Idgit;5051639 said:
I agree about the job Parcels did, but that defense was first in the league in yardage and 2nd in points that season, wasn't it? That was the year he kept Zimmer's 4-3 in place and they played well enough to get Carter and Hambrick and the rest of that goof-troup into the playoffs.
It kind of underscores how much a good defense can help cover up problems for a QB. If you don't turn it over, and you don't let them score, it's hard for them to win.
People forget that we kept that 4-3 defense in 2004 and just how awful that 4-3 defense was in '04. It was just about as bad as the '10 defense. Zimmer somehow gets excused for '04 and our collapse in '06.
That was really the tale of Zimmer in Dallas...get off to a good start and then fizzle badly in the second half.
Part of the success of the '03 team is that change in itself is often very good for a team in the NFL. New coaches, new players, new schemes...opposing teams don't know how to quite prepare for it.
The pass protection in '03 improved dramatically. In the past, teams like the Eagles would simply blitz us to death and dominate the game. I remember the first game versus the Eagles at Texas Stadium the Eagles sent a blitz on our first play on offense and Hambrick just obliterated the blitzer. In the past Hambrick was a terrible blitz pickup back. While he stunk as a tailback, he becamse a great blitz pick up back under Parcells.
And when you take away something from an opponent that they thought they could pull on you...it throws a major monkey wrench into their plans.
The big thing on defense for the '03 team is that we were much more disciplined. But, we had more talent on that side of the ball. And Dat Nguyen played phenomenally well that year. With Newman on the other side and the league allowing for grabbing we had Mario Edwards who was effective.
We also had two really great safeties.
Woodson was underrated in coverage because he didn't make a lot of picks. But, he was a great pass defender and knew where to lineup Roy. Roy had his 'football pride' back then and the league had not switched over to the athletic, pass receiving TE's that could beat Cover 2 defenses at that point. We also had Aaron Glenn, who could still play at that point, as the nickel corner. That allowed us to have a better coverage package on passing downs instead of having Woody switch to the nickel corner like he did under Campo.
I have no major problem with Parcells. My only minor issue with him is that he could have just said that 'yes, we discussed bringing T.O. here and we wanted him on the team and I wanted him on the team.'
I doubt the media would have stopped because they really hated T.O. *when* he signed with Dallas (hypocrites). But, I think it would have eased up a bit and not been such a circus.
Even after reading that article, which had a few big inaccuracies (IMO), I still like the guy and was glad he was the coach here. I think we often see people that are great at something and that are well respected and for whatever reason...we cannot reconcile with the fact that like every human they are flawed when those flaws are exposed.
YR
