Recommended Tony Romo's 3 Interceptions

Bluestang

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1. Play Action Pass from 12 personnel - Hanna/Witten are your TEs with Murray as your single back. Dez and Williams as your WRs with close splits to the formation. Both Hanna and Witten stay in to block the edges and Dez runs a crossing route underneath as Williams runs the post so you have only 2 guys out on routes w/ Murray as a check down.

Two things, the call is on 1st and 10 and Romo sells the fake by turning his head to Murray. This in turn is good and bad, good in that he gets the defense to flow to his right to key on the run, but bad because he loses sight of the defenders in front of him and also losing reads on Dez and Williams on their routes.

Which brings me to my opinion on this play. As Romo looks down field, Williams is making his break behind the traffic towards the left pylon. By the way that the play quickly unfolded, it looks to me like Romo had pre-determined his throw to Dez pre-snap. If Romo had just scanned the field a tick longer he may have seen the SS drop right in front of Dez and moved on to his next progression which should have been Williams or the check down to Murray.

2. Play Action Pass from S11 personnel - Witten/Murray w/ Dez, Beasley, and Harris as your receivers. Witten stays in to block then leaks out still covered. While Beasley runs a flat route, Dez a crossing route in the back of the end zone, and Harris runs a sluggo. Murray helps with blocking as well.

Again it's 1st and goal here, and Romo sells the fake again by turning his head to Murray. After the fake Romo wants to hit Harris but sees both LBs eyeing him down. I think he doesn't trust himself to fit the ball to Harris behind the LBs and then Murray's man has Romo scrambling to the right. Whether it was a bad throwaway or poor decision by Romo whatever that was it was ugly.


3. Play Action Pass from 13 personnel - Witten/Hanna/Escobar as your TEs and Murray as your single back. Dez is your lone WR that runs a skinny post and Witten goes out on a pattern too. (couldn't tell what is was) Hanna and Escobar stay in as blockers but Escobar and Murray are the check downs this time.

1st and 10 again - see the pattern yet? Romo again sells the fake with his head turn but this time he quickly snaps it back to scan the field. The problem is that Romo never sees the backside corner drop into the deep center of the field. Romo never accounted for him and unloads the ball to Dez hoping that Dez can make the circus catch.


Here's my extended analysis on these particular plays. All of them were PA passes and they were all called on 1st and 10. In the offseason Tony's stats when throwing PA passes was posted here and everyone was screaming for more PA passes because we rarely ran them. Well PA passes are great, but one of the big issues when trying to run them is to, #1 sell the fake to the defense to suck them in, and #2 make an easy completion for your QB.

Let me talk about #1. PA pass fakes is an art form that must be perfected at the NFL level. It's just not about going through the motions. First and foremost the QB has to sell the fake to the runner. If the QB keeps his vision down field and doesn't really sell the fake then the LB are going to drop in their zones and read pass all day. You can always sell the fake in other ways too, with the OL, by going low hat or use a pulling OG but you invite yourself to quick QB pressure. On play 1, I don't think Williams was ever part of his progression because as soon as Romo got to his landmark he set his feet and unloaded the ball into triple coverage. As Romo turns his head to sell the fake, he doesn't see the SS drop right in front of Dez or that the FS commits to Dez from behind. On Play 2 it seems like Romo doesn't trust himself more than anything as he sees Harris but doesn't pull the trigger. On Play 3, Romo never accounts for the backside corner #20 dropping into the deep center as help. Cowboys are in a heavy run formation and the 49ers are in their base defense, in hindsight they probably should have ran there as they have the personnel advantage to run there vs the 49ers base defense.

On with #2, making the easy completion for your QB. PA passes are designed to suck the defense in order to get your play makers behind them. And while Dallas was able to get the 49ers to commit on 2 of 3 PA calls, they failed to make the easy completions. Play 1 is a basic Hi/Lo concept where you want the far S to commit to the crosser or the skinny post and whichever he commits to you go the opposite. Play 2 was more of the QB not trusting himself to get the ball in a window. And Play 3 was a play call that was probably doomed from the beginning because of the defense on the field.


So where do we go from here? I simply don't know because the sample size is too small. The Cowboys ran more PA passes and Romo was fine on those but they were on different downs and distances. Maybe scrap the idea on 1st downs and go with a run or straight up pass play instead?

Maybe tweak the passing concepts to make the reads easier for Romo so that he can make the correct read when he hits his landmark on the fake?

Maybe send more route runners out at the expense of less protection? That's a risky proposition considering Romo could get rattled pretty easy with one good hit.

As the season goes on though, we will see how Linehan and Romo fix these issues.
 

LittleBoyBlue

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1. Play Action Pass from 12 personnel - Hanna/Witten are your TEs with Murray as your single back. Dez and Williams as your WRs with close splits to the formation. Both Hanna and Witten stay in to block the edges and Dez runs a crossing route underneath as Williams runs the post so you have only 2 guys out on routes w/ Murray as a check down.

Two things, the call is on 1st and 10 and Romo sells the fake by turning his head to Murray. This in turn is good and bad, good in that he gets the defense to flow to his right to key on the run, but bad because he loses sight of the defenders in front of him and also losing reads on Dez and Williams on their routes.

Which brings me to my opinion on this play. As Romo looks down field, Williams is making his break behind the traffic towards the left pylon. By the way that the play quickly unfolded, it looks to me like Romo had pre-determined his throw to Dez pre-snap. If Romo had just scanned the field a tick longer he may have seen the SS drop right in front of Dez and moved on to his next progression which should have been Williams or the check down to Murray.

2. Play Action Pass from S11 personnel - Witten/Murray w/ Dez, Beasley, and Harris as your receivers. Witten stays in to block then leaks out still covered. While Beasley runs a flat route, Dez a crossing route in the back of the end zone, and Harris runs a sluggo. Murray helps with blocking as well.

Again it's 1st and goal here, and Romo sells the fake again by turning his head to Murray. After the fake Romo wants to hit Harris but sees both LBs eyeing him down. I think he doesn't trust himself to fit the ball to Harris behind the LBs and then Murray's man has Romo scrambling to the right. Whether it was a bad throwaway or poor decision by Romo whatever that was it was ugly.


3. Play Action Pass from 13 personnel - Witten/Hanna/Escobar as your TEs and Murray as your single back. Dez is your lone WR that runs a skinny post and Witten goes out on a pattern too. (couldn't tell what is was) Hanna and Escobar stay in as blockers but Escobar and Murray are the check downs this time.

1st and 10 again - see the pattern yet? Romo again sells the fake with his head turn but this time he quickly snaps it back to scan the field. The problem is that Romo never sees the backside corner drop into the deep center of the field. Romo never accounted for him and unloads the ball to Dez hoping that Dez can make the circus catch.


Here's my extended analysis on these particular plays. All of them were PA passes and they were all called on 1st and 10. In the offseason Tony's stats when throwing PA passes was posted here and everyone was screaming for more PA passes because we rarely ran them. Well PA passes are great, but one of the big issues when trying to run them is to, #1 sell the fake to the defense to suck them in, and #2 make an easy completion for your QB.

Let me talk about #1. PA pass fakes is an art form that must be perfected at the NFL level. It's just not about going through the motions. First and foremost the QB has to sell the fake to the runner. If the QB keeps his vision down field and doesn't really sell the fake then the LB are going to drop in their zones and read pass all day. You can always sell the fake in other ways too, with the OL, by going low hat or use a pulling OG but you invite yourself to quick QB pressure. On play 1, I don't think Williams was ever part of his progression because as soon as Romo got to his landmark he set his feet and unloaded the ball into triple coverage. As Romo turns his head to sell the fake, he doesn't see the SS drop right in front of Dez or that the FS commits to Dez from behind. On Play 2 it seems like Romo doesn't trust himself more than anything as he sees Harris but doesn't pull the trigger. On Play 3, Romo never accounts for the backside corner #20 dropping into the deep center as help. Cowboys are in a heavy run formation and the 49ers are in their base defense, in hindsight they probably should have ran there as they have the personnel advantage to run there vs the 49ers base defense.

On with #2, making the easy completion for your QB. PA passes are designed to suck the defense in order to get your play makers behind them. And while Dallas was able to get the 49ers to commit on 2 of 3 PA calls, they failed to make the easy completions. Play 1 is a basic Hi/Lo concept where you want the far S to commit to the crosser or the skinny post and whichever he commits to you go the opposite. Play 2 was more of the QB not trusting himself to get the ball in a window. And Play 3 was a play call that was probably doomed from the beginning because of the defense on the field.


So where do we go from here? I simply don't know because the sample size is too small. The Cowboys ran more PA passes and Romo was fine on those but they were on different downs and distances. Maybe scrap the idea on 1st downs and go with a run or straight up pass play instead?

Maybe tweak the passing concepts to make the reads easier for Romo so that he can make the correct read when he hits his landmark on the fake?

Maybe send more route runners out at the expense of less protection? That's a risky proposition considering Romo could get rattled pretty easy with one good hit.

As the season goes on though, we will see how Linehan and Romo fix these issues.



My Friend... A sample size of
3 1/2 years is not small.

This team/organization is what it is.

No surprises coming. You get what you got.
 

ftghb

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good analysis and writeup. A couple things about the PA fakes. The cowboys are one of the few teams i see that still run under center with any regularity. the PA fakes that come off these conventional under center handoffs are dangerous because of the amount of time Romo spends with his back to the defense. the running back is obv not available for protection he's preoccupied with the fake handoff so Romo is down an extra blocker. Almost everybody else in the league has shifted exclusively to the shotgun pistol handoff PA. I think part of the reason that the fakes are bad is because Romo is always cognizant of the threat of a free defender running at him with his back turned, so he never fully commits to it in case he wants to do one of his patented 360 spins to his left.

Second thing, the cowboys don't have a strong identity of running the football. So even though we were gashing SF (not having bowman and aldon smith really killed them in this respect) in the run, clearly their gameplan preparation during the week was to not even bother selling out for it. Let demarco get his yards and prevent the big play downfield. They never really deviated from this the entire game. It was almost like watching the seahawks play peyton in the SB; peyton got his yards and all those completions, but the defense was always hanging back waiting for that one errant pass, and boom, INT. So in essence, there was nobody to fake, the niners were always content to let their front 7 take care of the run. All it did was allow the defense to get a longer look at the routes developing.
 
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Macnalty

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These interceptions are more the exception for Tony than the mean, thanks for breaking it down, it was difficult to watch the first time not sure how you could survive additional exposure. As a longtime fan that was one of the worst games I have seen from Tony, his long passes hint that we may have a long battle ever selling the deep pass route. That will really shrink the field for opposing pass defenses.I suffered through the early days of Troy Aikman, if Tony's deep pass is gone this may make those seasons very similar to 2014, hope none of you can remember those years with much clarity.

I watched almost all the teams playing Sunday and our running offense looked very good in comparison to the rest of the league, not sure what the issue was with Tyron Smith as this game film will keep a left tackle out of the pro bowl. Revis playing for the Patriots looked human, Patterson playing for Tenn did not, yikes that kid has talent as I am sure Coach Dooley will testify. We will have our hands full with Tenn, they played hard and made few mistakes under Wisenhunt. If you watched the Seattle vs GB game on Thursday I believe you have seen how good the best teams are playing in contrast to our play.


Jason Garrett will not survive many more games like this one in fact another like this one could be more than Jerry can spin.
 

CCBoy

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There is validity in expecting more in the view of a pretty sophisticated analysis presented...but not when concepts then executed on the level that was shown yesterday. Plain and simply, this team does not possess the sophistication to execute on the levels that are needed to present such views validly.

If the 49'ers weren't as injured, as they were for yesterday's game, Dallas wouldn't have been as able to get at least running game successes from that game.

Behind, Tony Romo threw plenty of deep balls, and completed one late one, to Harris. And San Francisco had injury problems, even in it's secondary yesterday.

It looked bad for an Exhibition game level of play, much less, to start a season with.
 

gimmesix

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good analysis and writeup. A couple things about the PA fakes. The cowboys are one of the few teams i see that still run under center with any regularity. the PA fakes that come off these conventional under center handoffs are dangerous because of the amount of time Romo spends with his back to the defense. the running back is obv not available for protection he's preoccupied with the fake handoff so Romo is down an extra blocker. Almost everybody else in the league has shifted exclusively to the shotgun pistol handoff PA. I think part of the reason that the fakes are bad is because Romo is always cognizant of the threat of a free defender running at him with his back turned, so he never fully commits to it in case he wants to do one of his patented 360 spins to his left.

Second thing, the cowboys don't have a strong identity of running the football. So even though we were gashing SF (not having bowman and aldon smith really killed them in this respect) in the run, clearly their gameplan preparation during the week was to not even bother selling out for it. Let demarco get his yards and prevent the big play downfield. They never really deviated from this the entire game. It was almost like watching the seahawks play peyton in the SB; peyton got his yards and all those completions, but the defense was always hanging back waiting for that one errant pass, and boom, INT. So in essence, there was nobody to fake, the niners were always content to let their front 7 take care of the run. All it did was allow the defense to get a longer look at the routes developing.

I am very disappointed in Romo after this game because of his choices to throw into coverage. I don't know whether it was the rust, his expectations on the PA fakes, adjustments to the play-calls/reads expected in this new system, but this was a truly horrid performance by a QB who doesn't have very many of them.
 

CCBoy

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On the wrong side of things...Romo is leading the NFL in interceptions thrown now.
 

CCBoy

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There is validity in expecting more in the view of a pretty sophisticated analysis presented...but not when concepts then executed on the level that was shown yesterday. Plain and simply, this team does not possess the sophistication to execute on the levels that are needed to present such views validly.

If the 49'ers weren't as injured, as they were for yesterday's game, Dallas wouldn't have been as able to get at least running game successes from that game.

Behind, Tony Romo threw plenty of deep balls, and completed one late one, to Harris. And San Francisco had injury problems, even in it's secondary yesterday.

It looked bad for an Exhibition game level of play, much less, to start a season with.

Now, How about them Cowboys and after film study, let's go to Tennessee...
 

Awakened

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Romo was the worst QB in the league yesterday. He had another ball that should have been intercepted. Horrible. And we're stuck with him for a long time.
 

TwoDeep3

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1. Play Action Pass from 12 personnel - Hanna/Witten are your TEs with Murray as your single back. Dez and Williams as your WRs with close splits to the formation. Both Hanna and Witten stay in to block the edges and Dez runs a crossing route underneath as Williams runs the post so you have only 2 guys out on routes w/ Murray as a check down.

Two things, the call is on 1st and 10 and Romo sells the fake by turning his head to Murray. This in turn is good and bad, good in that he gets the defense to flow to his right to key on the run, but bad because he loses sight of the defenders in front of him and also losing reads on Dez and Williams on their routes.

Which brings me to my opinion on this play. As Romo looks down field, Williams is making his break behind the traffic towards the left pylon. By the way that the play quickly unfolded, it looks to me like Romo had pre-determined his throw to Dez pre-snap. If Romo had just scanned the field a tick longer he may have seen the SS drop right in front of Dez and moved on to his next progression which should have been Williams or the check down to Murray.

2. Play Action Pass from S11 personnel - Witten/Murray w/ Dez, Beasley, and Harris as your receivers. Witten stays in to block then leaks out still covered. While Beasley runs a flat route, Dez a crossing route in the back of the end zone, and Harris runs a sluggo. Murray helps with blocking as well.

Again it's 1st and goal here, and Romo sells the fake again by turning his head to Murray. After the fake Romo wants to hit Harris but sees both LBs eyeing him down. I think he doesn't trust himself to fit the ball to Harris behind the LBs and then Murray's man has Romo scrambling to the right. Whether it was a bad throwaway or poor decision by Romo whatever that was it was ugly.


3. Play Action Pass from 13 personnel - Witten/Hanna/Escobar as your TEs and Murray as your single back. Dez is your lone WR that runs a skinny post and Witten goes out on a pattern too. (couldn't tell what is was) Hanna and Escobar stay in as blockers but Escobar and Murray are the check downs this time.

1st and 10 again - see the pattern yet? Romo again sells the fake with his head turn but this time he quickly snaps it back to scan the field. The problem is that Romo never sees the backside corner drop into the deep center of the field. Romo never accounted for him and unloads the ball to Dez hoping that Dez can make the circus catch.


Here's my extended analysis on these particular plays. All of them were PA passes and they were all called on 1st and 10. In the offseason Tony's stats when throwing PA passes was posted here and everyone was screaming for more PA passes because we rarely ran them. Well PA passes are great, but one of the big issues when trying to run them is to, #1 sell the fake to the defense to suck them in, and #2 make an easy completion for your QB.

Let me talk about #1. PA pass fakes is an art form that must be perfected at the NFL level. It's just not about going through the motions. First and foremost the QB has to sell the fake to the runner. If the QB keeps his vision down field and doesn't really sell the fake then the LB are going to drop in their zones and read pass all day. You can always sell the fake in other ways too, with the OL, by going low hat or use a pulling OG but you invite yourself to quick QB pressure. On play 1, I don't think Williams was ever part of his progression because as soon as Romo got to his landmark he set his feet and unloaded the ball into triple coverage. As Romo turns his head to sell the fake, he doesn't see the SS drop right in front of Dez or that the FS commits to Dez from behind. On Play 2 it seems like Romo doesn't trust himself more than anything as he sees Harris but doesn't pull the trigger. On Play 3, Romo never accounts for the backside corner #20 dropping into the deep center as help. Cowboys are in a heavy run formation and the 49ers are in their base defense, in hindsight they probably should have ran there as they have the personnel advantage to run there vs the 49ers base defense.

On with #2, making the easy completion for your QB. PA passes are designed to suck the defense in order to get your play makers behind them. And while Dallas was able to get the 49ers to commit on 2 of 3 PA calls, they failed to make the easy completions. Play 1 is a basic Hi/Lo concept where you want the far S to commit to the crosser or the skinny post and whichever he commits to you go the opposite. Play 2 was more of the QB not trusting himself to get the ball in a window. And Play 3 was a play call that was probably doomed from the beginning because of the defense on the field.

I will suggest this looks more like Romo not mentally being at game seed. He twice missed indicators during the play unfolding which would have caused him to look elsewhere.

But the pick in the endzone - the one after the extended drive - was a play changed at the line and Romo just tossing the ball up.

Even those pieces of information have value here, because they leab toward him nut at game speed and seeing everything.
So where do we go from here? I simply don't know because the sample size is too small. The Cowboys ran more PA passes and Romo was fine on those but they were on different downs and distances. Maybe scrap the idea on 1st downs and go with a run or straight up pass play instead?

Maybe tweak the passing concepts to make the reads easier for Romo so that he can make the correct read when he hits his landmark on the fake?

Maybe send more route runners out at the expense of less protection? That's a risky proposition considering Romo could get rattled pretty easy with one good hit.

As the season goes on though, we will see how Linehan and Romo fix these issues.
 

Stash

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For me, I'm stripping things down even further.

The fundamental issue regarding this team's playcalling and the utter and complete lack of patience when it comes to the running game.

Point your finger in whoever's direction you prefer, as I don't care to argue who's doing what, only that it is being done.

But this team just does not have the patience to consistently use its' running game, no matter how well it may be working.

Fans have long complained about it and some have staunchly and stubbornly defended it, but I think at this point, there is no longer any denying it.

Opponents do not have to worry about stopping the Dallas running game, at some point or another, we will do it for them.
 

Zimmy Lives

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For me, I'm stripping things down even further.

The fundamental issue regarding this team's playcalling and the utter and complete lack of patience when it comes to the running game.

Point your finger in whoever's direction you prefer, as I don't care to argue who's doing what, only that it is being done.

But this team just does not have the patience to consistently use its' running game, no matter how well it may be working.

Fans have long complained about it and some have staunchly and stubbornly defended it, but I think at this point, there is no longer any denying it.

Opponents do not have to worry about stopping the Dallas running game, at some point or another, we will do it for them.

Completely agree, especially with your final statement in bold.

Dallas finally has the beef up front to run the football and they have the workhorse running back. Shame on them for not using all their assets.
 

waving monkey

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Most definitely.

Are you thinking of changing your season record prediction at this point?

I haven't had a high expectation this year
next year I think they'll be in the play off hunt
and I know how tired everybody is me too
 

Idgit

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First, great stuff, Bluestang. You're probably on to something, but whatever the solution, he can't be missing on his keys just because it's play action. That first pick to Dez for example, he should be keying off that S before he lets go of the ball after the PA is sold. That's just a blown read. Maybe they were making a point of getting Dez involved early (I bet they were). Maybe that's a play that works in practice playing against our Ss. Whatever the cause, it's a ball I'm sure he's dying he can't have back. At that point in the game, too, the 14 point swing when we had already coughed up the defensive score was a back breaker.
 
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