Cowboys vs. Broncos: The Mourning After

1bigfan13

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Woke up this morning still agitated about the game plan. I'm fine with the loss because any realistic football fan understands your team is going to suffer some losses throughout the course of a season. However, yesterday it felt like the game plan that was installed didn't give our guys a chance to win, at all. I'm mainly talking about the reluctance to commit to the run. As we kind of discussed in the chatter thread yesterday, even greats like Emmitt Smith had a stinker or two along the way. But what really bothers me is not Zeke's total yardage but his total rush attempts. NINE carries for the game. NINE!?!?! He should have had that by halftime. Chances are you aren't going to beat that Broncos team with a one-dimensional passing attack. Trying to do so plays right into the strength of their team, and for some reason we chose to attack their strength.

I'd be a little more at peace with this loss if Zeke had 20 carries for 8 yards. Because then I would at least know that we leaned on the strength of our team went down riding our best. But 9 carries leaves you wondering "What if". Granted there were a ton of other things that went wrong yesterday, so the lack of a running game wasn't the only reason we lost. But I single the lack of rush attempts out because running the ball is supposed to be who we are. Teams know we're coming at them with Zeke and the OL and we still bludgeon them repeatedly with it until they cry uncle late in the game. That philosophy worked beautifully in 2014 & 2016.

As for Dak, Garrett, & Linehan I'll say this. They'd better check their egos with all this passing because it will not end well. Never has ended well for these Cowboys. Tony Romo was a superior passer to Dak and every year the Cowboys decided to lean on the pass rather than the run, the results were typically an 8-8 kind of season. The seasons where we decided to lean on a strong run game and bludgeon teams in the trenches, the results were usually outstanding. Seems like an easy choice to make but egos tend to cloud judgement.

Dak has struggled against two very good secondaries so far this season. The Cardinals secondary is strong as well. If Dak and co. think they're going to have success slinging it around 40 times against the Cardinals, they're fooling themselves.
 

midswat

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I'm largely indifferent after that game. To me, it just re-affirms what so many of us have been preaching: garrett is a terrible coach.

Jason Garrett, unless he's being carried by his quarterback's elite play, is a orange headed red faced Campo. You look at yesterday and you see our defense going into the game down a few players. Game goes on, more players drop. Make matters worse, they're all falling from one position group. We can't get them off the field, and they're moving almost at will against us. Zero Broncos punts until the 4th quarter.

It just seems like a coach with an ounce of a feel for the game would say "you know, I got to give my defense a rest. I know they're stopping Elliott now, but I'm going to let my OL and Elliott try and wear them down and shorten the game. Throw from play action a little. Designed QB rollouts, etc."


Instead we just kept throwing time and time again. Most of the time from shotgun with no real threat of a run game. Like OP said, Elliott had 9 carries. Leagues leading rusher last year, and with our offensive line, and we run it 9 times when our QB just looks "off" and Dez is being flakey and Williams and Butler are still trash.

Garrett is an idiot. The gameplan was shit. He had zero adjustments. He had zero plan. He got schooled by a young rookie head coach coaching his second game. Then had the audacity to call out Prescott after the game. Loser.
 

ravidubey

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Problem is our play design has drifted back to being predictable.

They had no respect for our passing game and jammed up the running game.

When that happens you have to connect on some intermediate passes and we couldn't. You have to MAKE something happen.

Bottom line one is Dak ain't no Philip Rivers. Not yet.
 

1bigfan13

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I'm largely indifferent after that game. To me, it just re-affirms what so many of us have been preaching: garrett is a terrible coach.

Jason Garrett, unless he's being carried by his quarterback's elite play, is a orange headed red faced Campo. You look at yesterday and you see our defense going into the game down a few players. Game goes on, more players drop. Make matters worse, they're all falling from one position group. We can't get them off the field, and they're moving almost at will against us. Zero Broncos punts until the 4th quarter.

It just seems like a coach with an ounce of a feel for the game would say "you know, I got to give my defense a rest. I know they're stopping Elliott now, but I'm going to let my OL and Elliott try and wear them down and shorten the game. Throw from play action a little. Designed QB rollouts, etc."


Instead we just kept throwing time and time again. Most of the time from shotgun with no real threat of a run game. Like OP said, Elliott had 9 carries. Leagues leading rusher last year, and with our offensive line, and we run it 9 times when our QB just looks "off" and Dez is being flakey and Williams and Butler are still trash.

Garrett is an idiot. The gameplan was shit. He had zero adjustments. He had zero plan. He got schooled by a young rookie head coach coaching his second game. Then had the audacity to call out Prescott after the game. Loser.
You brought up a good point, Midswat about using the offense and the running game to help out a clearly overwhelmed defense. That's a similar criticism that I had for Oklahoma football a few years ago when seemingly every team not named Kansas was hanging 40 on them. Even Bob Stoops struggled understanding that rationale.

You'd think that line of thinking is basic football common sense, but a vast majority of football coaches have massive egos and choose to ignore the obvious.
 

Simpleton

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The play-calling is always more balanced and creative when Garrett doesn't fully trust his QB or needs to protect him for one reason or another. In 2014 it was Romo's back that needed protecting and we were just starting to establish our identity as a running team, last year it was Dak's inexperience. You can even go back to 2010 when Kitna came in after Romo got hurt, the play-calling and balance was much better then too.

Now the coaches trust Dak so they want to revert back to their roots and have him throw it around 35 times a game. It's ironic because the main reason that they trust him of course is his play last year, and the main reason for his success last year was the balanced offense, the catering to his strengths, etc., so now they're going to just act like he's 2012 Romo in his second year?

It's ridiculous.

I don't want to go too far off the deep end because the Giants and Broncos are probably the top two secondaries in the league, and two of the best defenses overall, so I will reserve the right to pass judgment for a few more weeks to see if the offense doesn't get back to a similar efficiency as last year. But I will say that you are certainly seeing signs of the offense reverting back to Romo-era type tendencies with the excessive adjustments at the line, the excessive shotgun/5-wides, etc.

Hopefully yesterday's ass-whipping is a wakeup call to everybody involved.
 

1bigfan13

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This week I expect the local media to needle and question Garrett as to why the Cowboys didn't put more emphasis on at least trying to establish the run. As I said in yesterday's chatter thread, it was a one score game the entire 1st half up until the 1:30 mark before halftime. So I don't want to hear how they couldn't run because the Cowboys were "playing from behind trying to play catch up". In a one score game that excuse doesn't fly.

As a result of the questioning of his game plan that is sure to come, I fully expect Garrett & Linehan to make running the ball the primary focus next week. I think close to 30 carries between the RBs. I say this because Garrett has a long history of folding to criticism whenever his game plans are questioned. Especially when the criticism centers on the lack of rush attempts or running in short yardage situations.
 

Chocolate Lab

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This week I expect the local media to needle and question Garrett as to why the Cowboys didn't put more emphasis on at least trying to establish the run.
Good luck with that. He'll grin and ask how we doin' guys, they'll softball him, and he'll give his typical empty cliches without really answering anything. Same as always.

In this particular case, he'll say you have to be able to attack these defenses in different ways and we weren't able to do that well enough Sunday... although he'll be sure to point that "I thought we did that well at different times" during the game, just not often enough. Got to always CYA and prop yourself a little bit.
 

UncleMilti

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Another big problem is Dak is now doing the fuckin Romo "change every play at the line BS" that often bit us in the ass.

I think Dak is not able to master that QB category yet and my guess he's a much better QB when he simply runs the plays called in from the sideline, which is what he did last season.
 

Texas Ace

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The play-calling is always more balanced and creative when Garrett doesn't fully trust his QB or needs to protect him for one reason or another. In 2014 it was Romo's back that needed protecting and we were just starting to establish our identity as a running team, last year it was Dak's inexperience. You can even go back to 2010 when Kitna came in after Romo got hurt, the play-calling and balance was much better then too.

Now the coaches trust Dak so they want to revert back to their roots and have him throw it around 35 times a game. It's ironic because the main reason that they trust him of course is his play last year, and the main reason for his success last year was the balanced offense, the catering to his strengths, etc., so now they're going to just act like he's 2012 Romo in his second year?

It's ridiculous.

I don't want to go too far off the deep end because the Giants and Broncos are probably the top two secondaries in the league, and two of the best defenses overall, so I will reserve the right to pass judgment for a few more weeks to see if the offense doesn't get back to a similar efficiency as last year. But I will say that you are certainly seeing signs of the offense reverting back to Romo-era type tendencies with the excessive adjustments at the line, the excessive shotgun/5-wides, etc.

Hopefully yesterday's ass-whipping is a wakeup call to everybody involved.
Great observation on your part and you're absolutely right.

I said last week after the Giants game how I didn't like what I saw that night in regards to all the audibles and passing I was seeing from Dak. The impression that I got from that was that we were now turning the flawed Romo-approach over to Dak now that he had a year under his belt.

I said how I hoped it was just a one game thing not an actual philosophy that we were turning to, but that looks like that's exactly what happened.

We trust Dak now so apparently we think we need to go back to the flawed offenses of 2011-2013 where we put everything on Romo and thought we could win throwing 40 times a game.

Like you, I'm hoping these last 2 weeks and yesterday in particular serve as a wake up call to these idiots that they need to go back to the formula that was responsible for our success in both 2014 and 2016.

But this is Garrett we're talking about who hasn't learned any lessons from any of his idiotic mistakes since he became coach, so I highly doubt anything is going to change.
 

data

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We trust Dak now so apparently we think we need to go back to the flawed offenses of 2011-2013 where we put everything on Romo and thought we could win throwing 40 times a game.
I was told this was a necessity as our OL sucked those years.
 

Texas Ace

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Another big problem is Dak is now doing the fuckin Romo "change every play at the line BS" that often bit us in the ass.

I think Dak is not able to master that QB category yet and my guess he's a much better QB when he simply runs the plays called in from the sideline, which is what he did last season.
But again, as I said all week leading up to this game, this is on the coaches.

They can reign him in as much as they want but it's clear that they are giving him free reign to do whatever the hell he wants just as they did with Romo.

It was when they supported Romo with a balanced attack that he had his finest season as a pro, but they didn't learn a damn thing from that because they're going right back to that flawed approach with Dak.
 

Texas Ace

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I was told this was a necessity as our OL sucked those years.
I've also been told that us running 5-wide and passing so much when we should be running isn't a big deal because other teams do it too.....or something.
 

Cotton

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Fuck Jason Garrett. I once thought I could never hate anyone as much as I do Jerry Jones, but this asshole is pushing it.
 

Chocolate Lab

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I said last week after the Giants game how I didn't like what I saw that night in regards to all the audibles and passing I was seeing from Dak. The impression that I got from that was that we were now turning the flawed Romo-approach over to Dak now that he had a year under his belt.

I said how I hoped it was just a one game thing not an actual philosophy that we were turning to, but that looks like that's exactly what happened.
They said before the season that now that Dak had a better understanding of the offense, they were going to give him more flexibility like Romo had. I wondered right then if that wouldn't lead to defenses being able to dictate to us instead of vice-versa, just like happened for years.

Why you'd change much of anything from one of the most successful offensive seasons in years is a mystery. But I guess you can't show how smart and innovative you are if you just line up and bludgeon people.
 

BipolarFuk

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Cowboys Need to Discipline Ezekiel Elliott for Lack of Effort in Loss to Broncos

Cowboys Need to Discipline Ezekiel Elliott for Lack of Effort in Loss to Broncos

I don’t like what Ezekiel Elliott did Sunday. At all.

With the Cowboys down 18 to Denver in the middle of the third quarter, Elliott, the defending NFL rushing champion, ran a route from the left slot. Quarterback Dak Prescott threw for the receiver just outside Elliott to the left, Dez Bryant; the ball went through Bryant’s hands, and Denver’s Chris Harris intercepted it. At the time of the interception, Harris was about five yards away from Elliott. Elliott immediately stopped and put his hands on his hips and didn’t chase Harris. Harris ran to his left, passing maybe four yards from Elliott at their closest point. Eventually, in a zig-zag course, Harris ran back to his right and was tackled by a Dallas lineman.



I give you the play-by-play to describe without prejudice exactly what happened on an important play in the eventual Denver rout of Dallas. Elliott stopped. Elliott did not chase the Denver interceptor, though he certainly would be instructed by any coach in the history of football to pursue the man who intercepted the ball until he was down. Elliott stood there with his hands on his hips. He did nothing.

It was a stunning lack of effort in the middle of a game that was still certainly in play. Dallas, down 28-10 at the time of the Harris interception, had six possessions after that. So often in cases like this, the player gets a pass. And very often, Dallas players get passes, because the Cowboys take chances on great players who have character or behavior or ethos flaws. Elliott might have all three of those. To give up on that play was horrendous. Dallas coach Jason Garrett has to do something about it—if he has not already. Owner Jerry Jones should back his coach 100 percent when Garrett does discipline Elliott. And if Garrett does not, then there’s something seriously wrong in Dallas.

It’s one thing to be frustrated. It’s another thing to quit. Elliott is a good football player who quit on a play. Don’t sugarcoat it. He quit on a play in the middle of a game that was still a game. And he should not be allowed to get away with it.

Here is what LaDainian Tomlinson said on NFL Network on Sunday night about Elliott. “He absolutely quit on his team today.”

Maybe Elliott was frustrated at his awful day (nine carries, eight yards). Maybe the pressure of his suspension and his court case to try to overturn the suspension are getting to him. Maybe he simply doesn’t handle failure or rejection well. The 42-17 loss to Denver was an eye-opener for Cowboys players and coaches and owner Jerry Jones. But that changes nothing about what we saw in the middle of the third quarter, with the game slipping away, and one of the best players on the team giving up on a play he could have tried to make. Inexcusable.
 

Texas Ace

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They said before the season that now that Dak had a better understanding of the offense, they were going to give him more flexibility like Romo had. I wondered right then if that wouldn't lead to defenses being able to dictate to us instead of vice-versa, just like happened for years.

Why you'd change much of anything from one of the most successful offensive seasons in years is a mystery. But I guess you can't show how smart and innovative you are if you just line up and bludgeon people.
I have no problem with giving him more flexibility.

In fact, I specifically addressed this as well to demonstrate that I wasn't stubbornly close-minded and thought the Cowboys should do exactly what they did last year on offense to a tee.

He has more experience now so he should be given more privileges. But giving him more flexibility and total control of a pass-heavy offense are two different things and it's clear through 2 weeks that we've done the latter.

That's a mistake.
 

Chocolate Lab

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He has more experience now so he should be given more privileges. But giving him more flexibility and total control of a pass-heavy offense are two different things and it's clear through 2 weeks that we've done the latter.

That's a mistake.
To this staff I don't think they are...
 

lostxn

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I can't stand all the shotgun snaps. Hate it, hate it. I realize Dak was a sg QB in college. But it becomes so obvious. We come up with 3 TEs, we're running the ball. We come up in sg, we are going to pass it. Now we ran some plays to break those assumptions but had no success doing so anyway. I would love to see us just run some plays with 2 WRs, 1 TE, 1 FB and 1 RB and see how it goes. Keep the FB to double Miller maybe. Give some time for the receivers to open. Then run the ball with less predictability. I understand it's not Dak's strength but he's a young player who likely could learn.
 

2233boys

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Elliott isn't right. This impending suspension is weighing on him. Sit now and get it over with.

The team isn't going anywhere. The offense that was highly touted all off season scored 1 td in the Giants game and really one last night. The first one last night being a gift from the defense, so two offensively generated Tds on the year. Pathetic
 

shane

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This week I expect the local media to needle and question Garrett as to why the Cowboys didn't put more emphasis on at least trying to establish the run. As I said in yesterday's chatter thread, it was a one score game the entire 1st half up until the 1:30 mark before halftime. So I don't want to hear how they couldn't run because the Cowboys were "playing from behind trying to play catch up". In a one score game that excuse doesn't fly.

As a result of the questioning of his game plan that is sure to come, I fully expect Garrett & Linehan to make running the ball the primary focus next week. I think close to 30 carries between the RBs. I say this because Garrett has a long history of folding to criticism whenever his game plans are questioned. Especially when the criticism centers on the lack of rush attempts or running in short yardage situations.
Yup, he will grovel and go back to what works. Good enough to get us to 11-5, then he will pull a GB last year in the playoffs and we will get wrecked. Rinse and repeat every year until all the talent is snake bitten.
 
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