- 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
