There was a time football information came from skilled sports writers.
Now any yokel with enough dough to buy a site from Go Daddy and can download Wordpress and copy and paste together a website, can join the hallowed halls of the hard drinking sports guys like Sherrod, Galloway, and maybe Fisher. Two out of three qualify, if for nothing else, the hard drinking.
Matt Weston attempts the same folly most of these wannabe writers do by filling column inches with archaic references in an attempt to be witty. Something about being Tarantino-esque in adding Americana causes people like this guy to jot off his thoughts buried in lousy prose.
Sometimes just stating the facts without the flourish accomplishes the task at hand without needing links to other sites to tell the great unwashed what the Hell he was talking about. If you trundle off to read this poorly written piece, don't think this is going to be Bob Sturm level enlightenment.
We are not for the better because Joe Bob can buy himself into the writing game. There may be more assembled knowledge on the mens room's varnished pine walls of Sadie Mae's Truck stop in Pensacola Florida.
And with all that wit on display, the Texans will still lose.
We are better, because today's beat writers and NFL columns usually suck and are TMZ-ish style of writing. At least when it comes to the Cowboys. The bar isn't set very high, so it's easy to clear.
I didn't think the column was bad, but I do agree that Weston tried to go for the joke too much. I think it's very Bill Simmons-ish and I'm sure he was influenced by that. I hate to use this cliche, but sometimes less is more with that approach.
When he started to get to the nitty gritty about focus of the article (Dallas' running game and O-Line), it was very good. Remember, it's a Texans blog so while most of us Cowboys fans already know what is going on with our running game and O-Line, Texans fans probably have little idea as to what to expect.
The only things I disagree with him on the running game are:
1. From what I've seen on All-22, defenses are really trying to guard against the outside zone running plays. I do agree that some mistakes in technique and sometimes personnel packages are the problem. But, I've seen defenses really try to jump the play. My guess is that defenses are being told how important that play is to stop (usually it's in Tyron's direction and he's the focal point of the O-Line). If you struggle to stop it, then Romo can run bootlegs off of it and it makes for a very productive offense.
2. The running game didn't struggle in the first half. It did struggle in the first quarter. Of course, the team only ran 10 plays in that quarter (typically it's 15 per quarter). And I think the running game struggled because we tried to 'fool' the Rams with throwing the ball, Romo was audibling out of run plays and we were getting too cute with shotgun draws and freeze draw plays.
In the end, I would rather read Weston's work than the dreck I read from 90% of professional beat writers out there. And that's why guys like Weston do what they do...the beat writers are terrible at what they do and it makes people like Weston believe they can do a better job (which is probably true).
YR
