Hill: Witten says the offense as much to blame as the defense for Cowboys woes

Jason Witten says the offense as much to blame as the defense for Cowboys woes



There is no fracture in the Cowboys locker room between the offense and the team's maligned defense.

Never mind that the defense ranks last in the league and is on pace to become one of the worst units in NFL history, he Cowboys are in this together, per tight end Jason Witten.

Besides, he said, the team's struggling offense, which has dropped to 18th in the league after being as high as seventh earlier in the season, bears as much blame for the team's woes.

Witten said the offense must focus on improving itself rather than trying to overcompensate for supposed expected problems on defense.

"I don’t think you can look at it that way," Witten said. "You play within yourself and trust the guys around you. Obviously the defense and special teams. We’ve got to do a better job offensively, that’s for sure. We’ve got to get down there more and we’ve got to score more. We just haven’t done a good job. We’ve left our defense out there way too long the last couple of weeks. Those areas, we can improve, too. You’ve got to believe in everybody around you. You can’t go in there and say we’ve got to go put up X amount of points. I don’t think you live in that world."

Clarence Hill

Correct.

I can't agree that it bears "as much" blame but certainly it gets plenty.

mschmidt64 said:

I can't agree that it bears "as much" blame but certainly it gets plenty.

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Throw a percentile at me and let's argue about it.

If the offense was balanced at all, this defense might not have gotten so wore down earlier in the season.

Of our 5 losses I'd say the offense lost the KC game, possibly San Diego as well while the defense lost the Denver game, New Orleans was shit all around while Detroit could go either way, the defense blew the last drive obviously but the offense did shit all day and was handed about 12 turnovers by the defense.

Simpleton said:

Of our 5 losses I'd say the offense lost the KC game, possibly San Diego as well while the defense lost the Denver game, New Orleans was shit all around while Detroit could go either way, the defense blew the last drive obviously but the offense did shit all day and was handed about 12 turnovers by the defense.

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The offense is also the reason why the Eagles game was as close as it was and why we almost lost the Vikings game.

mschmidt64 said:

I can't agree that it bears "as much" blame but certainly it gets plenty.

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It bears most of the blame for the losses because they were supposed to bear more responsibility fir creating wins. So sucking equally leaves them more at fault.

jeebs said:

It bears most of the blame for the losses because they were supposed to bear more responsibility fir creating wins. So sucking equally leaves them more at fault.

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That's dumb.

mschmidt64 said:

I can't agree that it bears "as much" blame but certainly it gets plenty.

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It does, especially when you consider the defense (and special teams) have set up the offense with excellent field position on several occasions and supplemented the scoring burden with several touchdowns.

Iamtdg said:

Throw a percentile at me and let's argue about it.

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Genghis Khan said:

It does, especially when you consider the defense (and special teams) have set up the offense with excellent field position on several occasions and supplemented the scoring burden with several touchdowns.

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It does get plenty, or it does get as much as the defense which is setting all time records for futility every week?

Genghis Khan said:

It does, especially when you consider the defense (and special teams) have set up the offense with excellent field position on several occasions and supplemented the scoring burden with several touchdowns.

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There has been numerous times the offense hasn't done anything after we got a turnover. Short field or not.

Absolutely the offense deserves a lot of credit for the shit sandwich we're being served up.

mschmidt64 said:

It does get plenty, or it does get as much as the defense which is setting all time records for futility every week?

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Lowest rushing plays ever is one that the offense set this year.

mschmidt64 said:

It does get plenty, or it does get as much as the defense which is setting all time records for futility every week?

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I am not going to argue semantics but they've been roughly equally futile overall.

Bye Week Allowed Callahan, Romo Time To Tinker

Posted 3 hours ago

David Helman DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer


IRVING, Texas – Chalk it up as stating the obvious, but Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones has seen his offense play better this year, and he’d like to see it again.

With two weeks to stew about his team’s worst offensive output in recent memory, Jones said he’d love to see a return to good form – citing offensive explosions in the shootout with Denver and the beatdown of St. Louis earlier this fall.

“I'd like to see us play like we did against Denver. I'd like to see us play the way we did against, frankly, St. Louis, those good games where we had good offensive games. I'd like to see that kind of offensive continuity,” Jones said. “We need to get some drives going. We need to keep that defense off the field, all of that. That's what I'd like to see."

Jones frequently stresses the importance of communication with his coaching staff, and that appears to be the case here. Offensive coordinator Bill Callahan spoke at length Thursday about the offense’s recent struggles, and he said the key comes on third down.

“I keep going back to third downs, and those are crucial downs. If you’re going to have success there, you’re going to have another opportunity to extend drives,” Callahan said. “I would say we haven’t had as many sustainable drives and opportunities, which keeps the numbers down.”


The Cowboys’ abysmal showing of 0-of-9 on third down two weeks ago in New Orleans is a well-known stat by now. Tony Romo’s 128 yards against the Saints was his lowest total with at least 10 completions since a 2009 loss to the Giants.

“You don’t want that ever to happen. Over the course of the years, you know that’s going to happen once,” he said. “You have to figure out why and make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s our goal and our objective going forward.”

Judging by the stats, Romo would be well-served not just by converting third downs, but by finding yardage on first and second down. Against Denver, the Cowboys only faced six third downs all afternoon, converting four of them. Against St. Louis, they were 5-of-11, or 45 percent.

“Each week is going to come up differently, but you want to get to a point where you’re playing at a high level week in and week out,” Romo said. “That’s our goal, and I think we’re taking steps to ensure that.”

A cold-weather game against a divisional rival will certainly be the judge of that. The Cowboys have only reached 350 yards of total offense twice in the five games since they lost to the Broncos. They failed to crack even 300 yards of offense in the other three.

Callahan said there has been focus on making changes to improve that fact. With two weeks to prepare, though, he said the offense is ready to give it a shot, lest they change too much.

“We’ve taken the bye week to spend a lot of time trying to position guys in different locations and spots. So we’re anxious to get going and see what it looks like,” he said. “Because any time you’ve come off a long break and you’ve had time – it can be a good thing, it can be a bad thing. They always say ‘Don’t give coaches too much time to reinvent the wheel.’”

Genghis Khan said:

I am not going to argue semantics but they've been roughly equally futile overall.

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I don't see how that could possibly be the case.

mschmidt64 said:

I don't see how that could possibly be the case.

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Then you aren't watching all the games.

mschmidt64 said:

I don't see how that could possibly be the case.

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I know, I can hardly believe it myself. It's pretty ridiculous given the talent and relative health we've had on offense.

There's a deeper analysis that I feel corroborates this, but I will keep it relatively simple for now.

First, I should point out that from the beginning I said that I feel an adjustment is warranted for defensive turnovers and scores and this analysis reflects that. Second, yardage is not included in my analysis, simply because raw yardage data ignores mitigating factors such as turnovers, long returns, and FG vs Td percentage. Plus, you win games based solely on points. Yardage totals can easily be deceptive, or at least ambiguous.

By my rough estimation, out of our 5 losses, I would put 2 on the offense (SD & KC), two on the defense (Denver & Detroit) and one on both (NO).

This is based on a per game analysis of whether either side of the ball was above league average, roughly league average, or below league average.

Example: I put the Chargers game on the offense (but not the defense) because we scored 14 offensive points (below average) but gave up a net 23 points (roughly average). I don't care that they gave up a bunch of yardage, because they only asked the offense to put up a reasonable 24 points. Had the offense performed to a roughly league average standard, we would have had a good chance of winning. The Giants season opener was a similar formula, with the difference being that the offense did perform to league average standards and hence we won the game.