jday
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Before Zeke even got a ruling in his favor, I honestly felt this was a winnable game for the Cowboys. I know…it’s the big bad Chiefs and the Cowboys have only beaten teams with losing records (excluding the Commanders), but stats such as win-loss ratio can be ridiculously misleading. Football is about matchups, position by position. You either have a solution for an oppositional weapon…or you don’t…and if you don’t, more often than not, you lose. For some of you, that may be way too simplistic, but it does come alot closer to hitting the mark than simply saying team A with more wins should beat team B with less wins.
To decide how a game will unfold, it is far better to take a closer look at match-ups and, furthermore, a look at what particular players were seemingly taken away in previous losses of said team. Furthermore, when a team has an elite running game, as does the Chiefs, you can usually hazard an accurate guess that in losses their run game likely struggled. We Cowboys fans should all intimately know this, because that is typically the case in Cowboys losses.
Thus far this season, the Chiefs have only two losses, one against the Steelers and the other against the Raiders…two very good teams, so it wasn’t nearly as surprising as would be a Cowboys victory this coming Sunday for the uninformed legion. In the loss to the Steelers, Kareem Hunt only managed 21 yards on 9 carries, an average of 2.3 yards per tote. In the loss at the hands of the Raiders, Kareem Hunt had 18 carries for 87 yards, averaging a respectable 4.8 per carry. Note, however, that Kareem did have a fairly long carry in this contest for 34 yards, so if we remove that from consideration, that average plummets to 17 carries for 53 yards and 3.11 yards per carry.
Of course, looking at the averages (and averages alone), can also be misleading because to an extent it assumes a minimum yardage per touch and it completely ignores situational football. For instance, many of Kareem’s carries may have resulted in negative yardage, whereas at other times, his carries may have put the Chiefs in favorable down and distance. Without the benefit of watching each carry from whistle to whistle and having a complete understanding of the context present at the time within each series, levying judgement can be a precarious business. Nevertheless, I do feel fairly comfortable asserting that if the Cowboys can shut down Kareem, they can effectively disrupt everything the Chiefs want to do and by extension they have a really good chance of embarrassing the Chiefs…especially with Zeke back in the lineup.
The first thing I’d encourage Cowboys fans to do when deciding how these Cowboys match-up based on how they have played throughout the season, is throw out every game that didn’t involve Sean Lee, Anthony Hitchens, and to a lesser extent, David Irving. I understand that doing so for all three players means throwing out stats garnered against the Cowboys in the majority of games they have played this season, however, it is what it is…those three, minus Demarcus Lawrence, are among the most impactful players on that side of the ball.
The second thing I would like to point out is that the Chiefs currently possess the 28th Ranked rush defense while the Cowboys possess the 2nd ranked rush attack…that, my friends, is a fairly potent strength of the Cowboys against a noted weakness of the Chiefs and they have faced nothing like Zeke this year in their struggles to stop the run. Alternatively, the Cowboys possess the 15th ranked rush defense (these number, by the way, include games without Sean, Hitchens and Irving, so they are better than their record suggest) and Chiefs are ranked 11th in yards per game.
Perhaps I am being optimistic here, but with Lee and Hitchens moving from sideline to sideline, that matchup very well could be a wash, if not decidedly favor the Cowboys. That said, Kareem is also adept with receiving the ball in space (screens, wheel routes, and swing plays) and doing serious damage with the ball in his hands, which may be a significant part of how the Chiefs opt to attack the Cowboys, particularly in the early going in attempt to open the run initially using the pass.
As I intimated above, if the Cowboys can shut down the run, the Chiefs will struggle, however, they also possess the 6th ranked passing offense in the league. Much of that, of course, has been garnered on the strength of their running games reputation, however, the other side of that has been on the pass catching and run after the catch prowess of TE Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill, who current occupy the 6th and 7th spot of all receivers in the NFL for total yards respectively. Despite the gnashing of teeth and complaints of Cowboys fans, they have actually fared better against the pass than what I initially expected, ranking 15th in the league, which is above league average. This further supports my belief that many Cowboys fans (though, not all) are like many Starbucks addicts; they have to have everything just so, or it completely sucks!
When the news of Zekes stay of execution broke, I initially thought his absence this week might be a hindrance in game. After all, he has missed most every practice and meeting this week as a result of the reinforced suspension. However, after reviewing the above numbers, I honestly don’t see how anything changes from last weeks gameplan against the Commanders versus this week against the Chiefs. In fact, it may prove to be a good thing he had a little time off because once again, if I’m the offensive coordinator, my plan is likely to hand him the ball for another 30 snaps. Why not? The Chiefs struggle to stop the run and have the offensive firepower to stress and abuse the Cowboys defense. This recipe writes itself, really.
There are certainly matchups that favor the Chiefs, but not many, and by no means the majority. Believe it or not, this is a game the Cowboys could easily dominate if 1. They are able to continue their trend of abusing defenses on the ground, which they are more than capable of with Zeke back in the fold and 2. The defense plays assignment sound football and continue to get after the quarterback. Alex Smith has been having a career year, but if he doesn’t have time in the pocket and he is forced to play dink & dunk, I really like the Cowboys odds…and suspect once Vegas realigns the line to consider Zeke back in the game, the Cowboys will be favored by 3 in deference of their home field advantage.
For the fun of it:
Cowboys: 34
Chiefs: 24
To decide how a game will unfold, it is far better to take a closer look at match-ups and, furthermore, a look at what particular players were seemingly taken away in previous losses of said team. Furthermore, when a team has an elite running game, as does the Chiefs, you can usually hazard an accurate guess that in losses their run game likely struggled. We Cowboys fans should all intimately know this, because that is typically the case in Cowboys losses.
Thus far this season, the Chiefs have only two losses, one against the Steelers and the other against the Raiders…two very good teams, so it wasn’t nearly as surprising as would be a Cowboys victory this coming Sunday for the uninformed legion. In the loss to the Steelers, Kareem Hunt only managed 21 yards on 9 carries, an average of 2.3 yards per tote. In the loss at the hands of the Raiders, Kareem Hunt had 18 carries for 87 yards, averaging a respectable 4.8 per carry. Note, however, that Kareem did have a fairly long carry in this contest for 34 yards, so if we remove that from consideration, that average plummets to 17 carries for 53 yards and 3.11 yards per carry.
Of course, looking at the averages (and averages alone), can also be misleading because to an extent it assumes a minimum yardage per touch and it completely ignores situational football. For instance, many of Kareem’s carries may have resulted in negative yardage, whereas at other times, his carries may have put the Chiefs in favorable down and distance. Without the benefit of watching each carry from whistle to whistle and having a complete understanding of the context present at the time within each series, levying judgement can be a precarious business. Nevertheless, I do feel fairly comfortable asserting that if the Cowboys can shut down Kareem, they can effectively disrupt everything the Chiefs want to do and by extension they have a really good chance of embarrassing the Chiefs…especially with Zeke back in the lineup.
The first thing I’d encourage Cowboys fans to do when deciding how these Cowboys match-up based on how they have played throughout the season, is throw out every game that didn’t involve Sean Lee, Anthony Hitchens, and to a lesser extent, David Irving. I understand that doing so for all three players means throwing out stats garnered against the Cowboys in the majority of games they have played this season, however, it is what it is…those three, minus Demarcus Lawrence, are among the most impactful players on that side of the ball.
The second thing I would like to point out is that the Chiefs currently possess the 28th Ranked rush defense while the Cowboys possess the 2nd ranked rush attack…that, my friends, is a fairly potent strength of the Cowboys against a noted weakness of the Chiefs and they have faced nothing like Zeke this year in their struggles to stop the run. Alternatively, the Cowboys possess the 15th ranked rush defense (these number, by the way, include games without Sean, Hitchens and Irving, so they are better than their record suggest) and Chiefs are ranked 11th in yards per game.
Perhaps I am being optimistic here, but with Lee and Hitchens moving from sideline to sideline, that matchup very well could be a wash, if not decidedly favor the Cowboys. That said, Kareem is also adept with receiving the ball in space (screens, wheel routes, and swing plays) and doing serious damage with the ball in his hands, which may be a significant part of how the Chiefs opt to attack the Cowboys, particularly in the early going in attempt to open the run initially using the pass.
As I intimated above, if the Cowboys can shut down the run, the Chiefs will struggle, however, they also possess the 6th ranked passing offense in the league. Much of that, of course, has been garnered on the strength of their running games reputation, however, the other side of that has been on the pass catching and run after the catch prowess of TE Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill, who current occupy the 6th and 7th spot of all receivers in the NFL for total yards respectively. Despite the gnashing of teeth and complaints of Cowboys fans, they have actually fared better against the pass than what I initially expected, ranking 15th in the league, which is above league average. This further supports my belief that many Cowboys fans (though, not all) are like many Starbucks addicts; they have to have everything just so, or it completely sucks!
When the news of Zekes stay of execution broke, I initially thought his absence this week might be a hindrance in game. After all, he has missed most every practice and meeting this week as a result of the reinforced suspension. However, after reviewing the above numbers, I honestly don’t see how anything changes from last weeks gameplan against the Commanders versus this week against the Chiefs. In fact, it may prove to be a good thing he had a little time off because once again, if I’m the offensive coordinator, my plan is likely to hand him the ball for another 30 snaps. Why not? The Chiefs struggle to stop the run and have the offensive firepower to stress and abuse the Cowboys defense. This recipe writes itself, really.
There are certainly matchups that favor the Chiefs, but not many, and by no means the majority. Believe it or not, this is a game the Cowboys could easily dominate if 1. They are able to continue their trend of abusing defenses on the ground, which they are more than capable of with Zeke back in the fold and 2. The defense plays assignment sound football and continue to get after the quarterback. Alex Smith has been having a career year, but if he doesn’t have time in the pocket and he is forced to play dink & dunk, I really like the Cowboys odds…and suspect once Vegas realigns the line to consider Zeke back in the game, the Cowboys will be favored by 3 in deference of their home field advantage.
For the fun of it:
Cowboys: 34
Chiefs: 24
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