Archer: Cowboys line closer to normal versus Bears

Cotton

One-armed Knife Sharpener
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Cowboys line closer to normal versus Bears
December, 8, 2014

By Todd Archer | ESPNDallas.com

IRVING, Texas – A few days after the Thanksgiving day loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, players throughout the Dallas Cowboys' roster kept saying the same thing: That wasn't us.

It was if Jason Garrett sent that message to his team after the 33-10 loss.

As far as the Cowboys' offensive line is concerned, that wasn't them.

DeMarco Murray was held to season-low 73 yards. Tony Romo was sacked four times. The Eagles also had eight tackles for loss in the game.

In the Cowboys' 41-28 win against the Chicago Bears last week, the offensive line returned to form.

The Cowboys ran the ball 33 times, not including two Romo kneel downs, for 196 yards. They had two rushing touchdowns. Romo was sacked once in 27 pass plays and threw three touchdown passes. He wasn't intercepted. The Bears had just three tackles for a loss.

"I think we're closer," center Travis Frederick said when asked if that was more like them. "I don't think we're there yet. But I think we're certainly closer. We just need to keep working on that and hopefully we can do something like that against Philly."

But Frederick wasn't able to say the Bears' performance was completely them.

"We had a couple of pre-snap penalties," he said. "We've got to work on a couple of technique things here and there. Assignment-wise we missed a couple of things. It's small things you don't see when you see the TV copy but things we know we didn't do right."

The Cowboys get the rematch with the Eagles this week with the NFC East on the line. If the Cowboys win the rest of their games, they will win the division and make the playoffs for the first time since 2009.

If the Cowboys are going to get it done, it will largely be done on the backs of the offensive line.

"I think a big message is just getting back to executing what we do," right guard Zack Martin said. "We were able to do that a lot."
 

UncleMilti

This seemed like a good idea at the time.
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The thing I saw with Philly yesterday is when you are able to throw the ball against them, their D starts to get exposed. Seattle had a real tough time in the beginning....Wilson wasn't hitting his WR's and Lynch was getting gang tackled. The Eagles D was simply pinning their ears back. But as soon as Wilson started hitting 10 and 20 yard passes, the Eagles starting showing some cracks. Wilson beat them several times on bootlegs and roll outs.

We don't have that advantage with Romo...although he should be limber enough to roll and throw the ball.

The big key is long drives. The Eagles were gassed around the 3rd quarter yesterday. the TG day game, Dallas wasn't converting 3rd downs...at all. That has to change.
 

p1_

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I can think of no better place and time for the line to rise to a challenge. They're young and still gelling, but they are already a force to be reckoned with. Let's see
how they come out against one team that man-handled them.
 
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