My meaningless thoughts on the game...

[big dog cowboy]

IMO, the one key ingredient to making this defense dominant is the addition of one game-changing DT. Don't you know that Jerry and Parcells were hoping that either Spears or Canty would be that player. One of those guys needs to step up or else this defense will continue to be good but not dominant.

Ferg has done a decent job. That isn't the problem IMHO. The ability to generate and kind of consistent pass is the problem.

 

[Clove]

I pray for the day we roll out a scheme like the Patriots roll out. They are constantly in the quarterbacks face, and you can't tell me that we don't have the personell to do this.

Please please oh great Football spirits, please bring us a Patriots coordiator from the defensive side of the ball, and have him train our coordinators how to call a blitz package.

 

[jrumann59]

a safety that should've been challenged but someone one upstairs said the knee was down.

Is a safety like a TD, the ball has to be in the endzone when the knees go down or is it if your knees are in the endzone it makes no difference where the ball is? If its the 1st one then it should have been challenged, if it was the seconfd then it was good call.

With the penalties and at least 1 dropped pass for a TD the team left easily 14 points on the field and the Skins found them and took them for themselves.

 

[Joe_Fan]

- I'm officially on the GROZ bandwagon. I think overall, he's probably about the 16th best D-Coordinator in the NFL right now. We could do worse, but we could do better. The one thing I notice about this team is that we very rarely have a pass rusher go unblocked. Teams know when we are going to blitz, who is blitzing, and where they are blitzing. He's not the worst D-Coordinator out there, but every season Dallas does things or brings people in to improve the pass rush and every season it's just not there. At best are pass rush is decent. Overall it's so-so. And every year there's some excuse or even worse, no excuse for it and I think the common denominator is that Zimmer can't coach a defense that can get a good consistent pass rush. He's still a decent D-Coordinator, but he'll never be a very good D-Coordinator until he figures that out. We need better.

It's because we don't put a true emphasis on generating a pass rush.

Our defensive scheme isn't designed to put up sacks I mean Marcus Spears said it best during an interview last week. It's just not a priority.

 

[Kobal]

Man, I really hate this team sometime. :bang2: :

 

[Joe_Fan]

Nice post. If Parcells does come back year, I believe there are sure to be a few shakeups on the coaches staff. Who do you think doesn't make it back? I think Zimmer goes, Sparano goes, Haley goes, the special teams coach goes.

I sure hope that you're right.

I'd love to see all of those individuals go.

 

[Joe_Fan]

Excellent post. I agree with everything you said. I honestly believed we would go 6-3 because I was fooled by our defense into believing so. 5-4 coming home isn't so bad and I did see a lot of good things out there (namely Romo and MB3).

MB3 needs more PT.

I'd feel much better going into the Indy game 6-3 instead of 5-4.. because well, yeah..

 

[Joe_Fan]

I think you missed the most obvious fact: There isn't a single game-changing player on defense. Zimmer will look like a god when they do add one to the defense. Ware is good but, so far, he does not come close to LT.

Another observation of mine is that these guys don't play too smart. Just an observation.

Oh, we have those players.. it's just that those players aren't allowed to do what they do best due to his scheme.

I get sick and tired of all this defending of Zimmer and whining about how if he had this player or that player.. or if he had more talent he'd do this or that..

He has plenty of talent and still the same results as when we had a bunch of no name players.

It gets to a point where if you're constantly bringing in more and more players and getting the same result then it's time for a change.. and I'm not talking about changing the players.

But then again given your user name I'd expect nothing more from a Zimmer apologist than more excuses.

 

[Zimmy Lives]

Oh, we have those players.. it's just that those players aren't allowed to do what they do best due to his scheme.

We have those players? Where are they? So far, I have not seen anything beyond acceptable. There are some good players on defense but that's it.

IMO, talent wins games. But since you are the pro football expert who has been studying the game since it's inception and are paid untold amounts of money by NFL coaches, I will bow down to your unlimited knowledge and agree that Dallas' scheme is what holding them back.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

We have those players? Where are they? So far, I have not seen anything beyond acceptable. There are some good players on defense but that's it.

IMO, talent wins games. But since you are the pro football expert who has been studying the game since it's inception and are paid untold amounts of money by NFL coaches, I will bow down to your unlimited knowledge and agree that Dallas' scheme is what holding them back.

New England does a far better job of getting to the QB. Is Roosevelt Colvin better than DeMarcus Ware? Is Banta-Cain better than Greg Ellis? Is Ty Warren and Vince Wilfork better at rushing the passer than Spears and Ferguson? Are any of the NE CB's nearly as good as Newman, Henry and Glenn?

Yet, they are still able to rush the passer much better than Dallas is able to. Why? Because their blitz disguise is pretty top notch. I watched last night's game and they were constantly disguising their blitz. They played a great QB who could kind of tell who was coming and who was dropping back in coverage on occasion. But, they sacked Peyton Manning 3 times....who had only been sacked 7 times in 7 games so far this season.

The lack of a good, consistent pass rush will always be Zimmer's Achilles Heel as a D-Coordinator. I'm just tired of having my favorite team be associated with it, year in and year out.


YAKUZA

 

[Zimmy Lives]

New England does a far better job of getting to the QB. Is Roosevelt Colvin better than DeMarcus Ware? Is Banta-Cain better than Greg Ellis? Is Ty Warren and Vince Wilfork better at rushing the passer than Spears and Ferguson? Are any of the NE CB's nearly as good as Newman, Henry and Glenn?

Yet, they are still able to rush the passer much better than Dallas is able to. Why? Because their blitz disguise is pretty top notch. I watched last night's game and they were constantly disguising their blitz. They played a great QB who could kind of tell who was coming and who was dropping back in coverage on occasion. But, they sacked Peyton Manning 3 times....who had only been sacked 7 times in 7 games so far this season.

The lack of a good, consistent pass rush will always be Zimmer's Achilles Heel as a D-Coordinator. I'm just tired of having my favorite team be associated with it, year in and year out.


YAKUZA

You keep talking about these guys as if they are perennial Pro Bowlers. The potential is there, especially for the young guys, but I will refuse to believe it is the scheme until they actually achieve personal success in terms of All-Pro and Pro Bowl recognition.

I said it before and I'll say it again, Terry Bradshaw didn't care what defense Dallas played in those memorable Super Bowls back in the 70s. All he knew is that he was staring across the line from Harvey Martin, Randy White, Larry Cole, and Ed Jones.

The scheme is only as good as the players executing it.

 

[Oh_Canada]

- I'm officially on the GROZ bandwagon. I think overall, he's probably about the 16th best D-Coordinator in the NFL right now. We could do worse, but we could do better. The one thing I notice about this team is that we very rarely have a pass rusher go unblocked. Teams know when we are going to blitz, who is blitzing, and where they are blitzing. He's not the worst D-Coordinator out there, but every season Dallas does things or brings people in to improve the pass rush and every season it's just not there. At best are pass rush is decent. Overall it's so-so. And every year there's some excuse or even worse, no excuse for it and I think the common denominator is that Zimmer can't coach a defense that can get a good consistent pass rush. He's still a decent D-Coordinator, but he'll never be a very good D-Coordinator until he figures that out. We need better.

- This just in, Tony Romo can really play. Notice how the O-Line is playing much better now? Even his 2 sacks were coverage sacks.

- I didn't have too much of a problem with the last face mask call. That's usually getting called when the helmet gets turned like that. The refereeing got off to a horrendous start, but started to come around. Washington should've never been in position to get that ball anyway.

- Good to see the board isn't blaming Vandy. The bar I was at was livid at him for some reason. Also didn't help that FOX kept panning shots of him afterwards. Not sure how you block somebody and kick the ball at the same time.

- I like Matt McBriar and all, but sometime before I die I would like to see him pin the opponent inside their own 5 yard line.

- That was the first true, legit goal line stand I've seen from Dallas in a long time.

- While I like how Dallas uses so many multiple formations and their beautiful designs of their passing patterns, it seems like there's an inordinate amount of time the opposing defenses know exactly what play we are going to run. The safety comes to mind and usually when we bootleg too.

- Seems like opposing offenses try to run towards the strongside (Spears and Ellis) on normal running plays and use their misdirection or trick plays to run towards the weakside (Canty and Ware) since Ware tends to overcommit at times to runs the opposite side.

- Are nickel package blitzes suck.

- I like Bradie James and all, but I do wish we had something more dynamic at ILB. Ayodele has to play a role that doesn't lend way to needing a dynamic player at that spot, but Bradie just doesn't seem to be playing at the same pace as he was last year. Just a step too slow.


- Overall, I've got a pretty good idea of what this team is about. Talent wise and coaching, they are pretty good. Unfortunately, they seem to shoot themselves in the foot at least 5 times a game. Sometimes they can overcome that, sometimes they can't. I think every team in the league shoots themselves in the foot to a certain extent, but the legit good teams are able to overcome that. I'm starting to believe more and more of that is due to our lack of a pass rush as DeMarcus Ware can't do it all. A better pass rush would probably lead to some more turnovers, especially in games like this. I think the other part is that the defense is decent at forcing turnovers, but not really good at it (and part of that is due to the pass rush as well).

Dallas was up 19-12 when Owens dropped that TD pass and I couldn't help but think to myself "I've smelled this skunk before." And then Roy drops a surefire INT and I couldn't help but think we were losing this game. Even when Vanderjagt was attempting the 35 yarder, which I was confident he would make, I kept thinking about something not being right that Dallas would win despite those 2 huge "shot in the foot" type of plays by Owens and Roy.

Still, part of me is a bit happy since Romo really impressed me quite a bit and I think the O-Line was vastly underrated as they had to play with Bledsoe's ineptitude. So now we've got a 26 year old QB and outside of Rivera, a pretty young and somewhat promising O-Line. But we still manage to lose these games where we outgained the opponent, had a better time of possession, a turnover advantage and had a 35 yarder to win the game.

So I've got a whole lot of mixed emotions on this one. But I promised myself that as long as Dallas went 5-4 in the first 9 games, I would contend that they have a solid chance of making the playoffs. Albeit we could've really used that one.



YAKUZA

Great post my friend!!
5-4 would be nice, but 6-3 would have been a whole lot better!!
Next week won't be any cakewalk either....the Cards always seem to get up for the Boys in the dessert.

 

[InmanRoshi]

New England does a far better job of getting to the QB. Is Roosevelt Colvin better than DeMarcus Ware? Is Banta-Cain better than Greg Ellis? Is Ty Warren and Vince Wilfork better at rushing the passer than Spears and Ferguson? Are any of the NE CB's nearly as good as Newman, Henry and Glenn?

Richard Seymour is worlds better at rushing the QB than Spears and Canty, and maybe the best defensive lineman in football. New England doesn't do anything exotic with their blitzes. They don't need to.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Richard Seymour is worlds better at rushing the QB than Spears and Canty, and maybe the best defensive lineman in football. New England doesn't do anything exotic with their blitzes. They don't need to.

It's not about being exotic. It's about disguising the blitz. I could send 6 pass rushers w/2 that go straight up the middle that time their blitz well and it's hard for the O-Line to recognize and thus be effective. That's not exotic, that's just well disguised.

OTOH, I could throw a bunch of stunts on a 6 man blitz and use a CB to come in and a DE to zone blitz. But if it's not disguised well, it's counterproductive.

Seymour is great, but Ware is much better than Colvin. Warren and Wilfork are pretty much the same type of players as Fergy and Canty. Ellis is much better than Banta Cain. Bruschi and Vrabel have combined for a total of 1.5 sacks. Then you consider that the Dallas secondary, especially the CB's are better than NE's secondary.

So yeah, Seymour is great, but there's more talent condusive to having a better pass rush on Dallas' defense than New England's.

And watch last night's NE vs. Indy game, the Patriots were pretty exotic on defense.



YAKUZA

 

[Yakuza Rich]

You keep talking about these guys as if they are perennial Pro Bowlers.

Roy Williams is a perennial Pro Bowler. Newman is considered Pro Bowl material. Ware is considered to be a beast. And it's not just me and Cowboys fans saying it.

What I am saying is that the talent on this defense is much more condusive to generating a better pass rush than the talent on the Patriots, who do generate a good pass rush.

The scheme is only as good as the players executing it.

Schemes and playcalling are not about certainty, they are about probability. So for all of the talk of "scheming and playcalling being overrated", it loses sight of the fact that scheming and playcalling greatly help determine the player's chances of executing properly.


YAKUZA

 

[Zimmy Lives]

Schemes and playcalling are not about certainty, they are about probability. So for all of the talk of "scheming and playcalling being overrated", it loses sight of the fact that scheming and playcalling greatly help determine the player's chances of executing properly.


YAKUZA

Agreed. Talent + proper execution (of scheme) = success. Both are integral.

As for our differences concerning Zimmer, I respect your overall football opinions so we'll have to agree to disagree.