Yakuza Rich
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Dallas vs. Cincinnati Game Preview
by Yakuza Rich
http://yakuzarich.blogspot.com
DALLAS COWBOYS (17.5) VS. CINCINNATI BENGALS
AT TEXAS STADIUM
OCTOBER 5, 2008 4:15 PM EST
The Dallas Cowboys came into the year as one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl and after the first three weeks of the season they only managed to further solidify that ranking. However, after last week’s 26-24 loss the hated rival Washington, there appears to be some major chinks in the Cowboys’ armor.
Personally, last week’s game reminded me of the Dallas’ loss to Philadelphia back in week 15 of last season. Dallas was well favored in that game and then wound up just plain getting beat against a hated rival that usually plays them very tough. However, I think there may be bigger chinks in the armor shown this time around because for the most part last season the Cowboys offense was dynamite and whether it was one bad game or Romo’s thumb injury to the Eagles, odds were the offense would rebound and be one of the best in the league. However, this time around it is the defense. Hell, for all of the belly aching about the offense, lack of run game and lack of willingness to run the ball, the Dallas offense scored 24 points and only had 1 turnover despite having mediocre field position for most of the game. 24 points a game would rank a team 9th in points scored last season and just isn’t anything to sneeze at. But a defense that gives up 26 points in a game, with zero takeaways and allows over 160 yards rushing is problematic.
I’ve harped on this a bit, but the most worrisome statistic I see with the Cowboys is how their defense plays at Texas Stadium. Ever since Romo has been named the starting QB for the team, the defense has allowed a 90.8 QB rating at Texas Stadium (they have allowed only a 71.8 QB rating on the road). Even more concerning is that four of the games at Texas Stadium came against QB’s like Bruce Gradkowski, Marc Bulger, Kellen Clemens and Tarvaris Jackson, who combined for a 40.4 QB rating in those games.
The Bengals have been a mess for the past two seasons and it probably all started back in 2006 when they had a shot of making the playoffs but botched the snap on an extra point attempt in the last game of that year which busted their chances. Since then they’ve been either too busy dealing with players in trouble with the law, Chad Johnson’s latest antics or injuries. They’ve been dreadful so far this year, starting the season 0-4 and recently losing to the struggling Bengals last week. That being said, they did give the Giants a good fight at Giants Stadium a couple of weeks ago and if Dallas keeps agonizing over the past week’s game, they may find themselves in a similar predicament the G-Men were in not too long ago.
WHEN DALLAS IS ON OFFENSE
It’s been a guessing game as to how defenses will try and defend the Cowboys offense as opposing teams have tried a variety of different styles. Last week the Commanders put 8 in the box and did a fair amount of blitzing (they blitzed roughly 30% of the time) and played press coverage on the receivers. We’ve seen similar schemes to this, although most of the time teams would not put 8 in the box. According to Wade Phillips, the run was abandoned due to the offense audibling out of running plays too much. Phillips approximates that they probably did it 14-15 times too many. The Commanders plan has normally been a recipe for disaster for opposing teams. And while their defense really didn’t shut down the offense (24 points, 1 turnover and 5.9 yards per play), I wouldn’t be surprised to see teams follow that formula.
The good news is I believe that’s the wrong formula to follow. For starters, most teams don’t have Shawn Springs who matches up well against Dallas and followed Owens around. And while Springs had a good first half against Dallas, come the second half the Cowboys started motioning Owens around and he started having good success. Furthermore, it seems like Romo every once in awhile needs to make a mistake in order to keep up to snuff on his game and knowing Romo the team will not neglect the run for a long time. A similar situation happened last season when in week 14 Dallas neglected the run against the Lions, but they still scored 28 points and won the game. Unfortunately the next week the Cowboys neglected the run again against the Eagles and paid for it with a 10-6 loss.
The Bengals defense is headed by a former Dallas Defensive Coordinator and Yakuza Rich nemesis, Mike Zimmer. So you’ll see a 4-3 and a lot of Cover 2. And in typical Mike Zimmer fashion, he focuses almost completely on stopping the run and rushing the passer is a bit of an afterthought. Zimmer hasn’t failed to live up to this as his defense has recorded 2 sacks this year. They are averaging 1 sack per 58 pass attempts. They rank last in both statistics. In fact, their pass attempts per sack is dead last. The nearest team to that ratio is the Kansas City Chiefs who still manage 1 sack per 37 pass attempts.
On the flip side Dallas has only allowed three sacks this year and have allowed 1 sack per 47 pass attempts, both of which rank 3rd in the NFL. Needless to say there’s probably not gong to be a lot of pressure on Romo come Sunday.
With that, I’m leaning on Zimmer playing the receivers pretty soft in an attempt to not give up the big play. They know they probably won’t get to Romo and probably won’t stop the offense, so keeping it reasonable and not giving up the big play is the best option. That being said, for all of the stopping the run philosophy Zimmer embodies, the Bengals are still allowing 4.3 yards per carry.
This may be a good game to give Montrae Holland a try. Corey Proctor played his best game of the season, but part of that was they didn’t run the ball very much because when they did run the ball he looked poor blocking his guy. With the Bengals, it’s not a divisional game and they’re a defense that doesn’t really get to the passer so him not understanding the system and missing a block should be a little less punishing.
WHEN DALLAS IS ON DEFENSE
The Bengals like to use a 3 wide receiver and 1 tight end formation. The tight end is mostly there for pass protection purposes. I haven’t watched a lot of the Bengals on offense, but they’ve really struggled with protecting Carson Palmer this year, so they may use more 2 TE sets or put a fullback in there. That being said, they may have just shortened their pass patterns as TJ Houshmandzadeh is only averaging 11.1 yards per catch and Chad Johnson is averaging only 10.5 yards per catch.
According to DMN’s Todd Archer, Dallas played press coverage only 25% of the time against the Commanders last week and with Houshmandzadeh and Johnson’s speed, chances are they’ll keep playing soft coverage on the receivers.
One of the major issues I see with the team is that opposing teams are slowly killing the defense with short passes. The receivers are wide open on those plays most of the time and I’m not sure why because scanning teams across the NFL last week, several of them played soft coverage heavily at times and still managed to guard against the short pass better. They’ll probably want to stick Adam Jones and Newman on their two best WR’s, so expect some more Henry blitzes from the slot.
If Cincy goes to a shorter passing game, it would be nice to see the Cowboys play more press coverage. However, Dallas needs to get their D-Line to bat more passes down because the Dallas DE’s (Canty, Spears, Hatcher and Bowen) have combined for a whopping 1 sack for the season (somewhere that just caused Zimmer to salivate). If the Bengals can get the short passes going early, they’ll likely try to set up a double move deep provided they can give Carson Palmer enough time to throw the ball.
Chris Perry has some skills, but hasn’t been able to do much as he’s only averaging 2.9 yards per carry. Wade seemed to indicate that the run defense struggled last week because they were trying to make a big play instead of maintaining gap responsibility. The run defense hasn’t been too hot this year, but hopefully he’s right and they can correc the problem. Last week Chris Canty struggled against the run quite a bit.
SPECIAL TEAMS
The returners have been pretty good this year with Antonio Chatman averaging 10.6 yards a punt return and Glenn Holt getting 26 yards a kickoff. Shayne Graham is a good kicker, nailing 85% of his kicks over his career. Punter Kyle Larson has been a weak punter for his career and only averages 42 yards a punt right now.
Cincinnati ranks 18th in kickoff return yardage allowed and 19th in punt return yardage allowed. Felix Jones struggled in kickoffs last week against a good Washington special teams. He also was coming off a bruised calf and may not have been up to snuff. Adam Jones needs to concentrate on finding a crease and hitting it as he’s trying to reverse direction too much and it’s not working.
OUTLOOK
While I’ve been down on the Cowboys at Texas Stadium, especially this past week, the good news is that Dallas has been strong at Texas Stadium when it’s the second week in a row at home. The overall trend seems to be that this team is tough on the road, but something happens to them their first game back to Texas Stadium and then they make the adjustments have play pretty well at home.
This is one of those games where you don’t want the Cowboys to take the Bengals too lightly, but this is the team to try some things to see if it can fix what ails Dallas. For instance, this would be a good time to give Montrae Holland a try. While Kyle Kosier played well against Green Bay and should be the starter when he comes back, there’s no guarantee that he won’t get injured again or somebody like Leonard Davis could get hurt and we could use Holland’s services. It also would be a good idea to start using more press coverage and some linebacker coverage adjustments to help take away those short passes. If it doesn’t work out, the absolute very worse that could happen is a non-divisional, non-conference loss. But if it works out, then the Cowboys have some confidence in solving two possible monkey wrenches in the team’s future.
YR'S PREDICTED SCORE: DALLAS 27 CINCINNATI 21
by Yakuza Rich
http://yakuzarich.blogspot.com
DALLAS COWBOYS (17.5) VS. CINCINNATI BENGALS
AT TEXAS STADIUM
OCTOBER 5, 2008 4:15 PM EST
The Dallas Cowboys came into the year as one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl and after the first three weeks of the season they only managed to further solidify that ranking. However, after last week’s 26-24 loss the hated rival Washington, there appears to be some major chinks in the Cowboys’ armor.
Personally, last week’s game reminded me of the Dallas’ loss to Philadelphia back in week 15 of last season. Dallas was well favored in that game and then wound up just plain getting beat against a hated rival that usually plays them very tough. However, I think there may be bigger chinks in the armor shown this time around because for the most part last season the Cowboys offense was dynamite and whether it was one bad game or Romo’s thumb injury to the Eagles, odds were the offense would rebound and be one of the best in the league. However, this time around it is the defense. Hell, for all of the belly aching about the offense, lack of run game and lack of willingness to run the ball, the Dallas offense scored 24 points and only had 1 turnover despite having mediocre field position for most of the game. 24 points a game would rank a team 9th in points scored last season and just isn’t anything to sneeze at. But a defense that gives up 26 points in a game, with zero takeaways and allows over 160 yards rushing is problematic.
I’ve harped on this a bit, but the most worrisome statistic I see with the Cowboys is how their defense plays at Texas Stadium. Ever since Romo has been named the starting QB for the team, the defense has allowed a 90.8 QB rating at Texas Stadium (they have allowed only a 71.8 QB rating on the road). Even more concerning is that four of the games at Texas Stadium came against QB’s like Bruce Gradkowski, Marc Bulger, Kellen Clemens and Tarvaris Jackson, who combined for a 40.4 QB rating in those games.
The Bengals have been a mess for the past two seasons and it probably all started back in 2006 when they had a shot of making the playoffs but botched the snap on an extra point attempt in the last game of that year which busted their chances. Since then they’ve been either too busy dealing with players in trouble with the law, Chad Johnson’s latest antics or injuries. They’ve been dreadful so far this year, starting the season 0-4 and recently losing to the struggling Bengals last week. That being said, they did give the Giants a good fight at Giants Stadium a couple of weeks ago and if Dallas keeps agonizing over the past week’s game, they may find themselves in a similar predicament the G-Men were in not too long ago.
WHEN DALLAS IS ON OFFENSE
It’s been a guessing game as to how defenses will try and defend the Cowboys offense as opposing teams have tried a variety of different styles. Last week the Commanders put 8 in the box and did a fair amount of blitzing (they blitzed roughly 30% of the time) and played press coverage on the receivers. We’ve seen similar schemes to this, although most of the time teams would not put 8 in the box. According to Wade Phillips, the run was abandoned due to the offense audibling out of running plays too much. Phillips approximates that they probably did it 14-15 times too many. The Commanders plan has normally been a recipe for disaster for opposing teams. And while their defense really didn’t shut down the offense (24 points, 1 turnover and 5.9 yards per play), I wouldn’t be surprised to see teams follow that formula.
The good news is I believe that’s the wrong formula to follow. For starters, most teams don’t have Shawn Springs who matches up well against Dallas and followed Owens around. And while Springs had a good first half against Dallas, come the second half the Cowboys started motioning Owens around and he started having good success. Furthermore, it seems like Romo every once in awhile needs to make a mistake in order to keep up to snuff on his game and knowing Romo the team will not neglect the run for a long time. A similar situation happened last season when in week 14 Dallas neglected the run against the Lions, but they still scored 28 points and won the game. Unfortunately the next week the Cowboys neglected the run again against the Eagles and paid for it with a 10-6 loss.
The Bengals defense is headed by a former Dallas Defensive Coordinator and Yakuza Rich nemesis, Mike Zimmer. So you’ll see a 4-3 and a lot of Cover 2. And in typical Mike Zimmer fashion, he focuses almost completely on stopping the run and rushing the passer is a bit of an afterthought. Zimmer hasn’t failed to live up to this as his defense has recorded 2 sacks this year. They are averaging 1 sack per 58 pass attempts. They rank last in both statistics. In fact, their pass attempts per sack is dead last. The nearest team to that ratio is the Kansas City Chiefs who still manage 1 sack per 37 pass attempts.
On the flip side Dallas has only allowed three sacks this year and have allowed 1 sack per 47 pass attempts, both of which rank 3rd in the NFL. Needless to say there’s probably not gong to be a lot of pressure on Romo come Sunday.
With that, I’m leaning on Zimmer playing the receivers pretty soft in an attempt to not give up the big play. They know they probably won’t get to Romo and probably won’t stop the offense, so keeping it reasonable and not giving up the big play is the best option. That being said, for all of the stopping the run philosophy Zimmer embodies, the Bengals are still allowing 4.3 yards per carry.
This may be a good game to give Montrae Holland a try. Corey Proctor played his best game of the season, but part of that was they didn’t run the ball very much because when they did run the ball he looked poor blocking his guy. With the Bengals, it’s not a divisional game and they’re a defense that doesn’t really get to the passer so him not understanding the system and missing a block should be a little less punishing.
WHEN DALLAS IS ON DEFENSE
The Bengals like to use a 3 wide receiver and 1 tight end formation. The tight end is mostly there for pass protection purposes. I haven’t watched a lot of the Bengals on offense, but they’ve really struggled with protecting Carson Palmer this year, so they may use more 2 TE sets or put a fullback in there. That being said, they may have just shortened their pass patterns as TJ Houshmandzadeh is only averaging 11.1 yards per catch and Chad Johnson is averaging only 10.5 yards per catch.
According to DMN’s Todd Archer, Dallas played press coverage only 25% of the time against the Commanders last week and with Houshmandzadeh and Johnson’s speed, chances are they’ll keep playing soft coverage on the receivers.
One of the major issues I see with the team is that opposing teams are slowly killing the defense with short passes. The receivers are wide open on those plays most of the time and I’m not sure why because scanning teams across the NFL last week, several of them played soft coverage heavily at times and still managed to guard against the short pass better. They’ll probably want to stick Adam Jones and Newman on their two best WR’s, so expect some more Henry blitzes from the slot.
If Cincy goes to a shorter passing game, it would be nice to see the Cowboys play more press coverage. However, Dallas needs to get their D-Line to bat more passes down because the Dallas DE’s (Canty, Spears, Hatcher and Bowen) have combined for a whopping 1 sack for the season (somewhere that just caused Zimmer to salivate). If the Bengals can get the short passes going early, they’ll likely try to set up a double move deep provided they can give Carson Palmer enough time to throw the ball.
Chris Perry has some skills, but hasn’t been able to do much as he’s only averaging 2.9 yards per carry. Wade seemed to indicate that the run defense struggled last week because they were trying to make a big play instead of maintaining gap responsibility. The run defense hasn’t been too hot this year, but hopefully he’s right and they can correc the problem. Last week Chris Canty struggled against the run quite a bit.
SPECIAL TEAMS
The returners have been pretty good this year with Antonio Chatman averaging 10.6 yards a punt return and Glenn Holt getting 26 yards a kickoff. Shayne Graham is a good kicker, nailing 85% of his kicks over his career. Punter Kyle Larson has been a weak punter for his career and only averages 42 yards a punt right now.
Cincinnati ranks 18th in kickoff return yardage allowed and 19th in punt return yardage allowed. Felix Jones struggled in kickoffs last week against a good Washington special teams. He also was coming off a bruised calf and may not have been up to snuff. Adam Jones needs to concentrate on finding a crease and hitting it as he’s trying to reverse direction too much and it’s not working.
OUTLOOK
While I’ve been down on the Cowboys at Texas Stadium, especially this past week, the good news is that Dallas has been strong at Texas Stadium when it’s the second week in a row at home. The overall trend seems to be that this team is tough on the road, but something happens to them their first game back to Texas Stadium and then they make the adjustments have play pretty well at home.
This is one of those games where you don’t want the Cowboys to take the Bengals too lightly, but this is the team to try some things to see if it can fix what ails Dallas. For instance, this would be a good time to give Montrae Holland a try. While Kyle Kosier played well against Green Bay and should be the starter when he comes back, there’s no guarantee that he won’t get injured again or somebody like Leonard Davis could get hurt and we could use Holland’s services. It also would be a good idea to start using more press coverage and some linebacker coverage adjustments to help take away those short passes. If it doesn’t work out, the absolute very worse that could happen is a non-divisional, non-conference loss. But if it works out, then the Cowboys have some confidence in solving two possible monkey wrenches in the team’s future.
YR'S PREDICTED SCORE: DALLAS 27 CINCINNATI 21
