Hindsight is 20/20

sonnyboy

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In my opinion, the last two games clinched a thought I had been harboring all year. I'll get to that thought that I now see as a truth in a minute.

Injuries hid this truth fairly well. Or at least they hide it from me.

Almost from the start of the season, I felt something was wrong with our offense. It primarily manifested itself in Romo. Something was amiss in our passing game and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Why were we not operating at the same or better efficiency level as 2007. The numbers were similar early on, but the feeling was different.
We didn't convert on third down, especially 3rd and long as well as in the past.
We were hiting big plays and that's great! Certainly helped keep the numbers close to 2007 and helped us win games: Browns, Eagles, Packers.

We just weren't puting together longer drives. We seldom seemed to operate well without the big play.

Often Romo would have plenty of time and could not find a reciever. And why could we not get the ball to TO?

The Ravens exposed another weakness in our offense. The used cleverly disguised delayed blitz's. They were consistently getting a man on a free delayed rush.
Now this player wouldn't get to Romo for almost 3 secs, but it removed the ability of Romo to wait on longer developing patterns.
Since it was slightly delayed, nobody would break off hot.

This is just one example, I could go on and on, but here's the problem/truth as I now see it.

We miss Sparano. He was instrimental in offensive gameplanning. He also served a few other usefull rolls for the 2007 Cowboys I want get into right here.

But I think it's painfully obvious that he did a lot of work for Garrett in the preperation of the offensive gameplan. From what is not happening well now, I can assume most of this work was in the area of recognition of the opposing defense.

This is why we would start off so slow, why Romo was soo often surprised at what the defense was doing, why we couldn't get receivers open often enough, why defenses felt like they knew what we would be doing.

If you look at the 2007 offense vs 2008 offense (with Romo), it's clear this is the problem. We had a few more injuries, but we added talent. Shoulda been a wash.
Our #1 problem is our offensive our coordinator.
 
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