Weeden Speaks

[Idgit]

Honestly? I don't know. A few. But, was there any point during that stretch where the offense gave you any confidence, whatsoever?

I think most possessions would have ended in a punt, or FG, at best. We couldn't buy our way into the end zone.

It's hard to answer that question. If we had more TO's, and subsequently more points I guess, that doesn't necessarily translate to victories. Other teams played us conservatively for a reason. If we had a lead, they'd played us differently. Could we have stopped it? There's really no way to know.

Yeah, it was really just a rhetorical question. The offense clearly sucked badly. But then, take away Murray, Romo, and Dez, and then even measly little Dunbar who was averaging 10 catches a game or whatever it was in his role of check-down king, and we probably should have expected the offense to suck.

And I think most fans think there were ways to coach our way to more points. I don't think that's a crazy argument, given how few points we scored and how rarely we were playing with a lead all season long. But I'm not sure it was possible. Instead, we tried to limit the mistakes we might get with the backups and to try to win playing high-percentage offense behind a good OL and keeping things tight defensively. And that failed, miserably. But it doesn't follow that airing it out like Cassel did in the NYFG game was a better option. Letting backup players take big risks against starters is a recipe for getting beat. Play calling isn't really the issue when a QB can't throw anything that's not line-of-sight, WRs don't hang onto balls or get OPI calls that take points of the board, and the defense can't give the admittedly bad offense any meaningful extra series to speak of because they're suddenly worse at that than every other team in the league.

 

[Dodger12]

Show me a team that lost a Romo and a Dez please. You can't so you're the one talking out your ***.

Pittsburgh lost their starting QB and had to play their 3rd string QB; they also lost Le'Veon Bell in week 8 and he was an All-Pro. Denver went 3 and o without Manning. The Colts won without Luck. Washington lost almost their whole offensive line and still won the East. There were at least 12 starting QB's that missed games due to injuries. Keep making excuses for how completely inept and incompetent this team looks.

 

[Dodger12]

No no no...

This is the new math. Cowboys math.

Romo = 10 players by himself. Dez Bryant is another 7 players, and Lance Dunbar is worth like 5 guys too.

So, adding it all up, that's 22 players on any other team, and that = a 'get out of jail free' card for our front office and staff.

This season completely exposed the myth that we were "building" something here. It's nothing but excuse after excuse, year after year.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

Its fair what he's saying. To his credit....he didn't play TERRIBLE. He played well enough to win most of those games but he played far too conservative in some of them as well. That Falcons game should've been a W. If he had won that one...who knows what kind of trickle effect happens after that one. Maybe they go on a streak of wins.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

Pittsburgh lost their starting QB and had to play their 3rd string QB; they also lost Le'Veon Bell in week 8 and he was an All-Pro. Denver went 3 and o without Manning. The Colts won without Luck. Washington lost almost their whole offensive line and still won the East. There were at least 12 starting QB's that missed games due to injuries. Keep making excuses for how completely inept and incompetent this team looks.

Pittsburgh is ALSO stacked. Deangelo Williams was one of the best running backs in this league this year when he was out there and they also have probably the best receiving core in the league. Would you rather have DWill/Wheaton/Antonio/Bryant or Terrence Williams/McFadden/Randle and Beasley? There's no comparison.

 

[percyhoward]

If we had a lead, they'd played us differently. Could we have stopped it? There's really no way to know.

If we'd had more leads, especially 10+ point leads, we'd have had a lot more takeaways. More than half our takeaways in 2014 happened when were up by 10 points or more. In 2015, our opponents had about one-fifth as many snaps while trailing by 10+ points as they did the year before, and that alone almost cut our takeaway total in half. Our offense played a huge role in all of this.

And more importantly, 90% of all drives in the NFL this season (and 85% of all scoring drives) did not begin after a takeaway. The big problem, as you said, was the inability of the offense to score touchdowns.

Filter out all drives than began after a takeaway, and this is where the offense ranked in percentage of drives that ended in a touchdown:
2014: 1st
2015: 29th

 

[Oh_Canada]

We also got some pretty big favors from NYG and Philly when we started 2-0 with Romo.

They dominated Philly, but I get the point.

 

[Dodger12]

Pittsburgh is ALSO stacked. Deangelo Williams was one of the best running backs in this league this year when he was out there and they also have probably the best receiving core in the league. Would you rather have DWill/Wheaton/Antonio/Bryant or Terrence Williams/McFadden/Randle and Beasley? There's no comparison.

Folks can't have it both ways. We spent years rebuilding, or so we were told. I completely understand why some teams win and can overcome or at least stay in the hunt with injuries until they get healthy. I also understand why we didn't. I never bought the myth.

 

[SultanOfSix]

Clearly, they weren't good enough to win most of those games, as we couldn't overcome anybody in all but one game. Sitting at -22 TO differential gets you 4-12, and you don't get to -22 by just turning the ball over a lot. You also have to be pretty good at not taking it away.

We were worst in the league at taking it away, btw. With 11. Carolina had 39.

. This is such a impotent argument. Takeaways are a luxury. They're not something a defense has to do. A defense has to stop a team from scoring. A defense has to stop a team as early as possible in a drives, preferably make them go three and out and give the offense the ball. An offense is supposed to score points. An offense is supposed to lead the team down the field and either kick field goals, or preferably TDs. An offense is not supposed to turn the ball over and give the defense a short field, nor lead the team to a -22 TO differential.

In the Seattle game, Hardy intercepted the ball and ran it back to the ten or twelve yard line of Seattle. Had the offense been able to score a TD, the team would have won the game instead of losing 14-13 or 15-14 or whatever the hell it was. They couldn't put a TD on the board from twelve yards out!

This team was abysmal on offense. The only reason this team ever stayed in games was because of the defense. If the defense was anywhere near as bad as it was a few years prior, this team would have the first pick in the draft.

 

[DABOYZ]

Denver lost Manning for several weeks.. How did they get to the Superbowl?


Lots of teams seemed ok with their backups. We could only win 1 game with all 3 of ours.

I agree, this team needs to be built on what we can do best. Give the O-line a chance to wear teams down with a run controlled/intermediate route offense. Unfortunately, JG the coaching staff and yes even Romo lack patience. This team didn't learn anything from last years 12-4 season. We were bad right out of the gate this year and the injuries simply covered that up. Please draft a young QB with patience and who will take what the offense gives him. I'm ok with 5 yards here and there to set up the defense. You don't have to take shots down the field on every offensive series. We are wasting talent on this team by not playing to the player or TEAM strengths. Our O-line is great but we do a terrible job of allowing them to control the game (7-8 second routes).

 

[Future]

They dominated Philly, but I get the point.

No.

We didn't score an offensive touchdown until Weeden came in.

 

[Irvin88_4life]

Coulda, shoulda, woulda..................all means jack.

All that matters is the scoreboard bro, and the scoreboard says........wait for it........wait for it.............1-11 without Romo using 3 different QBs

Think it was you but I responded to a comment that said we were one play away from winning 0 games. So if it's true for that then it's true for my comment. Maybe you can't comprehend and couldn't see I was being sarcastic but try reading before replying

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

Folks can't have it both ways. We spent years rebuilding, or so we were told. I completely understand why some teams win and can overcome or at least stay in the hunt with injuries until they get healthy. I also understand why we didn't. I never bought the myth.

What are you implying? Trying to follow you. I don't think we ever really "rebuilt". They called it "retooling" and that's about what it is. The same core of Romo, Witten and Garrett are here. They just built a few pieces around them.

 

[Rockport]

Pittsburgh lost their starting QB and had to play their 3rd string QB; they also lost Le'Veon Bell in week 8 and he was an All-Pro. Denver went 3 and o without Manning. The Colts won without Luck. Washington lost almost their whole offensive line and still won the East. There were at least 12 starting QB's that missed games due to injuries. Keep making excuses for how completely inept and incompetent this team looks.

Big fail. Of course no other team lost a Romo and a Dez.

 

[Idgit]

. This is such a impotent argument. Takeaways are a luxury. They're not something a defense has to do. A defense has to stop a team from scoring. A defense has to stop a team as early as possible in a drives, preferably make them go three and out and give the offense the ball. An offense is supposed to score points. An offense is supposed to lead the team down the field and either kick field goals, or preferably TDs. An offense is not supposed to turn the ball over and give the defense a short field, nor lead the team to a -22 TO differential.

In the Seattle game, Hardy intercepted the ball and ran it back to the ten or twelve yard line of Seattle. Had the offense been able to score a TD, the team would have won the game instead of losing 14-13 or 15-14 or whatever the hell it was. They couldn't put a TD on the board from twelve yards out!

This team was abysmal on offense. The only reason this team ever stayed in games was because of the defense. If the defense was anywhere near as bad as it was a few years prior, this team would have the first pick in the draft.

Not at all. First of all, nobody is excusing the offense. Exactly the opposite, as a matter of fact, so that's not relevant. Like it or not, though, turnovers lose games, and takeaways win them. They aren't luxuries. Good teams protect the ball, bad teams pressure teams into turning it over. It's not a coincidence that TO differential correlates so highly with winning in the NFL.

The defense was better than it was a few years ago, with the exception of being dead last in the league in getting takeaways. Nobody is saying they weren't. I'm saying they weren't enough better to overcome the inept offense, and they needed to be with our best skill players on that side of the ball all out for the majority of the year.

 

[DABOYZ]

Pittsburgh is ALSO stacked. Deangelo Williams was one of the best running backs in this league this year when he was out there and they also have probably the best receiving core in the league. Would you rather have DWill/Wheaton/Antonio/Bryant or Terrence Williams/McFadden/Randle and Beasley? There's no comparison.

LMAO at Pittsburgh being stacked. Their defense was terrible. Our offense with a different staff and QB would be unstoppable.

 

[Beast_from_East]

Think it was you but I responded to a comment that said we were one play away from winning 0 games. So if it's true for that then it's true for my comment. Maybe you can't comprehend and couldn't see I was being sarcastic but try reading before replying

Only thing to comprehend was what actually happened, which is 1-11 without Romo.

And no, your comment is not equally true because we won the Washington game because of one fluke play. In order to win the 6 or 7 games you mentioned, it would have required a fluke play in each game.............ergo, a total of 6 or 7 occurrences.

So the two are not equivalent, you are comparing one occurrence to the same occurrence happening 6 or 7 times.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

LMAO at Pittsburgh being stacked. Their defense was terrible. Our offense with a different staff and QB would be unstoppable.

Steelers don't have a stacked offense? Literally all of their skilled players would start on our team.

 

[DABOYZ]

Steelers don't have a stacked offense? Literally all of their skilled players would start on our team.

That's funny go back to school kid. The Steelers have good receivers. Outside of that the system allows the entire team to be successful. Our team on the other hand allows Romo to do what he wants when he wants which is why the burden is put on him. We are a barely above .500 team when he is healthy and starts. And we completely suck when he doesn't. No team should be 100% built around any player especially an undrafted guy with the **** up tendencies that Romo has. Hell a tard like Eli has two superbowls not sure what Romo's excuse is.

 

[LatinMind]

Hey man, when are we going to get another write up about the upcoming draft, offseason, etc? Always enjoyed your take.

This week been doing alot of reading up on and watching some draftbreakdown videos on alot of mid and lower round guys. And been reading up and trying to find recent links on the status of Dallas and the spending floor. I know they had some big gap almost 7% but they gave Dez 20mil and Crawford 10 mil in SB thi past offseason so i wonder how much that went into theit cash spending. but ill put something out this week.