I'm not really going to give a whole lot of positives here.
We didn't see anything necessarily positive that we didn't already know, other than Weeden looked better than I'd expected he would.
We knew we could run the ball. We proved that again last night. That's nothing new.
The defense is clearly the bend but don't break type. You have to help them out by keeping them off the field as much as possible. That means Dallas has to be willing to keep Murray in the 25+ carries per game area. It's simply a must.
What we did learn from this is that our new play caller also needs to learn the very simple nature that screen passes are very effective against blitzing like that last night. Someone pointed out how Weeden beat the blitz last night (in another thread) and his big play against the blitz came on a screen pass to Murray that picked up 28 yards. As far as I can remember that was the only screen pass we called all night.
The blitz problem wasn't one person. It was on Scott's game plan, it's on Romo, and it's on an a young O-line. None of the people listed there ever seemed to adjust to the problem they were having and they'd better figure it out really quickly because the NFL is on notice for it now. Arizona, as I recall, blitzed the heck out of Philly Sunday to help get their W and you can believe you're going to see quite a bit of it this Sunday against Dallas.
Going forward this team has got to learn to play to their own strengths (Running the ball, dominating the game) and not worry about what kind of big plays they may or may not get against a bad secondary. This isn't the first time this team has gone into a game bullheaded and just forcing the issue of trying to get deep, time consuming routes, down the field and it biting them in the butt. That has got to change.
Murray has got to stop the fumbling. He absolutely has to.
Dez has to show up like the star he is when the competition is bad, not just when the competition is good. Last night he was pretty much invisible. Did he even catch a ball in the second half? He had 3 catches for 30 yards and I'm almost certain every single one of those were by the mid point of the second quarter. That's simply not acceptable. This is another area where Scott needs to improve. Getting Dez the ball on some fast routes. Quick slants, drags, and some smoke screens. Give this athlete a chance to make big plays with his big run after the catch ability.
And Dez has no choice he has to make the plays when it's there for him. His dropped TD pass was simply not acceptable. You have to help you QB out at all times but even more so when it's a back up QB coming in to try and help you win a game.
