Gosselin: Perfection! Cowboys get payback vs. inept Saints, Rob Ryan

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Gosselin: Perfection! Cowboys get payback vs. inept Saints, Rob Ryan

By RICK GOSSELIN Staff Columnist
rgosselin@dallasnews.com
Published: 28 September 2014 10:54 PM

ARLINGTON — This is how Scott Linehan and Jason Garrett drew it all up in the offseason.

This is how the Dallas offense is supposed to work.

Perfect offensive football — balance between run and pass, spread the ball around to your playmakers, score points, win games.

For 30 minutes Sunday night, that’s exactly what the Cowboys gave a home crowd of 91,176 and a national television audience — perfect offensive football.
The Cowboys ran 37 plays, gained 290 yards and controlled the ball for almost 18 minutes in building a 24-0 lead on the way to a stunning 38-17 victory over the New Orleans Saints.

It’s a simple formula: Establish DeMarco Murray as a focal point of your game plan and then play-action the Saints to death.

Tony Romo was a perfect 9 for 9 in the first quarter without ever looking at Dez Bryant. Romo threw passes to nine receivers in the half for 17 completions. He didn’t throw to Dez at all until the game was almost 23 minutes old.

This against a Rob Ryan defense that needs sacks and turnovers to survive, but the Cowboys wouldn’t give any up. Not in the first half anyway, when the outcome was being decided.

Romo didn’t force any passes, and two of his five incompletions in the half were essentially throwaways in the face of blitzes.

This was payback for a year ago when the Saints embarrassed the Cowboys on another Sunday night on national television. New Orleans set an NFL record with 40 first downs, gaining 625 yards in a 49-17 blowout. The Cowboys were inept on defense and punchless on offense that November night.
But what goes around in the NFL, comes around.

The Saints were inept on defense and punchless on offense this time. Pro Bowlers Drew Brees and Jimmy Graham struggled. Bress threw an interception in the second quarter, and Graham lost a fumble in the third quarter. On the other side of the ball, Ryan had no answers for Linehan.

When Murray wasn’t gashing the New Orleans front seven — he had runs of 22, 17, 15 and 11 yards in the first half alone — Romo was riddling the secondary with those play-action tosses to Terrance Williams.

Williams caught only eight balls through the first three games of the season, but Romo threw five passes to him in the first half against the Saints, including touchdown strikes of 6 and 23 yards.

The Cowboys had only one play for negative yardage in the half, a loss of a yard on a run by Murray off left tackle on the opening drive. Other than that, this was the offense Garrett had been envisioning the last three summers in camp when he talked about offensive balance.

With three first-round draft picks on the offensive line, the Cowboys now have the confidence to call handoffs. And with Murray in a contract year, he’s sprinting in the direction of an NFL rushing crown and a big pay day.

The Cowboys threw 22 passes and ran the ball 15 times in that first half. Murray took 14 of the handoffs for 87 yards on the way to his fourth consecutive 100-yard game this season. There wouldn’t be enough ticks on the clock in the second half for Brees to mount a comeback.

Romo didn’t force passes to Bryant or Jason Witten, which he has been prone to do throughout his career in the critical situations. Williams, Gavin Escobar, Murray, Dwayne Harris, Cole Beasley and Lance Dunbar all caught passes Sunday night before Romo even targeted Bryant.

“We have big-time players who get a lot of attention from opposing defenses,” Garrett said. “It happens every week to our team. It’s going to happen to those guys as long as they play in this league. We have to find ways to get them the ball, and we have to find ways to get other guys the ball.

“Tony did a good job of seeing the field and throwing to the right guy. He was very efficient, very effective. He made a lot of little plays and some big plays in this game and made the difference.”

Romo simply took what the Saints gave him, and Murray took everything else.

Just the way the Cowboys drew it up last offseason.
 
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