How badly did we mess up the RB situation?

[cowboys1981]

We probably go RB in Rd 2 if Gregory wasn't on the board. I really wanted Tevin Coleman.

 

[superonyx]

I believe we should have kept Murray. I'm not saying it would have been the difference over the last 7 games. But it would have allowed us focus on real needs in free agency and the draft. Like it or not we are still searching for his replacement and will be for a while. The money he got wasn't too much. It was more about the guarantee portion.

I will say that I more worried about our offensive system than I am about RB at this point.
Without Romo our offense is the worst in the league (or close enough to it)and that is not acceptable for a team that had super bowl talks.

 

[rynochop]

Should have drafted one in the middle rounds. .

Like a Robert Turbin type?

 

[bodi]

should have taken Langford

 

[CATCH17]

Come on Catch, you know they had it right last year. I'm not saying pay DM 8 million. This year they are running it well average wise, but it's an inconsistent running game.

Don't be mad because you were wrong about Joe!

I just don't think it's a topic if Romo is healthy and we're likely higher than we already are in rushing with a QB that converts 3rd downs.



The media has wanted to pounce on the Cowboys all season about letting Murray go.

There is 3 problems with that.

1. Murray is not that good in Philly.

2. Dallas is still one of the better rushing teams in the league.

3. Dallas is still one of the better rushing teams in the league while being completely predictable with playcalls and not having Tony Romo.



Could we use a better RB? Absolutely. But the lack of Murray has made no difference.

 

[Jenky]

I just don't think it's a topic if Romo is healthy and we're likely higher than we already are in rushing with a QB that converts 3rd downs.



The media has wanted to pounce on the Cowboys all season about letting Murray go.

There is 3 problems with that.

1. Murray is not that good in Philly.

2. Dallas is still one of the better rushing teams in the league.

3. Dallas is still one of the better rushing teams in the league while being completely predictable with playcalls and not having Tony Romo.



Could we use a better RB? Absolutely. But the lack of Murray has made no difference.

He's a mismatch for Philly and their o-line isn't exactly great at run blocking.

 

[CATCH17]

He's a mismatch for Philly and their o-line isn't exactly great at run blocking.

They seem to run fine when Ryan Matthews runs the ball.


Also, maybe that's just what Murray really is when he doesn't run behind the Cowboys O-Line.

He's had more seasons like he's having in Philly then his 1 giant season last year.

 

[Swanny]

First off, I'll admit, I wanted to let Murray go after the Eagles gave him that 8 million dollars a year offer. I would have signed him to a 6 million dollar per year contract. I think the previous low ball offer really affected Murray and offended him. It caused him to hold out in free agency, look for the best deal, and make an attempt to engage division rivals into a bidding war for his services.

I think the front office's arrogance completely botched that situation up. They wanted to emulate what the Patriots do, RBBC, and even though it's sound in theory, how often does it work in practice? It works for the Patriots cause they have Tom Brady. Their success always points back to Tom. The other deciding factor was probably based off the success of the o-line last year. "Anyone" can run behind that line. Say what you will, but Murray was the perfect back for this system. The only glaring deficiencies he had was the fumbling issue and his vision.

Last year Murray, Randle and Dunbar were all on the active roster. This year all 3 are gone (Dunbar to the IR). It's been a RB carousel this year with guys like Randle, McFadden, Michael, Rod Smith and probably Trey Williams soon. There's no consistency at all. It looks ugly, stagnate, and with hardly any upside.

Hindsight is 20/20 and I hate to say it, but I think things would have been tremendously different had we kept #29.

This team has the same record with DM. We would not have Dez if we kept DM. And 2 years from now we would be complaining about his cap hit. RB's are a dime a dozen. Unless you have a special one like AP, Gurley or Lynch. All other RBs are not worth big money contracts and I feel as Cowboys fans we should know this all too well. Latest example of this was Marion Barber. The best prime exaple of this right now in the NFL is Eddie Lacy. I bet the Packers are happy they didn't sign that guy to a new deal before the season started. If it were possible to predict an injury like Dunbar got then yeah I would be upset with Jerry. But Dunbar was looking great before his injury. The front office has screwed up a lot of things but RB is not one of them. I am fine with what we have. I hope they draft a good one in next years draft.

 

[InDakWeTrust]

I have a feeling Chubb and Elliott will be the future with Gurley when they come out. But two of them just had injuries, so you need proven backups or a passing game to avoid teams stacking the box each week, like we've been seeing for 7 weeks.

 

[hornitosmonster]

I don't know what Murray has to do with Romo? The team would be in the same position with Murray. McFadden has more 43 yards than Murray with only 2 more carries. Murray was slated to take a step back wherever he went.

 

[BotchedLobotomy]

Doesn't help that the O.L. has been pretty inconsistent this year.

 

[Jenky]

They seem to run fine when Ryan Matthews runs the ball.


Also, maybe that's just what Murray really is when he doesn't run behind the Cowboys O-Line.

He's had more seasons like he's having in Philly then his 1 giant season last year.

Come on dude, we've seen Murray run behind our garbage o-line earlier in his career and our inept play calling (Garrett). He has talent. I remember it like it was yesterday. He'd avoid 2-3 yard losses in the backfield for 3 yard gains. His ankle fractures killed him early on.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

I don't think the FO messed up the RB situation. I think the coaching staff did more of the mess up.

Keeping Murray was cost prohibitive. He came of a 436 carry season. While some argue against Football Outsiders' Theory of 380+ yards per carry in a season, in general I agree with it. Some will argue Eddie George's seasons, but his ypc went wayyyy down after his 403 yard carry season in 2000.

With Murray he is averaging 3.5 yards per carry for the Eagles. Some will counter that by saying 'well, the Eagles run a goofy offense!' But, his fellow RB Ryan Matthews is averaging 5.7 yards per carry. So, that doesn't fly.

I think Murray may have a better shot at coming back strong after this season because he's on pace for about 240 carries this season and that can keep him fresh.

However, would you be willing to pay him what the Eagles did for him to have a 240 carry season at 3.5 yards per carry (840 yards total) and then hope that will mean he will be rejuvenated for 2016 when he's 28 years old?

Where the pooch was screwed on this one is the coaching staff could not manage Murray's carries. Just like they can't manage McFadden's carries. And if we were to follow the gameplan of having Murray take a limited amount of carries for this season so he can be rejuvenated for 2016....we are relying on Garrett and Linehan to actually manage that.

***​

The bigger mistake was making Randle the starter. However, I can see what the staff and the FO were thinking. He was very productive as a backup last season. I don't know what choice they had. There were no real FA's out there and outside of Washington's Matt Jones (still only averaging 3.9 ypc), the tailbacks in the draft after the 2nd round have been very unproductive.

McFadden is the better running back and he does fit the scheme fairly well. But remember, he was a 'Jerry guy' and I'm guessing him not starting meant the coaching staff won that battle and Randle clearly wasn't the guy. And not to blame the coaching staff completely because McFadden was held out of parts of TC due to a hamstring injury. It also sends a bad message when Randle has been with the team and doesn't miss TC and gets replaced as the starter on opening day for a FA that came over here and missed parts of TC.

***​

We also forget about Dunbar who was extremely productive in his short time here and looked like a great mismatch, Darren Sproles type. Probably a better runner than Sproles, but not nearly the returner Sproles is. Most people on this board demanded that he get cut and I really think if he had stayed healthy, he would have been a difference in winning 1 of these games. If you don't have pure talent, you can score points thru mismatches. That's what the Patriots due on offense every year. For every Gronk, there's an Amendola or Kevin Faulk or a Ben Watson that are not great all around players, but they have attributes that present mismatches. Unfortunately, we know how well the coaching staff creates these mismatches.

***​

I think they liked Michael's ability, but he was taking forever to learn the blitz pickups which is more than just sticking your head in there. There's a lot of things like proper alignment, reading the defense, etc. that go into that. I think they gave him some leeway because he was new to the system, but you would think a guy that has been in the league for 2 years would have some feel and ability for it. He didn't and he wasn't a Bo Jackson type of runner to make up for it, so they waived him. In the end, it cost them the equivalent of fish heads and rice.

In the end, I think there was mismanagement from the coaching staff and some injuries that played a role in this. McFadden hurting his hamstring made it iffy that he could be the starter right away. Dunbar getting injured hurt the production of the RB corp as a whole.

Either way, we have not had the passing game due to Romo being out to clear up the box so the RB's could have a chance to run the ball. The play calling has been putrid (run the ball on first down almost every time and throw the ball out of the shotgun every time). And in the end, the good things are that Randle isn't a big cap hit, McFadden is basically a pay-for-play contract (and I would keep him around if he stays healthy), if Dunbar doesn't quite recover, he's not a big cap hit. And we got Michael, Smith and Turbin for cheap. We also should have some pretty good compensatory picks in the next draft which would make up for those spare 6th and 7th round picks we may lose (and most of them never seen the field in a real NFL game anyway).

A lot of this could have been avoided in the end if Murray got 320 carries (still 20 carries a game) last season. We could have matched the Eagles' offer and felt much more confident that he would still be a very productive running back.





YR

 

[Alexander]

RB isn't the reason we have lost 7 in a row.

No, but a sputtering offense could have used a quality RB who has indeed shown he can run and run very well behind this line. An extra one or two yards, setting a block up here and there makes a 2nd and 5, versus a 2nd and 7. That is what Murray did, despite all of this "meat on the bone" nonsense.

Keeping Murray wouldn't have helped any more than the RB's we have used in his absence.

Disagree completely. Might not have been more effective, but a back that is coming off a player of the year award still commands respect. That means perhaps play action could have been more effective and makes the offense at least have one facet to semi-respect.

Just because he is being misused in Philadelphia does not mean he was not a quality runner in Dallas.

This debate has been going on since he signed with the Eagles. Most agree he was not worth the money. But "if" it could have been worked out, our offense would not have been crippled as much by Romo being out.

That was not the running commentary this offseason. Anyone can run behind this line, they said. Well, they can, but they cannot be a core foundation of the offensive philosophy. No running back by committee system does that, anywhere. Nor will they ever.

Our philosophy changed the minute he was out the door.

It was pretty clear that our idea was to run the Detroit Lions offense Linehan had in 2013. A lukewarm commitment to the run with a lot of passes to the backs to substitute for the run. Otherwise to be known now and forever as the Lance Dunbar gambit.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

They seem to run fine when Ryan Matthews runs the ball.


Also, maybe that's just what Murray really is when he doesn't run behind the Cowboys O-Line.

He's had more seasons like he's having in Philly then his 1 giant season last year.

He was averaging 5.1 yards per carry prior to last season. His problems were injury issues, but we still didn't use him enough. Then because Garrett and Co. have no understanding of how to manage a player, they started to use him entirely too much last season.

Murray was an excellent back for us when not injured. He ran well behind a crap O-Line and ran well behind a great O-Line. But now he's likely burned out.




YR

 

[hornitosmonster]

They seem to run fine when Ryan Matthews runs the ball.


Also, maybe that's just what Murray really is when he doesn't run behind the Cowboys O-Line.

He's had more seasons like he's having in Philly then his 1 giant season last year.

yup, people want to take the outlier statistic and proclaim that as who a person is (good or bad). Murray is nowhere near that running back that one outstanding season falsely proclaimed him to be. You know who is that running back, AP. You know who will be that running back, Gurley. Murray was a one hit wonder.

 

[Sasquatch]

Doesn't help that the O.L. has been pretty inconsistent this year.

Nor was there a sense of urgency in getting the RBs and OL in sync during preseason though, admittedly, there were injuries.

 

[65fastback2plus2]

First off, I'll admit, I wanted to let Murray go after the Eagles gave him that 8 million dollars a year offer. I would have signed him to a 6 million dollar per year contract. I think the previous low ball offer really affected Murray and offended him. It caused him to hold out in free agency, look for the best deal, and make an attempt to engage division rivals into a bidding war for his services.

I think the front office's arrogance completely botched that situation up. They wanted to emulate what the Patriots do, RBBC, and even though it's sound in theory, how often does it work in practice? It works for the Patriots cause they have Tom Brady. Their success always points back to Tom. The other deciding factor was probably based off the success of the o-line last year. "Anyone" can run behind that line. Say what you will, but Murray was the perfect back for this system. The only glaring deficiencies he had was the fumbling issue and his vision.

Last year Murray, Randle and Dunbar were all on the active roster. This year all 3 are gone (Dunbar to the IR). It's been a RB carousel this year with guys like Randle, McFadden, Michael, Rod Smith and probably Trey Williams soon. There's no consistency at all. It looks ugly, stagnate, and with hardly any upside.

Hindsight is 20/20 and I hate to say it, but I think things would have been tremendously different had we kept #29.

Without Tony on the field, we are ranked 9th in total rushing in the league with 4.3 yards per attempt.

So, where is this "badly" you speak of?

 

[65fastback2plus2]

Without Tony on the field, we are ranked 9th in rushing in the league with 4.3 yards per attempt.

So, where is this "badly" you speak of?

Philly is ranked 10th.

 

[NEODOG]

Hey we signed Robert Turbin