Will The Cowboys’ Ryan Switzer Have To Pry Snaps From Jason Witten?

waving monkey

waving monkey

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A lot has already been made of Ryan Switzer making a difference on offense for the Cowboys. It was part of Burning Question Number 7 in our recent series. In the first OTA, because both Lucky Whitehead and Cole Beasley were out with injuries, Switzer took their snaps and shined. Here’s another article talking about Switzer’s practice, and one from BTB.


But for Switzer to make a difference, he has to first get on the field.

Our former colleague Joey Ickes has this nice write up on how Switzer might pair up with Cole Beasley to form a dual-slot attack of lightning quick possession receivers. Ickes was excited about the possibilities

link/http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2017...from-jason-witten-dallas-cowboys-dak-prescott
 
Bullflop

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If Linehan feels that Switzer's the best option in any given situation, that's whose number he'll call. It's just up to Switzer to make it work. If the OTAs are any indication, it shouldn't be any problem. Linehan is sky high on his new toy's performance thus far, so there's that!
 
casmith07

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If these guys actually believe what comes out of their mouths, then it won't matter who gets the catches or the snaps - they just want to win.

I think Williams made that wholly apparent by the deal he took. He could've easily made more money playing for a trash team with money to blow or another "cusp" competitor like Oakland (where I expected him to land).

--edit--

I think the depth chart will go: Bryant, Williams, Beasley, Switzer, Butler* (*bubble guy along with Whitehead and the rookie from Ohio State).

Witten's snaps will not decrease too much because he is the best in-line blocking tight end in NFL history. The only way Witten's snaps go down is if Rico Gathers is the beast we all are hoping he is and can supplant Witten's blocking ability.
 
DallasDW00ds0n

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Its gonna be hard to sell a run if Swizter is stealing reps from any TE, unless were referring strictly to catches here
 
gimmesix

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T-RO said:
If Switz runs a defender or two out of the box...it's almost as good as a block. You can run effectively from spread formations.
Click to expand...

We're not a spread running team and I don't expect us to become one. We're a base two-tight end, sometime tight end-fullback offense that wants to run the ball as much as we can with our star tailback behind our powerful offensive line.

Maybe Switzer will cause us to use four-receiver sets more on passing downs, but I'm not counting on it. (At this point, I don't know how much he'll even get on the field when we use four-receiver sets; he'll have to displace Butler.) Someone's always wanting to reduce Witten's snaps when about the only way to keep him off the field will be to get him to retire.
 
Toruk_Makto

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gimmesix said:
We're not a spread running team and I don't expect us to become one. We're a base two-tight end, sometime tight end-fullback offense that wants to run the ball as much as we can with our star tailback behind our powerful offensive line.

Maybe Switzer will cause us to use four-receiver sets more on passing downs, but I'm not counting on it. (At this point, I don't know how much he'll even get on the field when we use four-receiver sets; he'll have to displace Butler.) Someone's always wanting to reduce Witten's snaps when about the only way to keep him off the field will be to get him to retire.
Click to expand...
We are not a base two tight end team.
 
reddyuta

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Switzer is QB friendly.the obvious guy to lose snaps is the TE.
 
gimmesix

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Toruk_Makto said:
We are not a base two tight end team.
Click to expand...

http://www.sbnation.com/2016/10/21/...e-bills-blocking-ezekiel-elliott-lesean-mccoy

It depends on what you mean by base. With healthy tight ends, we use the two-tight end sets a lot on early downs/running downs. Sometimes we'll go three-receiver, one-tight end and sometimes we bring in the fullback. Just from memory (because I can't find any percentages), it appears to me that we use the four-receiver set the least, which would make sense considering the balance we want on offense. Our top two sets are two-tight end and three-receiver.
 
gimmesix

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Toruk_Makto said:
We are not a base two tight end team.
Click to expand...

Here's a good article supporting that we were more of an 11 personnel team (one back, one tight end) last year. We were using the 12 more early in the season (which is what I was considering since we had healthy tight ends then), but leaned on the 11 after Swaim went down because Escobar just wasn't much of a blocker. We even used the fullback more after Swaim's injury.

Now, we had a lot of success having Beasley on the field, so we may continue to favor the 11 even on early downs this year, but we may have to anyway if Swaim and Hanna aren't ready to go. I doubt we'll rely on Rico heavily at this point. The success we had with the 11 also says it's our best offense, but again we didn't have a good option for the 12 after Swaim's injury so it's hard to say we wouldn't have been just as successful if he had stayed healthy. I still can't see us using the spread much more than we have in the past.

https://www.fanragsports.com/nfl/cowboys/ezekiel-elliott-fare-stacked-boxes/
 
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