I don't think Dak played poorly against the Vikings and I thought he looked good against the Skins. He looked poorly against the G-Men, but I would put blame on Dez, the O-Line and Linehan/Romo (if he's helping with the play calling) as well.
This offense in the Garrett era has always looked better when the pace is quicker. Against the G-Men it was a lot of audibling and 'check with me' and then snapping the ball at the last second. This is the type of game that Romo would have when he didn't look sharp and the offense sputtered. We need to be more judicial in the audibles and check with me's because it just allows the defense to set up their blitzes and coverage disguises. It also confuses the O-Line and that's how false starts and missed assignments happen.
I'm not saying you can't audible or have those adjustments made, but doing it on every play is a bad idea. The Packers use some pretty exotic stuff and on our first drive against GB we were pretty much in hurry up mode (by Garrett's standards) and we ran right thru the Packers.
I won't confuse Dez for being a Steve Largent type route runner, but his route running really isn't the issue as much as his basic techniques and that's where he's been off the most. That long pass play against the Vikings was a perfect example....that should have been a walk-in touchdown, but instead he dropped his head, stutter stepped and was off balance. He doesn't use his hands well to separate from the coverage and he just looks rusty from a technique perspective
Lastly, we played 2 road games in a row. There's a very low probability of winning 2 road games in the row in the NFL.
I'll just give some examples from last year.
Carolina went 15-1 last year. Their only loss? A 13-20 defeat to the Falcons, on the road in the 2nd road game in a row and it was in December. The Falcons also went 8-8 last year.
The 13-3 Cardinals had two road games in a row...twice. And they lost 1 of them to the Steelers.
The 12-4 Patriots had 2 two-game road sets. The second one they lost both road games.
The 12-4 Bengals only had 1 two-game road series and they lost the second road game to the Broncos.
The 12-4 Broncos had 2 two-game series, but won them both. However, they both occurred in September and October and in the second 2-game series they needed overtime to beat the 3-13 Browns.
YR