teams. If this is your measuring stick, you are wrong; by design, this Cowboys defense allows yards and therefore on the stat sheet may look as though they are struggling…when in all actuality they are not. They are merely forcing the team to eat up clock and ideally eventually make a mistake.
Last Sunday’s game against the Packers is a microcosm of what I am talking about. The Packers scored points throughout the game making it seem as though they were staging a comeback, however, in the end their mistakes outweighed their efforts, their efforts only served to eat up clock and they fell well short of their mark. In fact, the game was over the moment Brice Butler tapped his two feet inbounds for a Touchdown right before the end of the first half.
The key stat that the football watching world should be looking at is expressed in the following formula:
Average Points Per Game minus the average points allowed. This formula, while not perfect, grants the viewer a better telling picture of the combined offensive and defensive ability of a team which otherwise would be described as their scoring differential. This is the mathematical expression of SCOREBOARD! And at the end of the day, is the only thing that truly matters in a given game.
Of teams in the NFC that have played 6 games, the Cowboys currently rank #1 with 8.7. That is to say, the Cowboys are presently averaging 26.5 in games while surrendering 17.8 per game. If you take in consideration that those numbers are skewed by the 1 point loss to the Giants in game 1 of this season, you should be able to make a leap in projecting that as the season progresses the separation between the Cowboys and the pretenders of the NFC will become more pronounced…and that is particularly true of the teams in the NFL whose identity is established on the defensive side of the ball. Based on what we have seen, the defensive powerhouses of the NFC picked the wrong year and the wrong side of the ball to be dominant in and on. They will not stop our Cowboys.
The Falcons, on the other hand, are a different story. This is the one team that really concerns me because they can keep pace with the Cowboys offense. That game will be about which defense does a better job on that day should that game transpire in the Play Offs, which is very likely at this point. Falcons aside, though, these Cowboys are going to be a force to reckon with. In my mind, the only thing that could possibly change that is a change at the quarterback position…but that’s just my opinion. For those who are ready to exclaim, “But a rookie has never won a Super Bowl before,” all I can say in response is: That wouldn’t be the first first for Dak this season (first Rookie to throw 176 passes without an interception) and it most likely won’t be the last.
