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Dallas Pregame Three Thoughts for Green Bay
The Playoffs are here and the opponent is a familiar foe with an unfamiliar quarterback.
BOB STURM
JAN 12, 2024
If you want to make a professional athlete feel pain and anguish, let them get within reach of a goal, and then, upon falling short, tell them they have to go all the way back to the start of the journey and begin again.
I remember talking to Jason Witten after the 2014 playoff loss in Green Bay and could not get over how exhausted he was at that truth. They were so close and felt like they had done enough to beat the Packers that day. They did not. And so they had to go all the way back to the start and try to climb again in 2015.
Obviously, there is nothing like that depressing premise. In video games, one of the real advances was when games started to be designed so you could save your progress and not have to restart at the beginning every time you died. Instead, the next time you play, just start in Level 13 and keep going. Well, real life and the NFL don’t work that way. Instead, if you lose in January, you must go back to March and begin the workouts and the mini-camps with the installation of the offense and defense to start all over again.
I tell you this because the Cowboys have finally gotten back to where they left off in 2022. They entered the 2022 playoffs with dreams and optimism, but they were limping in. They shocked many with their demolition in Tampa Bay, but on a short week in Santa Clara, things fell apart against those 49ers.
But Dallas is back here. They are back with better health, better vibes, and a better seeding. They have a path that allows some belief that on January 28th, they could be playing in their first NFC Championship Game since January 14, 1996 – ironically enough, against these Green Bay Packers.
Few teams have crossed paths as often as Green Bay and Dallas. The history oozes, and hopefully, you have a chance to wander through those past meetings because there are some absolute classics. This will be the 9th time they have met in the playoffs, which ties Green Bay with San Francisco (temporarily) for the most common Cowboys playoff opponent of all time.
The playoff series is tied 4-4, with Green Bay winning the first two (both in the calendar year 1967) and the last two, where Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy became unpopular figures in this city in January of 2015 and 2017. Green Bay has two playoff wins at home and two here in North Texas. Dallas won the four in between, in which they handled Lynn Dickey once and Brett Favre three times, all at Texas Stadium between January of 1983 and that aforementioned 1995 NFC Championship Game.
You cannot tell the story of the Cowboys without spending time on the Packers and you cannot tell the story of the Packers without chapters on the Cowboys.
They are essential to each-other’s history and that is why the combinations of the uniforms seem to hit all the right notes in our football consciousness. It is a beautiful series.
They renew their relationship on Sunday at 3:30 in what is to be a frigid Arlington, Texas, but it won’t matter inside AT&T Stadium where it should be about 72 degrees and perfect. It will end someone’s season and send them all the way back to the start.
These are my Three PreGame Thoughts:
–Dallas has earned home field advantage in their first two playoff games and has been the single best home team in the NFL over the last two seasons. This should really pay dividends and give the side confidence against any and all comers.
I mean, this is everything that was hoped for all year long. This was the source of so much frustration when it was clear that despite being so dominant at home, they might have to play all of their postseason on the road. And then Kyler Murray and the Cardinals were able to give the Cowboys a beautiful favor. They pushed the Eagles off the cliff, and now Dallas can unleash that runaway train mentality playing in their comfort zone.
They have won 16 straight at home and are easily the best home team in the league since September of 2022. It isn’t even close, by the way. Since 2022 began, they have scored 569 points in 17 home games and allowed 304. That difference of 265 points in just 17 games is an average score of 33-17 over that time. They play aggressively, confidently, and when things get going in one direction, it snowballs quickly.
Green Bay, on the other hand, has not had a playoff game in which Brett Favre or Aaron Rodgers didn’t start since that same day at Texas Stadium in 1983 when Lynn Dickey took on Danny White in a Cowboys win, 37-26. Young 10-year-old me was staring at the television screen with sadness on my face as those Cowboys ended James Lofton’s season. 41 years later, Jordan Love has a chance to join the series a few DFW suburban miles to the west.
When Dallas has the ball:
– Dallas enjoys a statistical advantage in nearly every category and must not give life to the upstarts by offering giveaways.
Hopefully, you caught the turnover numbers of the McCarthy Cowboys since the start of 2021. It is pretty clear how this team needs to play football to be successful and I will tell you, it is a McCarthy brand that has been his for a long time:
TURNOVER MARGIN RECORDS, DALLAS, 2021-2023:
When +1 or better: 25-2, 93%
When Even: 6-4, 60%
When -1 or worse: 6-11, 35%
The Cowboys press notes this week even had this fact below that I used on Twitter on Friday Morning:
Every coach wants to limit turnovers, of course. We know this. Over his career coaching the Packers, they were the 2nd best team in the NFL at taking the ball away far more than they coughed it up. His team was a +97 in Green Bay from 2006-2018. Then, he comes to Dallas and lo and behold, he has the best team in the NFL from 2020-2023. Dallas is a combined +31, and nobody else is better than +26. If we know that turnover margins win football games, perhaps we should note how well Mike McCarthy's teams are always in the profit zone.
As you study the numbers above in the matchup, the significant advantage goes to Dallas in every column. The offense here has been able to batter and bruise the lesser defenses it has played this season, and Green Bay is a lesser defense. The only way this goes badly is if the Cowboys gift away short fields and bonus possessions.
What does Green Bay do defensively? They mix coverages, but they operate at about league average in every aspect. Man/Zone, single-high/split-field safeties, blitz rates – everything is approximately at league average. They play hard and can apply pressure on a passer, but they don't generate many turnovers, and they don't pose too many matchup problems, although Preston Smith, Rashan Gary, and Kenny Clark are all players who can and will test the offensive line.
They tend to blitz a little more than usual on early downs, preferring to bring pressure on 1st and 2nd down and play coverage on 3rd down. However, their weakness lies in getting stops on 3rd down, which might frustrate Packers fans and fuel calls for immediate change at Defensive Coordinator.
In summary, Dallas must win this defensive matchup, and by a reasonably significant margin. Taking care of the football and maintaining patience will be crucial.
Now, it gets a bit more complex on the other side.
When Green Bay has the ball:
–Dallas must understand how Green Bay is attacking teams right now. There is no question it is all generated from the running game and you can expect Green Bay will make that clear on Sunday. This is the key to this game.
Ok, stay with me here. Jordan Love is going to get all of the talk and frankly, I get it. He is the potential future of that franchise and we will get to him more below. But, you must know this. Green Bay’s entire play on Sunday is going to be to get into 12 personnel and run Aaron Jones and probably AJ Dillon repeatedly to test the Cowboys defensive run defense. Then, they will be pairing that with play-action passing and try to stay ahead of the chains.
Look at the stark differences below for Love. Check the Passer Rating and the Yds per attempt.
He has a 89.8 passer rating with 6.5 yards per attempt with no play-action and he is at 113.8 and 9.2 with play action? I believe we have found their recipe.
Now, pair that with the return of Aaron Jones. He has been playing hurt since Week 1 and finally on Christmas Eve, the Packers saw his juice back. In the last three games, where Green Bay needed to win all three just to make the playoffs, Jones finally brought back his dominance:
In the last three weeks he has 63 runs for 358 yards for 5.7 per carry. Then, they pair that with 12 personnel and play-action passes and this is how they win games. So, if you are wondering, yes, this comes down to the familiar test for this defense. Can the Cowboys stop the run? Because if they cannot, the passing game will get going in a hurry.
Green Bay plays with a massive amount of shifts and motions. They run the Shanahan offense as well with plenty of tweaks, including a wider offensive line but with tighter receiver splits. They want to stay ahead of the chains and they want their receivers to be physical in digging out safeties in the run game.
Their offensive line, like everyone else's, is remarkably young. All five starters were drafted by Green Bay, including two second-rounders, a fourth-rounder at right tackle, a sixth-rounder at right guard, and a seventh-rounder from 2022 currently playing left tackle in the absence of David Bakhtiari, who, despite being one of the highest-paid tackles in the sport, has missed most of the last three seasons.
Green Bay has had answers for the blitzing and the passing numbers look pretty close either way for Love.
But, when people wonder if he is that good, it is remarkable how well he is playing right now. In sports, we fear the hot hand, the hot goalie, or the hot QB who is brimming with confidence. Well here are the seven “big time throws” Love has made in the last two games. He is firing dots everywhere and even some incompletions appear to be elite-level throws.
There are plenty of ways to look at this game, but clearly, not letting Love feel comfortable is way up there. Micah Parsons can get out some frustration about being left off the All-Pro team by dominating this game up front.
In the end, I suspect Dallas has too much. If I had to pick, I believe Dallas wins in the 34-24 range, but as you know, my picks sort of stink.
BONUS CONTENT
Ok, our bonus content includes my college evaluation from 2020 that I did back then as part of the annual Sturm60:
Jordan Love — Utah State — RS Junior – 6’4 — 224 – No. 10
The Playoffs are here and the opponent is a familiar foe with an unfamiliar quarterback.
BOB STURM
JAN 12, 2024
If you want to make a professional athlete feel pain and anguish, let them get within reach of a goal, and then, upon falling short, tell them they have to go all the way back to the start of the journey and begin again.
I remember talking to Jason Witten after the 2014 playoff loss in Green Bay and could not get over how exhausted he was at that truth. They were so close and felt like they had done enough to beat the Packers that day. They did not. And so they had to go all the way back to the start and try to climb again in 2015.
Obviously, there is nothing like that depressing premise. In video games, one of the real advances was when games started to be designed so you could save your progress and not have to restart at the beginning every time you died. Instead, the next time you play, just start in Level 13 and keep going. Well, real life and the NFL don’t work that way. Instead, if you lose in January, you must go back to March and begin the workouts and the mini-camps with the installation of the offense and defense to start all over again.
I tell you this because the Cowboys have finally gotten back to where they left off in 2022. They entered the 2022 playoffs with dreams and optimism, but they were limping in. They shocked many with their demolition in Tampa Bay, but on a short week in Santa Clara, things fell apart against those 49ers.
But Dallas is back here. They are back with better health, better vibes, and a better seeding. They have a path that allows some belief that on January 28th, they could be playing in their first NFC Championship Game since January 14, 1996 – ironically enough, against these Green Bay Packers.
Few teams have crossed paths as often as Green Bay and Dallas. The history oozes, and hopefully, you have a chance to wander through those past meetings because there are some absolute classics. This will be the 9th time they have met in the playoffs, which ties Green Bay with San Francisco (temporarily) for the most common Cowboys playoff opponent of all time.
The playoff series is tied 4-4, with Green Bay winning the first two (both in the calendar year 1967) and the last two, where Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy became unpopular figures in this city in January of 2015 and 2017. Green Bay has two playoff wins at home and two here in North Texas. Dallas won the four in between, in which they handled Lynn Dickey once and Brett Favre three times, all at Texas Stadium between January of 1983 and that aforementioned 1995 NFC Championship Game.
You cannot tell the story of the Cowboys without spending time on the Packers and you cannot tell the story of the Packers without chapters on the Cowboys.
They are essential to each-other’s history and that is why the combinations of the uniforms seem to hit all the right notes in our football consciousness. It is a beautiful series.
They renew their relationship on Sunday at 3:30 in what is to be a frigid Arlington, Texas, but it won’t matter inside AT&T Stadium where it should be about 72 degrees and perfect. It will end someone’s season and send them all the way back to the start.
These are my Three PreGame Thoughts:
–Dallas has earned home field advantage in their first two playoff games and has been the single best home team in the NFL over the last two seasons. This should really pay dividends and give the side confidence against any and all comers.
I mean, this is everything that was hoped for all year long. This was the source of so much frustration when it was clear that despite being so dominant at home, they might have to play all of their postseason on the road. And then Kyler Murray and the Cardinals were able to give the Cowboys a beautiful favor. They pushed the Eagles off the cliff, and now Dallas can unleash that runaway train mentality playing in their comfort zone.
They have won 16 straight at home and are easily the best home team in the league since September of 2022. It isn’t even close, by the way. Since 2022 began, they have scored 569 points in 17 home games and allowed 304. That difference of 265 points in just 17 games is an average score of 33-17 over that time. They play aggressively, confidently, and when things get going in one direction, it snowballs quickly.
Green Bay, on the other hand, has not had a playoff game in which Brett Favre or Aaron Rodgers didn’t start since that same day at Texas Stadium in 1983 when Lynn Dickey took on Danny White in a Cowboys win, 37-26. Young 10-year-old me was staring at the television screen with sadness on my face as those Cowboys ended James Lofton’s season. 41 years later, Jordan Love has a chance to join the series a few DFW suburban miles to the west.
When Dallas has the ball:
– Dallas enjoys a statistical advantage in nearly every category and must not give life to the upstarts by offering giveaways.
Hopefully, you caught the turnover numbers of the McCarthy Cowboys since the start of 2021. It is pretty clear how this team needs to play football to be successful and I will tell you, it is a McCarthy brand that has been his for a long time:
TURNOVER MARGIN RECORDS, DALLAS, 2021-2023:
When +1 or better: 25-2, 93%
When Even: 6-4, 60%
When -1 or worse: 6-11, 35%
The Cowboys press notes this week even had this fact below that I used on Twitter on Friday Morning:
Every coach wants to limit turnovers, of course. We know this. Over his career coaching the Packers, they were the 2nd best team in the NFL at taking the ball away far more than they coughed it up. His team was a +97 in Green Bay from 2006-2018. Then, he comes to Dallas and lo and behold, he has the best team in the NFL from 2020-2023. Dallas is a combined +31, and nobody else is better than +26. If we know that turnover margins win football games, perhaps we should note how well Mike McCarthy's teams are always in the profit zone.
As you study the numbers above in the matchup, the significant advantage goes to Dallas in every column. The offense here has been able to batter and bruise the lesser defenses it has played this season, and Green Bay is a lesser defense. The only way this goes badly is if the Cowboys gift away short fields and bonus possessions.
What does Green Bay do defensively? They mix coverages, but they operate at about league average in every aspect. Man/Zone, single-high/split-field safeties, blitz rates – everything is approximately at league average. They play hard and can apply pressure on a passer, but they don't generate many turnovers, and they don't pose too many matchup problems, although Preston Smith, Rashan Gary, and Kenny Clark are all players who can and will test the offensive line.
They tend to blitz a little more than usual on early downs, preferring to bring pressure on 1st and 2nd down and play coverage on 3rd down. However, their weakness lies in getting stops on 3rd down, which might frustrate Packers fans and fuel calls for immediate change at Defensive Coordinator.
In summary, Dallas must win this defensive matchup, and by a reasonably significant margin. Taking care of the football and maintaining patience will be crucial.
Now, it gets a bit more complex on the other side.
When Green Bay has the ball:
–Dallas must understand how Green Bay is attacking teams right now. There is no question it is all generated from the running game and you can expect Green Bay will make that clear on Sunday. This is the key to this game.
Ok, stay with me here. Jordan Love is going to get all of the talk and frankly, I get it. He is the potential future of that franchise and we will get to him more below. But, you must know this. Green Bay’s entire play on Sunday is going to be to get into 12 personnel and run Aaron Jones and probably AJ Dillon repeatedly to test the Cowboys defensive run defense. Then, they will be pairing that with play-action passing and try to stay ahead of the chains.
Look at the stark differences below for Love. Check the Passer Rating and the Yds per attempt.
He has a 89.8 passer rating with 6.5 yards per attempt with no play-action and he is at 113.8 and 9.2 with play action? I believe we have found their recipe.
Now, pair that with the return of Aaron Jones. He has been playing hurt since Week 1 and finally on Christmas Eve, the Packers saw his juice back. In the last three games, where Green Bay needed to win all three just to make the playoffs, Jones finally brought back his dominance:
In the last three weeks he has 63 runs for 358 yards for 5.7 per carry. Then, they pair that with 12 personnel and play-action passes and this is how they win games. So, if you are wondering, yes, this comes down to the familiar test for this defense. Can the Cowboys stop the run? Because if they cannot, the passing game will get going in a hurry.
Green Bay plays with a massive amount of shifts and motions. They run the Shanahan offense as well with plenty of tweaks, including a wider offensive line but with tighter receiver splits. They want to stay ahead of the chains and they want their receivers to be physical in digging out safeties in the run game.
Their offensive line, like everyone else's, is remarkably young. All five starters were drafted by Green Bay, including two second-rounders, a fourth-rounder at right tackle, a sixth-rounder at right guard, and a seventh-rounder from 2022 currently playing left tackle in the absence of David Bakhtiari, who, despite being one of the highest-paid tackles in the sport, has missed most of the last three seasons.
Green Bay has had answers for the blitzing and the passing numbers look pretty close either way for Love.
But, when people wonder if he is that good, it is remarkable how well he is playing right now. In sports, we fear the hot hand, the hot goalie, or the hot QB who is brimming with confidence. Well here are the seven “big time throws” Love has made in the last two games. He is firing dots everywhere and even some incompletions appear to be elite-level throws.
There are plenty of ways to look at this game, but clearly, not letting Love feel comfortable is way up there. Micah Parsons can get out some frustration about being left off the All-Pro team by dominating this game up front.
In the end, I suspect Dallas has too much. If I had to pick, I believe Dallas wins in the 34-24 range, but as you know, my picks sort of stink.
BONUS CONTENT
Ok, our bonus content includes my college evaluation from 2020 that I did back then as part of the annual Sturm60:
Jordan Love — Utah State — RS Junior – 6’4 — 224 – No. 10