George: Is the Dallas Cowboys' offense too Tony Romo-friendly or too Tony Romo-reliant?

[Rogerthat12]

Knowing how Garrett is, we know he won't change.

I guess the fun part is the shell game that will filched upon the fan base to make it appear otherwise.

 

[Junglist]

And the lap dog Dallas media and CZ homers lap it up

There media here has done a 180°. They all say coaching (Garrett) has a lot to do with not winning. It's about time.

 

[Bay10]

Anybody that doesn't thing Romo was the reason this team has been 8-8 instead of 4-12 just wasn't paying attention. Romo would have already have a ring with a competent organization. Romo could leave the Cowboys next week and I would root for him to win a ring.

 

[AzorAhai]

This assumes that the Cowboys figured out how to match their offense to Romo in the first place. It assumes Romo himself isn't the offense. Look at Romo's career passer rating by quarter.

1st 82.4
2nd 98.2
3rd 102.5
4th/OT 101.8

How much of our offensive success do we owe to that week's game plan, and how much of it is based on in-game adjustments to the plan? How much of what Romo learns about defensive tendencies and exploitable mismatches happens on the field in the 1st quarter, as opposed to during the week in the film room? How good would this offense be if 1st-quarter Romo were as good as the 2nd-4th quarter version?

That stuff may have nothing to do with the coaches or the offenses the team has built, and it could be that Romo is simply a slow starter. But when a playoff team goes 1-10 without its starting QB just one year later, it makes you wonder how much of that success is attributable to the rest of the team, coaches, and organization. How much is scheme as opposed to improvisation, preparation as opposed to reaction?


Meanwhile, this may be the high point of Brandon Weeden's career from a PR standpoint. Look at Weeden's downfield passing against the league's two worst pass defenses -- #31 Ten and #32 NO. (Remember, in the game against the Saints, there was no Dez.) Then compare those two games to Weeden's other games.

Passer rating on 10+ yard targets
vs NO (wk 4) 122.3
vs Ten (wk 16) 148.3
vs everyone else 55.5

Weeden's downfield success isn't unique to his games with the Texans. It's unique to his games against really, really bad defenses. Over his last 18 starts his passer rating has reached higher than the 80's only four times -- against pass defenses ranked 29th, 29th, 31st, and 32nd. If you miss that fact by ignoring which defenses Weeden faced, and just blend them all together, it can lead you to a conclusion that may be totally wrong about Weeden, but may be 100% correct about our offensive scheme having little to do with our success.

This really makes a lot of sense when you combine the eye test with stats. It's common knowledge that most teams have a set number of plays that they usually have scripted to start a game off. Those 1st 10 plays or so could easily result in his skewed numbers for the 1st Qtr. Combine that with the eye test and you get a potential reason for the slow starts that always seem to plague this team throughout Garretts tenure.

The 3rd and 4th qtr ratings can also be linked to more and more control being taken by Romo in the games. Usually those slow starts lead to trailing at half or at least a very close game. We've never been a team under Garrett to jump out to early leads or significant leads throughout the games. All of this results in having to open the game up which gives Romo more and more distance between the game plan and what he does best. I don't think its any coincidence that Romo really excels when he doesn't have to run the game plan.

 

[fifaguy]

You would think.

But if you remember, Garrett's hallmark game against the Packers, his muse was his wife who told him to throw it high and deep to Harper.

Nice one. Good old Alvin. Those were the days....

 

[Sarge]

Hey, the offense did great this year.

28th in yards per game
26th in 3rd down conversions
31st in points per game
32nd in turnover difference, by a large margin
22nd in penalties

This offense works. Period.

I think the process is in the wrong gear.

 

[ConstantReboot]

One of the reasons Weeden was replaced by Cassel was because he was handcuffed in the Cowboys' offense, told not to take chances down the field.

Although I not a fan of Weeden at all and didn't like the signing, I can see his dilemma here in Dallas.

He was told not to throw downfield because the risk of INT. However, we lost every game because our coach is too chicken to throw downfield even with a QB with a rifle arm.

Garrett seems like he is so afraid of taking risks in fear of losing that he doesn't take any risk at all and losses games. Thats what he calls "the process".

 

[Wolfpack]

This assumes that the Cowboys figured out how to match their offense to Romo in the first place. It assumes Romo himself isn't the offense. Look at Romo's career passer rating by quarter.

1st 82.4
2nd 98.2
3rd 102.5
4th/OT 101.8

How much of our offensive success do we owe to that week's game plan, and how much of it is based on in-game adjustments to the plan? How much of what Romo learns about defensive tendencies and exploitable mismatches happens on the field in the 1st quarter, as opposed to during the week in the film room? How good would this offense be if 1st-quarter Romo were as good as the 2nd-4th quarter version?

That stuff may have nothing to do with the coaches or the offenses the team has built, and it could be that Romo is simply a slow starter. But when a playoff team goes 1-10 without its starting QB just one year later, it makes you wonder how much of that success is attributable to the rest of the team, coaches, and organization. How much is scheme as opposed to improvisation, preparation as opposed to reaction?


Meanwhile, this may be the high point of Brandon Weeden's career from a PR standpoint. Look at Weeden's downfield passing against the league's two worst pass defenses -- #31 Ten and #32 NO. (Remember, in the game against the Saints, there was no Dez.) Then compare those two games to Weeden's other games.

Passer rating on 10+ yard targets
vs NO (wk 4) 122.3
vs Ten (wk 16) 148.3
vs everyone else 55.5

Weeden's downfield success isn't unique to his games with the Texans. It's unique to his games against really, really bad defenses. Over his last 18 starts his passer rating has reached higher than the 80's only four times -- against pass defenses ranked 29th, 29th, 31st, and 32nd. If you miss that fact by ignoring which defenses Weeden faced, and just blend them all together, it can lead you to a conclusion that may be totally wrong about Weeden, but may be 100% correct about our offensive scheme having little to do with our success.

Excellent post.

 

[DogFace]

It hard for me to remember many or any time where we have guys break wide open as other teams do. Or even pretty open.

 

[JohnnyHopkins]

Ironically, Garrett is correct. The system adapts to the players, but it never elevates their level of play. Losing Romo has exposed some extremely terrible coaching this season.

 

[gimmesix]

I said it 2 years ago, Romo is Garrett's ideal 'get out of jail free' card

Romo plays: see, the offense is productive. Garrett is a great coach

Romo is injured: well of course we lost, no one can win with a back up QB

And the lap dog Dallas media and CZ homers lap it up

The success of teams starting backup QBs is still not that high. There's no excuse for Dallas going 1-10 with their backups, but anyone expecting them to win more than 3 to 4 games isn't grounded in the reality of playing backup QBs.

For example, in 2014, eight backups didn't win any starts, going 0-17. Nine won 1 each, going 9-20. Four posted a winning record in their starts, out of 23 backups who made at least 1 start.

 

[visionary]

The success of teams starting backup QBs is still not that high. There's no excuse for Dallas going 1-10 with their backups, but anyone expecting them to win more than 3 to 4 games isn't grounded in the reality of playing backup QBs.

For example, in 2014, eight backups didn't win any starts, going 0-17. Nine won 1 each, going 9-20. Four posted a winning record in their starts, out of 23 backups who made at least 1 start.

I agree but when your back up who had been in your system for 2 years can't win a single game and goes elsewhere in the middle of the season and goes 2-0, then all other stays and excuses should stopped. IT IS COACHING THAT IS HOLDING US BACK. PERIOD.

 

[Wrangler87]

The offense is too talent dependent. The only way we're really going to succeed is to make Garrett a walk-around head coach. Get rid of his 'system' and hire an OC who has free reign to implement an offense that takes advantage of our talents.

Garrett has never been a coach prior to the cowboys, so he's had no time to develop any real expertise, so his super simplistic schemes are getting exposed by guys who have been int he game for decades as coordinators before getting a head coaching job. It's no surprise we're getting beat on that side of the ball. The problem is that you can only out talent the league for so long in a salary cap era, and once other teams start poaching our players, we go right back towards mediocrity. It's telling that our offense looks best the last 10 minutes of games when Romo is out there improvising and is unleashed because we are behind. There's a reason that Romo has a ton of 4th quarter comebacks, and that's because we were often behind due to mediocre offensive schemes, and then Romo is unleashed and we start putting easy touchdowns on the board.

We will not get anywhere with these overly conservative, overly predictable schemes where we run 90% on first down no matter what... and then when we are behind, we depend on Romo to bail us out.

Post of the year. Especially the highlighted section. The numbers speak for that. You hit the nail on the head. Especially when this is taken into consideration:


Look at Romo's career passer rating by quarter.
1st 82.4
2nd 98.2
3rd 102.5
4th/OT 101.8

 

[Apollo Creed]

Yup. Funny thing is the Garrett "timing" offense only works when it has Tony pulling 3 ninja moves so receivers can finally disregard the planned route and get open.

QFT.

I used to always say - go grab any random Tony Romo highlight video. More often than not, he makes plays outside of the initial design of the play.

Percy posted great stats showing we are historically worse in the 1st quarter and get better as games go on. That is not a good sign for Garrett and co. That means their 'first 15' usually never works - and it isn't until Romo starts free-wheeling out there that we start to move the ball.

How many games have you guys watched that we struggle for 58 minutes, then as soon as Romo gets in the 2 minute offense and starts drawing plays in the sand - we start to move the ball with ease.

I can only imagine how great of a career he would have had with a real bright mind coaching him, not this clown Garrett bus rolling him every chance he gets.

I would love to be a fly on the wall when Tony talks to his friends and close teammates about Garrett.

 

[percyhoward]

The success of teams starting backup QBs is still not that high. There's no excuse for Dallas going 1-10 with their backups, but anyone expecting them to win more than 3 to 4 games isn't grounded in the reality of playing backup QBs.

That's true if you lump all teams together -- good and bad. But if you look only at teams that made the playoffs the previous season, they're usually around .500 in games missed by the QB who had previously led them to the playoffs. Going 1-10 with your backup is no big deal, but it's extremely rare for teams that made the playoffs one year prior.

Over the last four seasons, such teams are 29-22-1 without their starter (not counting the Cowboys).

2012 (3-2)
Pit 1-2
SF 2-0

2013 (4-5-1)
Hou 0-1
GB 2-4-1
Min 2-0

2014 (7-4)
KC 1-0
Phi 4-4
Car 2-0

2015 (15-11)
Pit 3-2
Ind 5-3
Cin 1-1
Bal 2-3
Den 4-2

 

[DandyDon52]

"I think our offense is flexible enough really to adapt to anybody," Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said Monday. "That's one of the things we like about our offense is that we can feature a guy or protect a guy?? if need be, not only at the quarterback position but at any position. That's what we try to do. We believe in our system of football on offense."

How on God's green earth can he say that - TODAY - after all that has transpired this season? How??

LOL yeah that is pretty bad, but if he expects us to believe that, what does that say about him ??

I like the "our offense is flexible enough really to adapt to anybody" lol weeden, Cassel,Moore ANYBODY !
So I can only guess he is throwing all 3 QB's under the bus ??

 

[gimmesix]

That's true if you lump all teams together -- good and bad. But if you look only at teams that made the playoffs the previous season, they're usually around .500 in games missed by the QB who had previously led them to the playoffs. Going 1-10 with your backup is no big deal, but it's extremely rare for teams that made the playoffs one year prior.

Over the last four seasons, such teams are 29-22-1 without their starter (not counting the Cowboys).

I do think a lot goes into it, including the coaching.

Last year, we were a team with a so-so defense, a league-leading running back and a passing game orchestrated by Romo.

We improved the so-so defense but not to shutdown levels (which some of those teams had). We wounded the running game by letting Murray go. And we completely lost that passing game when we lost Bryant and Romo in the first two weeks.

Losing your top three producers on offense is a difficult set of circumstances to overcome, and I think we would need to look at each team's circumstances — both the good and bad — to truly understand why they succeeded or didn't.

With ours, we can see that it definitely wasn't just the backup QB(s) that led us to where we are instead of being one of those teams that overcame losing its starter. It was a factor, coupled with several other factors, such as a running game that failed us at times, an injured Bryant, a defense that would finally break when we needed a last stand, a special teams breakdown and poor scheme adjustments/decision-making.

 

[Apollo Creed]

Despite the consensus here and lack of turnovers - I thought our defense played well enough to win at least 8-10 games this year.

Can't really evaluate guys that are constantly gassed and getting zero support from the offense.

 

[Redball Express]

He'll never change this O. He's delusional.

We're doomed......

Well..

We all know how the offense rolls.

Romo is the central feature and you can't deny he is one of the best at calling plays and directing the offense at the LOS.

So it has evolved around his skill set and others cannot duplicate it.

So without Romo..it looks dysfunctional.

What does that mean going forward?

Either we find Romo's clone or we change the offense once the new QB arrives.

We evperienced a similar problem when we went from Quincy to Bledsoe then to Romo.

I think once we get the off season settled..

and Romo finally repaired..

things will go back to progress.

 

[khiladi]

Garrett talking about flexibility on offense and adaptability.. lmao!!

No wonder this team never will change offense as long as he's here..

Romo wasn't even involved in game planning until his last contract in 2013. Man these writers are clueless. This is Garrett's offense.. Romo bails it out..