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IRVING – From his first day on the job in 2010, Cowboys coach Jason Garrett has stressed the importance of smart situational football.
So you can imagine Garrett’s dismay at all the errors the club made in crunch time en route to losing 31-30 to the Lions on Sunday in Detroit.
It all started with Dallas trying to run down the clock while nursing a 27-24 lead. After forcing a Matthew Stafford incompletion on fourth-and-12 from the Detroit 31-yard line, the Cowboys ran on first and second downs to force the Lions to use their timeouts. But on third-and-14 from the Detroit 35, left tackle Tyron Smith was called for holding during Phillip Tanner’s 9-yard gain.
The infraction stopped the clock with 1:07 left. Although the Cowboys kicked a field goal, the Lions had plenty of time left thanks to Smith’s hold, which prevented the clock from winding down to about 25 seconds.
Garrett on Monday pointed out that Tanner made a mistake by bouncing the play out wide to the weak side.
“I don’t want to be critical of a player right there, but the design of the play was to stick it up in there and get what you get,” Garrett said. “We’re on the 35-yard line and you just want to go north and south and handle the situation that way.”
With Tanner running wide, Smith got into what Garrett called “a competitive situation,” which the coach said “contributed to the holding penalty.”
With 62 seconds left after Dan Bailey’s third long field goal of the game, Detroit moved down the field in short order thanks to Stafford passes of 17, 40 and 22 yards. His final completion, which went to Calvin Johnson and gave him 14 catches for near-NFL record 329 yards, placed the ball at the 1.
Rushing frantically to the line of scrimmage, Stafford signaled both with his right arm and loudly with his voice that he was going to spike the ball to stop the clock. But instead of following through with the spike, the Highland Park High School graduated leaped over a pile of linemen to give Detroit the lead by the final score with 12 seconds left.
The defense did not fire off the ball. Bottom line: Jason Hatcher, Sean Lee and others were caught napping.
“We have to handle that situation better and that goes to coaching, that goes to playing, everyone has to understand the possibility in that situation,” Garrett said. “Certainly, there was an anticipation in some way, shape or form that they were going to spike the ball. But it’s not for us to decide that they’re going to do that. We have to decide to play football, get in stances, defend them if they want to run the ball.
“The quarterback sneak was one logical thing they could do there if they didn’t want to spike it. That’s just a great lesson for everybody and there’s a level of readiness you have to have. In some ways you think you’re ready for that kind of situation but you have to be down, you have to be ready and we weren’t and we have to do a better job of that in that situation.”
The final error came on the ensuing kickoff when linebacker Kyle Bosworth cost the Cowboys about 5 precious seconds by choosing to run after fielding a squib kick. That miscue left Dallas with only 7 seconds for a miracle.
“There are two things we should have done in that situation,” Garrett said. “It’s just simply run north and south and get down, or simply get down immediately. What you don’t want to do there is you don’t want to bounce and go to the sidelines and chew up all that time. It probably would be a two- or three-second difference, maybe given us another play. That’s how we could have handled that situation, and we addressed that.”
Hopefully for Garrett’s sake, his latest lecture didn’t fall on deaf ears.
Continue reading...
So you can imagine Garrett’s dismay at all the errors the club made in crunch time en route to losing 31-30 to the Lions on Sunday in Detroit.
It all started with Dallas trying to run down the clock while nursing a 27-24 lead. After forcing a Matthew Stafford incompletion on fourth-and-12 from the Detroit 31-yard line, the Cowboys ran on first and second downs to force the Lions to use their timeouts. But on third-and-14 from the Detroit 35, left tackle Tyron Smith was called for holding during Phillip Tanner’s 9-yard gain.
The infraction stopped the clock with 1:07 left. Although the Cowboys kicked a field goal, the Lions had plenty of time left thanks to Smith’s hold, which prevented the clock from winding down to about 25 seconds.
Garrett on Monday pointed out that Tanner made a mistake by bouncing the play out wide to the weak side.
“I don’t want to be critical of a player right there, but the design of the play was to stick it up in there and get what you get,” Garrett said. “We’re on the 35-yard line and you just want to go north and south and handle the situation that way.”
With Tanner running wide, Smith got into what Garrett called “a competitive situation,” which the coach said “contributed to the holding penalty.”
With 62 seconds left after Dan Bailey’s third long field goal of the game, Detroit moved down the field in short order thanks to Stafford passes of 17, 40 and 22 yards. His final completion, which went to Calvin Johnson and gave him 14 catches for near-NFL record 329 yards, placed the ball at the 1.
Rushing frantically to the line of scrimmage, Stafford signaled both with his right arm and loudly with his voice that he was going to spike the ball to stop the clock. But instead of following through with the spike, the Highland Park High School graduated leaped over a pile of linemen to give Detroit the lead by the final score with 12 seconds left.
The defense did not fire off the ball. Bottom line: Jason Hatcher, Sean Lee and others were caught napping.
“We have to handle that situation better and that goes to coaching, that goes to playing, everyone has to understand the possibility in that situation,” Garrett said. “Certainly, there was an anticipation in some way, shape or form that they were going to spike the ball. But it’s not for us to decide that they’re going to do that. We have to decide to play football, get in stances, defend them if they want to run the ball.
“The quarterback sneak was one logical thing they could do there if they didn’t want to spike it. That’s just a great lesson for everybody and there’s a level of readiness you have to have. In some ways you think you’re ready for that kind of situation but you have to be down, you have to be ready and we weren’t and we have to do a better job of that in that situation.”
The final error came on the ensuing kickoff when linebacker Kyle Bosworth cost the Cowboys about 5 precious seconds by choosing to run after fielding a squib kick. That miscue left Dallas with only 7 seconds for a miracle.
“There are two things we should have done in that situation,” Garrett said. “It’s just simply run north and south and get down, or simply get down immediately. What you don’t want to do there is you don’t want to bounce and go to the sidelines and chew up all that time. It probably would be a two- or three-second difference, maybe given us another play. That’s how we could have handled that situation, and we addressed that.”
Hopefully for Garrett’s sake, his latest lecture didn’t fall on deaf ears.
Continue reading...