1. We use Dez in a poor fashion. What concerns me about him now is that he and Dak are not even close to being on the same page with sight adjustments. It's not really forcing the ball to Dez...it's just both guys reading the defense and adjusting to what they think is the right route to run according to the defense. That's what I saw on those plays that Dez saved interceptions (and the Talib pick 6)...they weren't on the same page more than it was a bad throw. On one play it looked liked Dak had the adjustment for Dez to go in on a hitch and Dez ran a stop route instead. Talib almost got the INT.
The worrisome part is that these two have had an entire season + offseason together and are still not on the same page.
We also have a major issue with Dez when he's playing against a physical, grabby corner and they have a top notch pass rusher. Dez wins by being more physical than defenders and when he faces a physical corner that's take away. The way Dez can work around that is thru jump ball situations because of his catch radius and vertical leaping ability. But if Dak doesn't have time to throw it deep then he's out of the play.
I think Dez still has elite ability, but if they cannot figure out the sight adjustments then he's hindering the offense.
2. We played 2 of the top-3 pass defenses in the league. I don't know what adjustments the Giants made because they certainly didn't stop Dak. I do think he's fighting a little with his throwing mechanics which have allowed him to put more zip on the ball. He can make throws this year that he simply couldn't make last year. But, he's missing those occasional throws (i.e. the throw to Beasley) that he wasn't missing last year. It's not that he is no longer accurate, but he'll need some time to adjust to the changes in throwing mechanics to get back to his old accuracy. He made some excellent throws that receivers dropped (i.e. Butler and Witten).
But in the end, Garrett and Linehan adjusted this offense more than anything. EE might as well served the suspension today with how little they used him. That took away any semblance of a bootleg or play action which Dak excels at. I knew we were in trouble when we were dink-n-dunking and that consisted of Witten running 4-yard routes. We simply look like CRAP on offense EVERY time we do that. And it don't matter if it's Romo or Dak as QB. Why it is so hard for our boy genius head coach to comprehend that is enough to drive me into an asylum.
3. Not shedding the block with Jaylon doesn't bother me too much because a lot of that is how the defense is designed. He's going to take on the O-Linemen and let Lee flow to the ball carrier. What I see now is he is very tentative and too concerned about making a mistake and may be worried about his foot. There was a play against the Giants where he made one of his first tackles against Paul Perkins and he stonewalled Perkins, but he hesitated and waited for Perkins instead of driving right into Perkins so he couldn't possibly make a move on him. He'll do that with his drops in the zone as he tends to err on the side of caution. But, it doesn't do him any good on the bench, he just needs more reps.
4. This is why I hold my judgment on Taco. Lawrence didn't look like a quality pass rusher when he was a rookie. He showed some things his 2nd year and then last year he didn't play well because he wasn't healthy. Unfortunately, it may take 4 years for Taco to become a quality player and by then Lawrence may not be around.
5. Heath made too many bad plays. I'd still rather have him than Church at this point. He has more ability in coverage and isn't nearly as limited. Still, I put most of the blame for the loss on the coaching.
Had we played an inferior opponent, we would have been lucky to come out with a win given this type of coaching. It was gameplan that didn't work on offense and they refused to make any adjustment despite the situation desperately calling for it. They clearly thought that the way to beat the Broncos defense was threw shotgun and dink-n-dunk. And when the situation called for us to throw some deep passes to hopefully come up with a big play and score quickly to cut into their lead...we stuck with dink-n-dunk which was too time consuming.
Then we went back to some run plays when the formation and personnel clearly dictated we were going to run the ball. It's about as bad as it gets from a coaching perspective. The Broncos looked good enough to beat any team in the league, but had we better coaching and playcalling from somebody like Josh McDaniels or a Bill Musgrave...we might have had the chance to pull out a victory or at least keep it close.
And this was all against a rookie head coach.
Luckily, this isn't college football where you cannot afford to lose a single game. But it's stuff like this and punting on 4th and 3 at the Broncos 39 yard line that makes me feel like Garrett is likely to be outclassed at least 2-4 times a year and what is supposed to make me feel confident that it won't happen in postseason against playoff coaches?
YR
