It occurs to me that Romo is the offensive genius, not the coaches

[GimmeTheBall!]

Well not everyone can do it as efficiently as Robert Griffin III.

Who the heck is Robert Griffin III?

 

[perrykemp]

So how do you know it was him that checked out of all of those running plays in the Green Bay game? Maybe if Romo had a proper coach - he wouldn't have to be "the coach" on the field and play the QB position as well.

They ran a ton @ GB in the playoffs.... <arguably> a bit too much considering how well Romo was playing.

 

[AbeBeta]

In the past, Romo has talked about getting into coaching as a QB Coach or Offensive Coordinator after his playing days are over. I've always kind of thought it'd be nice if we could draft a kid high, let him sit behind Romo for a couple years, and then have Romo retire and slide into the coaching staff to keep tutoring the new QB. Probably wishful thinking.

Not gonna happen.

Star players who take in over 100 mill in their careers realize rather quickly that they don't want a 12-14 hour a day job.

 

[DFWJC]

Romo doesn't know how to read multiple fronts, stunts, and formations that well.

He's brilliant at it.

Doesn't mean the results are always perfect, but he reads defenses exceptionally well.

Oh yeah, that's right; you're the Commanders fan who for some reason posts a lot here.

Having said that, I don't really agree with the OP

 

[BotchedLobotomy]

I believe you cannot have sustained success in the NFL without a competent QB AND a competent OC. If the OP is suggesting that it's just a competent QB and not both, I feel he is wrong. Unfortunately, this franchise has not been able to have both enough times in the past 15+ years.

 

[pansophy]

People seem to forget that play calling is directly related to what the coach thinks the players can execute. For years people were yelling at Garrett to run the ball and saying he was a stupid play caller, yet when we did run the ball it got stuffed. Garrett wasn't a bad play caller; he simply had to call complicated plays in order for us to get 2 yards because we couldn't line up and just run.

Suddenly the offensive line gets fixed and the play callers are geniuses and people sit back and think that we would have won the super bowl already if Garrett had just started calling runs a year or two earlier.

Weeden can't throw the ball outside the tackles with any consistency and the play calling reflected that.

 

[Alexander]

It will be even more clear if Cassel struggles as bad as Weeden.

 

[Idgit]

Wow this post shocks me from you. I don't completely agree with you though. If you have a REAL bad qb in there it can majorly impact the whole team. Not controlling the time of possesion can wear a defense out quick. I do blame the coaches for playing way too conservative though.

We've been making excuses for this defense for years. Now we're scapegoating the bad backup QB because that's a lot easier than admitting the whole team hasn't played all that well together yet this season. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Weeden, because he's a very questionable player. But he played well enough to get us through some of these games in a backup capacity.

If you read the things I've been critical of over the years, and set aside the tone of my posts, this isn't really anything new. Sometimes, it just plays better if you say it in a fed-up voice than it does if you're saying the exact same thing but phrasing it reasonably.

 

[AsthmaField]

Well not everyone can do it as efficiently as Robert Griffin III.

Well, Griffin hasn't been able to read the playbook as well since Shanahan left and they no longer have a playbook with pop-ups and crayon.

 

[Hoov]

Jerry made that comment before Linehan arrived. And Callahan was the official OC. And seemed he checked out of a lot of running plays, and passed a lot. Wasn't this a big deal in the GB game when we had the lead and we kept passing.
Maybe he wasn't much of a genius in that game.

when he checked out of the 3rd and 1 before the half and was trying to yell over the fans to communicate with wr and then the bad snap occurred it was fortunate that it was only an incomplete pass and not a turn over.

Still, they missed the FG and gave Rodgers time to get a pass downfield which led to GB FG. That's a 6 point swing and they lost the game by 5.

There were other plays that were worse (the Murray fumble is one). But I did feel like that 3rd and 1 play was a big missed opportunity and turning point in the game.

Im sure he thought he saw something he could take advantage of. However the smart play there is to run for the first. Even if you don't get it you take time off the clock which may have prevented GB from scoring. And if you do get it you can easily run down the clock and get a few yards closer.

But Tony is just a high risk/high reward player and he isn't going to change. Probably part of the reason he has been injured so much is he refuses to throw the ball away under pressure. Its a double edged sword - he has won games they probably should not have by keeping plays alive but he also has put the offense in difficult down and distance situations as well and taken quite a beating throughout the years because of it.

 

[DenCWBY]

Romo doesn't know how to read multiple fronts, stunts, and formations that well.

But he always knows the Mike.

 

[DC Cowboy]

Remember when Romo signed his new contract and Jerry said we're going to give him more control over the offense? It occurs to me that it's not Linehan or Garrett who were the brains behind our premier offense last season, but rather Tony. The drop off since he got hurt has been stunning. I realize a lot of that has to do with his talent, but he's got to be one of the top in the league at recognizing defenses and knowing what the offense needs to do. I think he's been operating at a Peyton Manning level regarding strategy - recognizing defenses and knowing the right play to call.

The only credit I give to Linehan and Garrett is getting out of the way and letting Tony do his thing. But who knows? Maybe Jerry told them they had to, and Jerry actually deserves the credit. To be honest, when Jerry said that a few years ago I was skeptical it was a good plan, but I've got to give him props on getting Tony more authority over the offense.

Dude it was our running game last year that made the biggest difference.

 

[DenCWBY]

Romo is the straw that stirs the drink. His play smooths out so much that is wrong at times. All the warts with blocking and WR routes look less noticeable with Romo in the game.

 

[AsthmaField]

We've been making excuses for this defense for years. Now we're scapegoating the bad backup QB because that's a lot easier than admitting the whole team hasn't played all that well together yet this season. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Weeden, because he's a very questionable player. But he played well enough to get us through some of these games in a backup capacity.

If you read the things I've been critical of over the years, and set aside the tone of my posts, this isn't really anything new. Sometimes, it just plays better if you say it in a fed-up voice than it does if you're saying the exact same thing but phrasing it reasonably.

I've been as hard on Weeden as anyone here, but he certainly did enough in the Atl and NO games to come out with a win. It was the extremely depleted (by injuries and suspension) defense that lost those two games.

However, it was his inability to retain possession on offense (convert on 3rd down) that wore the defense out so thoroughly and helped the defense collapse by the end of those games.

In New England, he was just terrible, which was a shame because the defense had enough to win that game if Brady didn't have 500 possessions to score on.

So, I do agree that he could have won those two games... but I also feel like it is a good move to get the offense out of his hands.

 

[Idgit]

People seem to forget that play calling is directly related to what the coach thinks the players can execute. For years people were yelling at Garrett to run the ball and saying he was a stupid play caller, yet when we did run the ball it got stuffed. Garrett wasn't a bad play caller; he simply had to call complicated plays in order for us to get 2 yards because we couldn't line up and just run.

Suddenly the offensive line gets fixed and the play callers are geniuses and people sit back and think that we would have won the super bowl already if Garrett had just started calling runs a year or two earlier.

Weeden can't throw the ball outside the tackles with any consistency and the play calling reflected that.

Fans often resort to criticizing play calling when the team is not winning because of liabilities on the personnel side. Good coaches assemble and develop personnel who can play. That's they way it has always been. I was reading a Giants board this morning that's criticizing Tom Caughlin for play calling and being slow in making adjustments. Go figure.

"The Cowboys couldn't beat the defending champs with their backup QB? You don't say? Must have been the play calling." "No, it's not the play calling, it's the adjustments. You can bet Belichick would have made the adjustments if he were in Dallas."

Meanwhile, we've got Brandon Weeden stomping around like bigfoot trying to throw a canned ham and Ronald Leary doing figure 8s around him in the backfield. What sort of play you got for that, coach? And what's your adjustment for Lance Dunbar's popped ACL? Just dumb.

 

[AsthmaField]

Romo is the straw that stirs the drink. His play smooths out so much that is wrong at times. All the warts with blocking and WR routes look less noticeable with Romo in the game.

Good post.

The ability that Romo has to walk to the line of scrimmage and adjust the offense to what he sees the defense doing is a huge plus for the offense. His ability to do that is a big part of the catch-22 that defenses were in last year with the run-pass game.

With Weeden likely having to just run what is called regardless of what the defense is doing, considerably lessens the effectiveness of both the pass and the run game.

 

[Idgit]

I've been as hard on Weeden as anyone here, but he certainly did enough in the Atl and NO games to come out with a win. It was the extremely depleted (by injuries and suspension) defense that lost those two games.

However, it was his inability to retain possession on offense (convert on 3rd down) that wore the defense out so thoroughly and helped the defense collapse by the end of those games.

In New England, he was just terrible, which was a shame because the defense had enough to win that game if Brady didn't have 500 possessions to score on.

So, I do agree that he could have won those two games... but I also feel like it is a good move to get the offense out of his hands.

If you think about it, Weeden started out like a house-afire. 7-7 and a touch in PHI in what turned out to be a really big game for us. Then the first half in ATL where he didn't throw an incompletion until that stupid pick. From that point on, things sort of evaporated on him. You're right that the third down inefficiency did him in. I will say that Bill Belichick has a long history of making bad QBs look awful. See what he did to Cassel with the Vikes in 2014 for exhibit B on that score. 30-7. 4 picks. Looks pretty familiar.

As far as the defense goes, and I think they played well v. NE and I don't care what the score was. But I'm so tired of hearing that they wore out because of the offense. That's just BS we tell ourselves to make it seem like the defense will be better when Romo is back. Their job is to stop the other guys. If they want to get off the field, hold up on 3rd downs early in drives, every drive, and nobody's talking about how tired they got. Hold onto the interceptions. Don't hold the receivers. Strip the ball. Everything else is lip service unless we're winning games. I'm so tired of our fans only paying attention to half of the football game every week.

The offense is ranked 23rd in terms of DVOA with Dez and Romo out. The defense is 22nd, and if you listen to our fans, it's also because Dez and Romo are out. I call bull. We're basically at full strength on that side of the ball right now. Time for them to start winning some games instead of keeping us in them for a half and then getting a pass because they're tired out.

 

[Clarkson]

great players make coaches look better.
astounding assertion! revolutionary!

 

[Proximo]

I'll just never understand why some fans are so hell bent on assigning blame or credit to one single person. The REALITY is, there are many individuals that deserve credit for last year's successful offense. Just like many people deserve blame for why things haven't gone so well this year.

But to believe that the HEAD COACH AND O COORDINATOR "got out of the way" so that the QB could run the show defies all sound logic. It's just dumb, to put it bluntly.

 

[31smackdown]

Romo already told us what his strength is, getting through his progressions very quickly which puts everyone in play and pressures defenses to cover the whole field. Add that to good mobility in the pocket and you have a qb that can get the ball to the open guy and extend a play while still seeing the field well.

Weeden has neither of those abilities. They didn't use the word limited by accident when describing him.