Image: Stephen White Tweets: Lions didn't do anything special to take Dez away, he was open alot

[btcutter]

THeir defense improved that much over a 7 day span?

Even bad defense has good days. Just look at ours against the Eagles and Rams then stink it up agains Denver and Lions.

 

[johnson2]

open or not romo led the offense to a 10 point lead twice in the 4th qtr.

 

[AKATheRake]

What did Romo do? Bet against Dez on props before the game? Under on Dez Bryant for 100 yards.

Those are 30 yard plays a piece.

 

[Mr Cowboy]

The Cowboy offense in the past 3 years has rarely thrown the ball to the middle of the field, it almost exclusively outside the numbers. Take a look at Sturm's passing charts, and you will see this. Garrett's offense is designed this way, the reads are always outside the numbers first. The times that they throw in the middle, it has usually produced great results, but they just don't game plan with the middle of the field in mind. Those passes outside the numbers take far longer to develop than something across the middle, that's why Romo gets killed.

 

[Ender]

OK try this..Romo threw 30 passes and the guy found 4 pictures..The fifth was a completion to Dez, so that doesn't count..This was proof of nothing except he knew how to post pictures..Nice Try Though,..

ok, Romo was 14 for 30. So we're talking about 16 pass attempts not 30. So if Tony managed complete 4 of the passes in those pictures his number would be closer to 19-30. Maybe even better if Dez was to turn those passes into longer gains.

You cant dismiss any singular pass, Let alone 4. A single pass can turn into a touchdown like the Terrence Williams TD or Dez second touchdown. I would say nice try but it wasn't...

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

THeir defense improved that much over a 7 day span?

I'm not really sure where this idea that Detroit was not very good defensively came from.


They held Minnesota to 238 yards passing and AP to 93 yards rushing on 18 carries, of which, he got 78 on one play. So basically, minus that long run, 15 yards on 17 carries.

They held Az to 248 yards passing and 86 yards rushing.

They held Cleveland to 292 yards passing and 82 yards rushing.

Dalton had a good day against them with 372 yards but they held Cincy's running game to just 51 yards

They held us to 206 yards passing and 42 yards rushing.

The problem is games 3, 4 and 5 against Washington, Chicago and Green Bay. They gave up a lot of yards in those games but they also had injuries, including Fairley (shoulder). That, I can only assume, is where the question on their defense comes from. However, if you look at what they've done when they are healthy, it's very impressive IMO.

 

[Ender]

I'm not really sure where this idea that Detroit was not very good defensively came from.


They held Minnesota to 238 yards passing and AP to 93 yards rushing on 18 carries, of which, he got 78 on one play. So basically, minus that long run, 15 yards on 17 carries.

They held Az to 248 yards passing and 86 yards rushing.

They held Cleveland to 292 yards passing and 82 yards rushing.

Dalton had a good day against them with 372 yards but they held Cincy's running game to just 51 yards

They held us to 206 yards passing and 42 yards rushing.

The problem is games 3, 4 and 5 against Washington, Chicago and Green Bay. They gave up a lot of yards in those games but they also had injuries, including Fairley (shoulder). That, I can only assume, is where the question on their defense comes from. However, if you look at what they've done when they are healthy, it's very impressive IMO.

Holding cleveland, Arizona and Minn under 300 yards is nothing to write home about. Those teams arent exactly world beaters. I can say the cowboys D balled against the Egirls and Rams, doesnt mean theyre any good.

 

[Ender]

Even bad defense has good days. Just look at ours against the Eagles and Rams then stink it up agains Denver and Lions.

literally just typed this... +1

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

Holding cleveland, Arizona and Minn under 300 yards is nothing to write home about. Those teams arent exactly world beaters. I can say the cowboys D balled against the Egirls and Rams, doesnt mean theyre any good.

OK, well, they beat us. At the end of the day, does it really matter what you write home about, other then the fact that Detroit beat us?

 

[beevomav]

ok, Romo was 14 for 30. So we're talking about 16 pass attempts not 30. So if Tony managed complete 4 of the passes in those pictures his number would be closer to 19-30. Maybe even better if Dez was to turn those passes into longer gains.

You cant dismiss any singular pass, Let alone 4. A single pass can turn into a touchdown like the Terrence Williams TD or Dez second touchdown. I would say nice try but it wasn't...

Ok..just ignore my posts if you have to answer with babble?

 

[ConstantReboot]

Bryant was open or had a lot of 1 on 1 coverage on him on 1st down. Yet we either kept trying to run the ball or went to another receiver besides Bryant. I feel that no matter what this offense should be centered around Bryant and he should always be the first read. As for Romo getting consistent pressure. Well when you design an offense for Romo to be a pocket passer and not move him around, like other teams do, then you get the results of Romo being battered. Play action would have solved some of the pressure Romo faced. Or design plays which moves him around away from pressure. Its not rocket science.

There was a time when we had special plays drawn up to beat the blitz and we actually invited teams to blitz and put heavy pressure on Romo. We usually beat it back then. With this offense there is no improvising, no putting Dez in moving to cause mismatches, no play action, no bootlegs or any kind of play specially designed to beat certain coverage. Its nothing more than a vanilla offense. Easy to defend and predictable.

 

[DallasDomination]

How can you have a guy like Dez Bryant and not feed him the ball more often. If I was Dez I would be mad too, and where is Garrett when you need him to design some plays just for Dez. Same thing, different year.

 

[joseephuss]

http://espn.go.com/nfl/statistics/player/_/stat/receiving/sort/receivingTargets

Dez Bryant is tied for 6th in the league in targets. He has been targeted 21 more times than Jason Witten for most targets by a Cowboy this season. Dez was targeted 138 times last season or 8.6 times a game. He is averaging 9.6 targets a game this season. Seems as if this game was the anomaly in targets and not the norm.

 

[tunahelper]

He WAS open a lot - the fact that he had only 6 targets makes me ill.

Romo has missed the deep in route a lot all year. He is not playing well the last few games and is holding thenball to long.

 

[CanadianCowboysFan]

Romo has missed the deep in route a lot all year. He is not playing well the last few games and is holding thenball to long.

no surprise after the way he was crucified again for the Denver game

 

[TrailBlazer]

For clarity, I'm not putting the onus just on the defense. The offense was pretty ordinary against the Lions. I'm kinda following @ABQCOWBOY's line of thinking that the interior of Detroit's d-line was just better than the interior of Cowboys o-line and it was messing up the flow of the offense.

So ordinary offense against historically bad defense and what you get is a 1pt loss.

The offense isn't playing any better than the defense. The offense doesn't score 30 points without the help of 4 takeaways by the defense. More like 17 points. That's not good enough.

 

[blindzebra]

lol every defense is 'better than they are given credit for' when playing the cowboys. Same thing were said about Commanders and eagles. Their defenses were 'tough' because we were playing divisional rivals. The real problem is Garrett and Callahan turning Romo into a dink and dunker, aka Alex Smith II. We see how explosive the offense can be in the Denver game when we came in KNOWING we have to score and we actually let Romo launch down the field. We saw how great this offense can be when Dez started screaming and we launched down the field and got two easy touchdowns with Dez and Williams in the 4th against the Lions. We're not going to be better than a .500 team with this conservative Garrett philosophy.

Down the field? Williams TD was about 8 yards down field the rest was YAC, the one to Dez was a little deeper but again mostly YAC.

 

[Rack]

Lions didn't do anything special to take Dez away

Yes, they did. They put good, consistent pressure on Romo, pretty much taking away deep routes. There's more to playing pass defense than coverage.

 

[Ender]

Ok..just ignore my posts if you have to answer with babble?

lol, ahahahah... go sit down some where bro.. Any single pass can result in a touchdown. you discounted 4 plays where Dez was open and said they dont matter because it was just 4 plays.

give this guy a manual.

 

[Ender]

http://espn.go.com/nfl/statistics/player/_/stat/receiving/sort/receivingTargets

Dez Bryant is tied for 6th in the league in targets. He has been targeted 21 more times than Jason Witten for most targets by a Cowboy this season. Dez was targeted 138 times last season or 8.6 times a game. He is averaging 9.6 targets a game this season. Seems as if this game was the anomaly in targets and not the norm.

Yea, Im not sure if i was to go so far and say Dez hasnt been targeted enough period. Just really in the forth quarter, it seems like you would want to get him the ball more often. !0 completion and a single TD in the 4th after 8 games isnt enough.