First Game. Who looked good and Who looked bad

[TNCowboy]

Good
Kneeland - several pressures. Played like a 1st rounder. Bodes well if he's legit as good as he looked yesterday.
Parsons - Unstoppable. Best defensive player in the NFL when he wants to be.
Overshown - Wow, best performance from a Cowboy LB not named Parsons since?
Demarcus - Was a beast. Best he's looked in a long time.
Secondary - Didn't really give up anything significant until the game was 27-3 and no longer in doubt.
Zimmer - He's a good football coach. Not enough to overcome the fail at the top of this organization, but unquestionably one of the top 5 defensive coaches in the league.
Aubrey - 18 games into his career, he looks like the best kicker in NFL history. If his clown HC paid attention to detail, he'd be a record holder this morning.

Bad
RBs - Just vanilla. No pop, no threat of breaking a run. Not a single NFL caliber back on the roster.
WRs - No one on the offense other than Lamb scares defenses. We could be in for a long season on that side of the ball.
Martin - Suckered Jones into giving him, what, $8 million extra last year? And of course, Jones bit. His prime is over and he'll only get awards this year based on past performance.
Steele - Still one of the NFL's worst tackles. Incredible to think our fool owners gave him $17 million/yr.

Mediocre
Dak was not good. Missed several throws, didn't make any plays with his feet. Not all his fault, due to his OL's pathetic showing. You need a guy eating that much cap to make the players around him better, Dak didn't do that, and he doesn't do that.

 

[conner01]

Browns were also a playoff team but you’d never know that based on how they played today.

Oline is beat up and Watson wasn’t the QB

 

[jterrell]

Who looked good:
CeeDee was uncoverable by Browns elite CBs. His rust diod show on some drops in 2nd half with game out of reach.
Defense was outstanding and especially the LB corps was vastly improved. --this means the DTs really did their job.

Great: You started so many young kids and did more than survive. Carson handling Amari 1v1 many snaps was a tall order but happened.
Aubrey is the bets kicker in the world.

When you win this big on the road over a quality opponent there is no bad beyond injuries.

 

[ArtClink]

Let's here it gang.
Who looked good.
Who looked bad

Our kicker is gonna win us an extra 2-3 games this year if we can keep the games close. What a weapon!!

 

[Texas_Pete]

Let's here it gang.
Who looked good.
Who looked bad

The Fat Boys up front made the LBs look like the 85 Bears.

 

[charron]

The entire defense looked good. Everyone making plays.

Same with special teams units, they had a good game.

The offense was sluggish at times but overall did well. Zeke was solid.

 

[Havic]

Oline is beat up and Watson wasn’t the QB

Is Flacco much better though? He played well in the moment but he would look like Watson as the season progressed. If it wasn’t for their coach, they would be a dumpster fire.

 

[America's Cowboy]

Fair enough.

But how about praise for what might have been a top-three draft class compared to every other team in the league last spring?

The Cowboys landed, I believe, an elite 2024 draft class...all while drafting from the bottom of each round.

Four Cowboys rookies starting and holding their own in their first game as starters. Another rookie or two as role players. Very, very, very uncommon...and music for those who love the team.

Oh, absolutely! Totally agree with you 100%. Cowboys did great with this year's 2024 draft class!

 

[McMicah]

Great:
T Smith, Parsons

Good:
Leupke, Guyton, Beebe, CeeDee, Turpin (except the drop), DLaw, Osa, Phillips, Overshown, Kendricks, Diggs, Lewis

OK:
Dak, Dowdle, Cooks, Steele, Wilson, Carson (better than people think), Kneeland, Liufai, Ferguson

Meh: Zeke, Deuce (what are we even doing? Give him carries or cut him), Martin, Mazi, Hooker, Thomas, all other TEs, all other LBs

Yikes: Mukuamu

 

[speedkilz88]

Overshown is giving me some Bobby Wagner feels. Credit Quinn on that.

I think he's got some Fred Warner in him.

 

[LandryFan]

And, like a bull, he's surprisingly quick and you don't want to be in his way when he's charging at you.

Yep…I’d call him the gazellephant.

 

[Creeper]

I rewatched the game last night focusing on a few key players.

Obviously, Overshown had a great game. That guy looked the way we thought he would when we saw him as a rookie before his injury. Closing speed is phenomenal. If he continues to play that way and stay healthy he could become our Fred Warner.

Beebe played pretty well. I saw him miss a few blocks here and there but he will learn. Guyton Struggled. Not just with Garrett. I think he will need more time to get into the NFL game than Beebe. I watched Steele as well, He looked close to his 2022 self. He is not the great pass protector we want to see but his run blocking has improved over last year.

I was most curious about Mazi Smith. He played the entire first half alongside Odighizuwa. Mazi was not getting pushed off the LOS yesterday. He held his ground and did what he is supposed to do. He occupied his blockers and let the LBs make plays. He is much better this year than his rookie season. Phillips and Joseph did not play until the second half so it was all Mazi in the important 1st half.

Kneeland is a player. He plays the run well, or did at least for this one game. I don't think he will ever be a great pass rusher, but he solves a problem Dallas had last year stopping the run.

Dak played really well in the first half, once the OL settled down a bit. But who realizes the Cowboys got on 49 yards of offense in the 2nd half? Dallas had a lead but Dak was 14 for 21 for 156 yards in the first half. he was 5 of 11 for 23 yards in the 2nd half. Of course the Cowboys had a lead in the 2nd and may have taken their foot off the gas, but watching the game, Dak's passes were not sharp in the 2nd half.

 

[conner01]

Is Flacco much better though? He played well in the moment but he would look like Watson as the season progressed. If it wasn’t for their coach, they would be a dumpster fire.

Flacco is a smarter QB. But Flacco wouldn’t have made the plays Watson did yesterday. He was under a lot of pressure and his legs saved him many times. But that defense is the same defense and that what’s the most impressive part from Cowboys perspective. Our young guys held up pretty well against a very tough defense

 

[Havic]

Flacco is a smarter QB. But Flacco wouldn’t have made the plays Watson did yesterday. He was under a lot of pressure and his legs saved him many times. But that defense is the same defense and that what’s the most impressive part from Cowboys perspective. Our young guys held up pretty well against a very tough defense

I agree, we also had a nice game plan and schemed Garrett to be almost ineffective

 

[Hawkeye19]

The running backs as a whole were the only thing I thought did not look good.
Only running yards we got seemed to come from the WRs.

My take away as well. We expected three yards and a cloud of dust, and that is about what we got.

Not enough horses in the stable I’m afraid. On the plus side— the short yardage/goal-line ground game looked improved

 

[conner01]

I agree, we also had a nice game plan and schemed Garrett to be almost ineffective

That was impressive.

 

[Bigtex67]

Dowdle was bad. 8 carries, only 26 yards, poor 3.3 yards/carry.

Don't understand why Deuce was not given more than 1 rushing attempt which he ran for 4 yards.

I wish we could have seen more of Deuce as well. I believe he was left on the sidelines mostly because they felt the need for running back blitz pickups. Zeke had some great pickup blocks.

 

[XXLMike]

Quick q, how did you think Jalen Tolbert played?

I didn’t really notice him to be honest with you

 

[Blast From The Past]

Kendricks and Overshown.....WOW!

Both looked very very good and I didn't know Overshown was a heat seeking missile. Man o lives he is fast and hits with bad intent. Actually I thought most of our guys were tackling very well all day long. I can't remember seeing such thing in a long while here. Hats off to Mike Zimmer for bringing in a different approach for our guys to be successful.

 

[beware_d-ware]

Zeke had a little more juice than I thought. He does have a habit of wearing down these days, so that's something to watch.