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By Bob Sturm 41m ago
I wish the human emotions of football weren’t so predictable.
That isn’t to say that the NFL offers a predictable product, because any gambler will tell you it absolutely does not. But there are times in the course of a season where you can see the car accident happen in slow motion.
This trip to Indianapolis followed a stretch of football in which the 2018 Dallas Cowboys were playing their best football and working their way toward punching their ticket into the NFC playoffs. It was invariably going to normalize, and when it did, it would probably be rather unpleasant.
The warning signs were there for all to see. They had recently played sloppy football, games filled with mistakes, penalties, and giveaways. Even broken tackles were starting to appear last Sunday against the Eagles, but in our outcome-based minds, that didn’t matter; the Cowboys were winning football games. Given the difficulty of stringing five wins together in this league, emerging with victories is pretty significant.
On Sunday, the outcome did not hide the messes. Further, the warnings – even the ones detailed in this space on Friday – were all too prophetic:
Seldom will you see five consecutive weeks where the schedule takes care of the emotion all by itself. It doesn’t require a big speech or grand gestures. The team was not going to struggle to get up for those tests.
But we know how this sport works. We also know that at some point, emotional play exhausts a team’s peak energy. Will it happen Sunday? It’s a noon game against an AFC team that you have no venom for and seldom see, and the opponent desperately needs the game — more than you. The Cowboys have been told just how great they are all week. Their urgency level has also dropped considerably now that it appears Washington and Philadelphia are doomed. For the first time in a huge stretch, the human emotion of desperation may not be on the Cowboys’ side when they take the field against a team that is probably in their same tier.
Either the Cowboys are up for it when toe meets leather at 12:01 central time Sunday, or the good times will end this week in Indianapolis. If I am Jason Garrett, I think hard about what I say to the team Saturday night and Sunday morning to try to push any emotional buttons I can think of.
Now, I think it is probably way too harsh to suggest the Cowboys weren’t ready to play yesterday. There were some things I liked about the way the offense looked in the early going, and it would seem to appear that the offensive gameplan was sound in many respects. An outcome-based review often leads us to target three targets with our angst. If it isn’t Jason Garrett’s fault, it is probably either Scott Linehan’s or Dak Prescott’s fault. If none of those apply, the simple solution involves Old Faithful: Jerry Jones. I am guilty of all of this, as the human emotions of disappointment want someone to mentally shove.
But there are times where you are beaten so soundly by the desperate team across the field that it seems disingenuous to pick out one or two people for blame. No; this, like many victories, was a total team effort where most everyone had a hand. From top to bottom, from stem to stern, the Cowboys were smacked back down to earth by the Colts and humbled in a way that they clearly did not see coming. Now, given that this isn’t my first rodeo, the script now dictates that the post-game voices will suggest that a loss at this time of year can do you good. It may bring you down a peg or two, allow you to recollect your thoughts, and realize that nothing has been accomplished so far. The Cowboys could then use this as the sole motivation to close the deal on their playoff pass by smacking down Tampa Bay next Sunday and we can then forget this forgettable trip to Indianapolis ever happened.
But all that comes next week. For now, we simply must talk about the most disappointing performance the Dallas Cowboys have put together in a long time.
When this squad wins, we champion the complementary football they played; how these pieces and styles fit and work together. When they lose, complementary probably isn’t the right word — but the poor defense and the poor offense that Dallas put on the field on this occasion certainly looked like they might be brothers from a similar mother.
Given that this team is led by its defense, that seems like a fair place to start. The plan of the Colts offense against the Cowboys was to make them defend the whole field and to show a run/pass mix that would keep them on their heels all day long. It would start with a fully healthy and confident Andrew Luck working his ability to make all of the throws in all of the spots while staying out of any trouble in the pocket. There was nothing close to a giveaway or a sack from his standpoint and when a quarterback avoids both, he can control the pace of the game with ease. Luck did. His numbers end up looking rather pedestrian since he really didn’t need to throw a single pass once the Colts scored to start the second half, but the Cowboys defensive front, which has won so many battles recently, looked like the defensive front in Carolina or Seattle from earlier in the season.
In fact, it was the only 2018 game in which Dallas did not get to the quarterback even once, and you could argue they were never terribly close. When things are going great, we are quick to credit this defense for always putting the offense in a position to win. I think when you concede 178 yards to a Colts rushing attack that generally doesn’t scare anyone, you would suggest it was just one of those days. The Cowboys have not looked this powerless on defense in a long time, with the most comparable performance coming in November 2017, when the Eagles walked into Dallas and smacked the Cowboys around to the tune of 37-9.
Just know this: When the Dallas defense gives up big chunks of yards on the ground, they don’t win. In fact, you would need to go back around five years to find a game the Cowboys won in which their opponent ran for over 150 yards on the ground. Dallas’ identity, their calling card, involves winning the battle up front. And they lost badly to this young Colts offensive line. Then, to make things even worse (if you can get worse than being gashed on the ground, missing tackles regularly, and not getting an interception or a sack), they almost never got a stop. The Colts scored on their first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth drives of the game. In all the cases but the first, they went right down a long field, too. They converted third downs regularly, they took advantage of penalties called on a grabby Dallas secondary, and they certainly squeezed the life out of the game with an ease that seemed familiar to the Cowboys.
It just isn’t as fun when someone is doing it to you for a change.
Nearly 225 games have been played in the 2018 NFL season as of this morning. Only once all year has a team had seven possessions in a game. That once was the Dallas Cowboys yesterday.
Each team went on long marches, and one team cashed in their chances with great regularity. The other was incredibly wasteful. You don’t need to be told which was which.
This would have to be a game where the offense could do its own heavy lifting, and as we have often seen on the road this season, that has become problematic. This is not a terribly dynamic offense in terms of generating big plays to cover some smaller sins. On Sunday, there was a 24-yard run from Ezekiel Elliott in the first quarter — and that makes up the entire list of explosive plays.
That means the Cowboys needed to keep moving the chains, marching slowly down the field. It is the Cowboys’ current style, one that can work with a low-risk, low-reward quarterback, and an awesome, battering-ram runner. They also have replacement-level tight ends, an offensive line that is the weakest they have had in years, and a group of wide receivers who can look good unless the opponent wisely decides to force the issue by bringing pressure all day long.
The 2018 Colts blitzed less than any team in the NFL entering this game. That makes the subplot of Matt Eberflus squaring off against his old team all the more interesting. They were ranked 32nd in the NFL in pressure, and on Sunday blitzed the Cowboys offense more than any team had all year. Indianapolis sent five or more rushers on 18 different pass plays and employed countless run blitzes that would have become intense pass rushes had the Cowboys used play action.
You could argue that no defensive coordinator in the NFL knows more about the Cowboys offense than Eberflus. He was comfortable storming the castle, especially on early downs. Prescott continued his form of finding the right targets against the blitz, but the Cowboys were never able to cut open the Colts secondary with those catches. They resulted in tiny gains that might have moved the chains but never the scoreboard. And therefore, the Colts kept the pressure on. If they could stress Prescott and his offensive line, they could end a drive with a sack or a holding penalty. It almost didn’t matter which one; both kill drives. Between five holding penalties on the offensive line and the three additional sacks that the Colts collected, the plan worked very well.
Here is a brief summary of the Cowboys’ seven drives (you’ll find more detail in tomorrow’s Decoding Linehan piece.)
First drive: Drive the ball all the way down the field but settle for a field goal that is so low it almost hits the defender who blocked it in the mid-section. Zero points.
Second drive: 3rd and goal saw a play-action pass that should have led to an easy touchdown. The feathered pass could have been better, but the moment for Jamize Olawale to secure his spot in the box score is sabotaged by catching skills that betrayed him. On fourth down, they tried a run that never had a chance and Ezekiel Elliott was charged with a lost fumble after the offensive line was overrun in short yardage. Zero points.
Third drive: There were three different holding penalties from the offensive line (Tyron Smith, Connor Williams) and a third-down sack when the Cowboys went max-protect with eight and still allowed pressure when the two receivers running routes were covered. Zero points.
Fourth drive: By the time they touched the ball for their fourth drive, the third quarter had arrived, along with a 17-0 deficit. But once again, everything was great until a holding penalty on Joe Looney blotted out a huge fourth-down completion to Cole Beasley after a third-down play should have been caught by Blake Jarwin. At this point, it is clearly not going to be their day. Zero points.
Fifth drive: Now already in the fourth quarter and down 20-0, 4th and 1 is stopped on a fine deflection from amazing rookie linebacker Darius Leonard. Zero points.
Sixth drive: Another holding penalty — Joe Looney again — puts the Cowboys in a bind. 4th and 14 falls five yards short when Allen Hurns gives himself up. Zero points.
Seventh drive: Down 23-0, they get a short field after a fumble! Five plays later, the ball is picked off as Prescott misses Jarwin and the deflection is caught by Colts safety George Odum. Zero points.
A league-low seven drives lead to a league-low zero points. This is the first time the Cowboys have been shut out since 2003 when Bill Parcells returned to New England only to lose 12-0. It was a complete and utter disappointment on both sides of the ball and throughout the coaching staff.
Speaking of, according to research maven Mark Lane, Jason Garrett has now lost 10 of his last 15 matchups with first-year head coaches. Since the start of 2017, Garrett is 2-5 and has lost to rookie coaches Vance Joseph, Sean McVay, Anthony Lynn, Mike Vrabel, and now Frank Reich (with wins over Kyle Shanahan and Matt Patricia.) That is hardly an impressive resume point.
This was very, very poor. But it also is just one loss and not one that appears terribly vital. That was the reason I expected it, I suppose. The Colts were desperate and the Cowboys felt very good about themselves. That is never the formula to beating an opponent at their place. Take it to heart, let it knock you down a few pegs, and then move on to Game 15. Coach, coordinators, quarterback, offense, defense, and pretty much all involved had a hand in this one.
This was a total team defeat. And it should be treated as such.
By Bob Sturm 41m ago
I wish the human emotions of football weren’t so predictable.
That isn’t to say that the NFL offers a predictable product, because any gambler will tell you it absolutely does not. But there are times in the course of a season where you can see the car accident happen in slow motion.
This trip to Indianapolis followed a stretch of football in which the 2018 Dallas Cowboys were playing their best football and working their way toward punching their ticket into the NFC playoffs. It was invariably going to normalize, and when it did, it would probably be rather unpleasant.
The warning signs were there for all to see. They had recently played sloppy football, games filled with mistakes, penalties, and giveaways. Even broken tackles were starting to appear last Sunday against the Eagles, but in our outcome-based minds, that didn’t matter; the Cowboys were winning football games. Given the difficulty of stringing five wins together in this league, emerging with victories is pretty significant.
On Sunday, the outcome did not hide the messes. Further, the warnings – even the ones detailed in this space on Friday – were all too prophetic:
Seldom will you see five consecutive weeks where the schedule takes care of the emotion all by itself. It doesn’t require a big speech or grand gestures. The team was not going to struggle to get up for those tests.
But we know how this sport works. We also know that at some point, emotional play exhausts a team’s peak energy. Will it happen Sunday? It’s a noon game against an AFC team that you have no venom for and seldom see, and the opponent desperately needs the game — more than you. The Cowboys have been told just how great they are all week. Their urgency level has also dropped considerably now that it appears Washington and Philadelphia are doomed. For the first time in a huge stretch, the human emotion of desperation may not be on the Cowboys’ side when they take the field against a team that is probably in their same tier.
Either the Cowboys are up for it when toe meets leather at 12:01 central time Sunday, or the good times will end this week in Indianapolis. If I am Jason Garrett, I think hard about what I say to the team Saturday night and Sunday morning to try to push any emotional buttons I can think of.
Now, I think it is probably way too harsh to suggest the Cowboys weren’t ready to play yesterday. There were some things I liked about the way the offense looked in the early going, and it would seem to appear that the offensive gameplan was sound in many respects. An outcome-based review often leads us to target three targets with our angst. If it isn’t Jason Garrett’s fault, it is probably either Scott Linehan’s or Dak Prescott’s fault. If none of those apply, the simple solution involves Old Faithful: Jerry Jones. I am guilty of all of this, as the human emotions of disappointment want someone to mentally shove.
But there are times where you are beaten so soundly by the desperate team across the field that it seems disingenuous to pick out one or two people for blame. No; this, like many victories, was a total team effort where most everyone had a hand. From top to bottom, from stem to stern, the Cowboys were smacked back down to earth by the Colts and humbled in a way that they clearly did not see coming. Now, given that this isn’t my first rodeo, the script now dictates that the post-game voices will suggest that a loss at this time of year can do you good. It may bring you down a peg or two, allow you to recollect your thoughts, and realize that nothing has been accomplished so far. The Cowboys could then use this as the sole motivation to close the deal on their playoff pass by smacking down Tampa Bay next Sunday and we can then forget this forgettable trip to Indianapolis ever happened.
But all that comes next week. For now, we simply must talk about the most disappointing performance the Dallas Cowboys have put together in a long time.
When this squad wins, we champion the complementary football they played; how these pieces and styles fit and work together. When they lose, complementary probably isn’t the right word — but the poor defense and the poor offense that Dallas put on the field on this occasion certainly looked like they might be brothers from a similar mother.
Given that this team is led by its defense, that seems like a fair place to start. The plan of the Colts offense against the Cowboys was to make them defend the whole field and to show a run/pass mix that would keep them on their heels all day long. It would start with a fully healthy and confident Andrew Luck working his ability to make all of the throws in all of the spots while staying out of any trouble in the pocket. There was nothing close to a giveaway or a sack from his standpoint and when a quarterback avoids both, he can control the pace of the game with ease. Luck did. His numbers end up looking rather pedestrian since he really didn’t need to throw a single pass once the Colts scored to start the second half, but the Cowboys defensive front, which has won so many battles recently, looked like the defensive front in Carolina or Seattle from earlier in the season.
In fact, it was the only 2018 game in which Dallas did not get to the quarterback even once, and you could argue they were never terribly close. When things are going great, we are quick to credit this defense for always putting the offense in a position to win. I think when you concede 178 yards to a Colts rushing attack that generally doesn’t scare anyone, you would suggest it was just one of those days. The Cowboys have not looked this powerless on defense in a long time, with the most comparable performance coming in November 2017, when the Eagles walked into Dallas and smacked the Cowboys around to the tune of 37-9.
Just know this: When the Dallas defense gives up big chunks of yards on the ground, they don’t win. In fact, you would need to go back around five years to find a game the Cowboys won in which their opponent ran for over 150 yards on the ground. Dallas’ identity, their calling card, involves winning the battle up front. And they lost badly to this young Colts offensive line. Then, to make things even worse (if you can get worse than being gashed on the ground, missing tackles regularly, and not getting an interception or a sack), they almost never got a stop. The Colts scored on their first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth drives of the game. In all the cases but the first, they went right down a long field, too. They converted third downs regularly, they took advantage of penalties called on a grabby Dallas secondary, and they certainly squeezed the life out of the game with an ease that seemed familiar to the Cowboys.
It just isn’t as fun when someone is doing it to you for a change.
Nearly 225 games have been played in the 2018 NFL season as of this morning. Only once all year has a team had seven possessions in a game. That once was the Dallas Cowboys yesterday.
Each team went on long marches, and one team cashed in their chances with great regularity. The other was incredibly wasteful. You don’t need to be told which was which.
This would have to be a game where the offense could do its own heavy lifting, and as we have often seen on the road this season, that has become problematic. This is not a terribly dynamic offense in terms of generating big plays to cover some smaller sins. On Sunday, there was a 24-yard run from Ezekiel Elliott in the first quarter — and that makes up the entire list of explosive plays.
That means the Cowboys needed to keep moving the chains, marching slowly down the field. It is the Cowboys’ current style, one that can work with a low-risk, low-reward quarterback, and an awesome, battering-ram runner. They also have replacement-level tight ends, an offensive line that is the weakest they have had in years, and a group of wide receivers who can look good unless the opponent wisely decides to force the issue by bringing pressure all day long.
The 2018 Colts blitzed less than any team in the NFL entering this game. That makes the subplot of Matt Eberflus squaring off against his old team all the more interesting. They were ranked 32nd in the NFL in pressure, and on Sunday blitzed the Cowboys offense more than any team had all year. Indianapolis sent five or more rushers on 18 different pass plays and employed countless run blitzes that would have become intense pass rushes had the Cowboys used play action.
You could argue that no defensive coordinator in the NFL knows more about the Cowboys offense than Eberflus. He was comfortable storming the castle, especially on early downs. Prescott continued his form of finding the right targets against the blitz, but the Cowboys were never able to cut open the Colts secondary with those catches. They resulted in tiny gains that might have moved the chains but never the scoreboard. And therefore, the Colts kept the pressure on. If they could stress Prescott and his offensive line, they could end a drive with a sack or a holding penalty. It almost didn’t matter which one; both kill drives. Between five holding penalties on the offensive line and the three additional sacks that the Colts collected, the plan worked very well.
Here is a brief summary of the Cowboys’ seven drives (you’ll find more detail in tomorrow’s Decoding Linehan piece.)
First drive: Drive the ball all the way down the field but settle for a field goal that is so low it almost hits the defender who blocked it in the mid-section. Zero points.
Second drive: 3rd and goal saw a play-action pass that should have led to an easy touchdown. The feathered pass could have been better, but the moment for Jamize Olawale to secure his spot in the box score is sabotaged by catching skills that betrayed him. On fourth down, they tried a run that never had a chance and Ezekiel Elliott was charged with a lost fumble after the offensive line was overrun in short yardage. Zero points.
Third drive: There were three different holding penalties from the offensive line (Tyron Smith, Connor Williams) and a third-down sack when the Cowboys went max-protect with eight and still allowed pressure when the two receivers running routes were covered. Zero points.
Fourth drive: By the time they touched the ball for their fourth drive, the third quarter had arrived, along with a 17-0 deficit. But once again, everything was great until a holding penalty on Joe Looney blotted out a huge fourth-down completion to Cole Beasley after a third-down play should have been caught by Blake Jarwin. At this point, it is clearly not going to be their day. Zero points.
Fifth drive: Now already in the fourth quarter and down 20-0, 4th and 1 is stopped on a fine deflection from amazing rookie linebacker Darius Leonard. Zero points.
Sixth drive: Another holding penalty — Joe Looney again — puts the Cowboys in a bind. 4th and 14 falls five yards short when Allen Hurns gives himself up. Zero points.
Seventh drive: Down 23-0, they get a short field after a fumble! Five plays later, the ball is picked off as Prescott misses Jarwin and the deflection is caught by Colts safety George Odum. Zero points.
A league-low seven drives lead to a league-low zero points. This is the first time the Cowboys have been shut out since 2003 when Bill Parcells returned to New England only to lose 12-0. It was a complete and utter disappointment on both sides of the ball and throughout the coaching staff.
Speaking of, according to research maven Mark Lane, Jason Garrett has now lost 10 of his last 15 matchups with first-year head coaches. Since the start of 2017, Garrett is 2-5 and has lost to rookie coaches Vance Joseph, Sean McVay, Anthony Lynn, Mike Vrabel, and now Frank Reich (with wins over Kyle Shanahan and Matt Patricia.) That is hardly an impressive resume point.
This was very, very poor. But it also is just one loss and not one that appears terribly vital. That was the reason I expected it, I suppose. The Colts were desperate and the Cowboys felt very good about themselves. That is never the formula to beating an opponent at their place. Take it to heart, let it knock you down a few pegs, and then move on to Game 15. Coach, coordinators, quarterback, offense, defense, and pretty much all involved had a hand in this one.
This was a total team defeat. And it should be treated as such.
