- Messages
- 79,278
- Reaction score
- 45,637
Updated Jan 4, 2010 12:40 PM EDT
The NFC rematch factor
Arizona has been a Jekyll and Hyde team all season. The Cardinals have played some stinkers at home. Now, maybe getting beat as they did might embarrass them just enough to make them play better. Maybe losing as they did will make them mad. Obviously, Green Bay is going back to Arizona with some confidence.
But the interesting rematch will be Philadelphia going back to Dallas, because this rematch is a big rivalry. And Philadelphia has had an upper hand on Dallas in recent seasons in some of these games and embarrassed the Cowboys at the end of the year last season.
Everybody has tremendous respect for the Philadelphia coaching staff, and I promise they will correct some of the mistakes they made in today's game.
I really liked Cowboys offensive coordinator Jason Garrett's approach to this game. Philadelphia forces a lot of turnovers with blitzes. What Dallas did was use a lot of a spread sets. By spreading receivers all over the field, it made Philadelphia commit its people on blitzes. The Dallas spread allows Tony Romo to see man pass coverage easily, and if it's a zone blitz, that puts the Philadelphia defenders in poor positions.
Consequently, by spreading the Eagles completely out, it exposed the blitz. It really helped Tony Romo with his decisions. He knew exactly where to throw. But when Dallas wanted to run the ball, the Cowboys went back to the I formation to run their lead draw. But when they went to the spread set, they were throwing the ball. And it definitely negated Philadelphia's blitz.
Now, if Garrett doesn't change his spread formations for next week, the Eagles are going to have to come up with blitzes to put some pressure on Romo. But they are going to have to do it in a way that they can disguise it. They can make these adjustments in a short week, and they definitely need to do it.
I loved Garrett's game plan because it went against their standard. I mean, the Cowboys are supposed to be a running team. Well, if you have Romo standing back there by himself in the shotgun, you are not running the football. But by using that formation, the Cowboys made Philadelphia commit on blitzes. So instead of trying the fool the Eagles about whether they were going to run or pass, the Cowboys let the Eagles know it was going to be a pass - so Dallas could see what the defense was going to do. It was really good thinking on the Cowboys' part.
What it did was take the indecision out of the offense. If the Cowboys had used their customary two backs in the backfield and wanted to use a play-action pass, there might have been six blitzers coming and then Romo would have had to make a quick decision. But if he's standing in a shotgun with no running backs, he knows exactly where to throw the football. It really helped Romo. And what little running game the Cowboys had, when they lined up in I formation, they ran a little draw play or sweep.
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/Johnson-Welker-big-loss-for-Patriots-010310
