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[FONT="]The Morning After – Cowboys offer home fans a refusal of dress rehearsal
By Bob Sturm Aug 27, 2018
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Friday’s column advocated for the NFL to stop with these preseason money grabs. I cannot promise you that Jerry Jones has The Athletic as his homepage yet, but I am a bit suspicious. I also don’t know what to do when it is clear Jerry and I agree on how to prepare a team in 2018.
My premise was that nothing good can happen to your top-tier earners and special players in these preseason affairs. If a player is one of your top talents, you should place him in styrofoam or bubble wrap until September 9th, when the time comes to look across the line of scrimmage and see Cam Newton and Christian McCaffrey or Kawaan Short and Luke Kuechly.
Now, I am speaking to the entire NFL, not just Jones. But as preseason action will show you around the league, some teams have decided to “shut it down” until Week 1 – just 10 days away for Atlanta and Philadelphia, 13 for most everyone else – and others have decided to continue on with full-speed, full violence practice games. That can definitely offer some significant mismatches when your “2’s” are playing someone else’s “1’s”. The outcomes can certainly be depressing. I will remind people that these outcomes might be interesting to Vegas and people that are looking for money-making opportunities, but in the real football world there is almost nothing less important than preseason scores and outcomes. Don’t believe the hype. There is no correlation between preseason records and playoff berths. Whoever is telling you that is full of it.
Getting out of the preseason in one piece is the key objective for most teams. And that is pretty difficult when you are playing more than 500 snaps of preseason action. There will be damage incurred.
You can’t play football without injuries, and many times they will be quite severe. This weekend, Jacksonville WR Marqise Lee lost his entire season in a very unfortunate incident during the Jaguars’ game against Atlanta. Concussions to Giants tight end Evan Engram and 49ers LB Reuben Foster will threaten their Week 1 status. The Panthers lost yet another offensive linemen (that makes four!) in Jeremiah Sirles to a hamstring, and new Bengals starting left tackle Cordy Glenn hurt his shoulder. Levels of severity will vary, but the overall point is that you would rather not risk your most important pieces. The Cowboys’ only significant injury from Sunday night was when third-choice safety Kavon Frazier made the dangerously thin position even thinner when he separated his shoulder on a contested pass play down the field.
I realize many will disagree with the top of this piece. But when All-Pro Zack Martin cannot go because of what happened last week to his knee, and All-Pro Travis Frederick sits due to his fight with Guillain-Barre syndrome, you knew that the middle of your offensive line was going to be a mess for this Cardinals game. Your choices are to treat it as if it is the regular season and make the other starters play because “the show must go on,” or to save all of your solutions and ideas for when the games actually matter in two weeks against one of the league’s best defenses.
If you do put their understudies out there, along with Joe Looney at center and Kadeem Edwards at guard, you know your QB is likely to take a bit of a beating. Now, you can dig in and ask Dak Prescott to take that August beating to prepare himself for Carolina, or you can insist on preserving his health until it must be risked. Same for Ezekiel Elliott. Same for Tyron Smith. You have special players who will be asked to do special things in 14 days. For the life of me, I cannot understand why you would risk their health against the top available Cardinals defense – with pretty much everyone playing – who blitzes as much as just about anyone. Is it a good opportunity to measure yourself against a top defense? Sure. But, the cost-benefit analysis does not smile upon it.
You are welcome to feel like you wasted your evening and perhaps your hard-earned money on that spectacle, but I think the Cowboys did the right thing. Unfortunately, that means the following players did not step on the field for either health reasons or preventative health reasons: Prescott, Elliott, Smith, Martin, Frederick, Sean Lee, Xavier Woods, Datone Jones, Leighton Vander Esch, Dan Bailey, Noah Brown, and Maliek Collins.
By the way, the Cardinals also sat a few of their top players, most notably Larry Fitzgerald and David Johnson. But, of those who did play, allow me to share a few observations:
By Bob Sturm Aug 27, 2018
[/FONT]
Friday’s column advocated for the NFL to stop with these preseason money grabs. I cannot promise you that Jerry Jones has The Athletic as his homepage yet, but I am a bit suspicious. I also don’t know what to do when it is clear Jerry and I agree on how to prepare a team in 2018.
My premise was that nothing good can happen to your top-tier earners and special players in these preseason affairs. If a player is one of your top talents, you should place him in styrofoam or bubble wrap until September 9th, when the time comes to look across the line of scrimmage and see Cam Newton and Christian McCaffrey or Kawaan Short and Luke Kuechly.
Now, I am speaking to the entire NFL, not just Jones. But as preseason action will show you around the league, some teams have decided to “shut it down” until Week 1 – just 10 days away for Atlanta and Philadelphia, 13 for most everyone else – and others have decided to continue on with full-speed, full violence practice games. That can definitely offer some significant mismatches when your “2’s” are playing someone else’s “1’s”. The outcomes can certainly be depressing. I will remind people that these outcomes might be interesting to Vegas and people that are looking for money-making opportunities, but in the real football world there is almost nothing less important than preseason scores and outcomes. Don’t believe the hype. There is no correlation between preseason records and playoff berths. Whoever is telling you that is full of it.
Getting out of the preseason in one piece is the key objective for most teams. And that is pretty difficult when you are playing more than 500 snaps of preseason action. There will be damage incurred.
You can’t play football without injuries, and many times they will be quite severe. This weekend, Jacksonville WR Marqise Lee lost his entire season in a very unfortunate incident during the Jaguars’ game against Atlanta. Concussions to Giants tight end Evan Engram and 49ers LB Reuben Foster will threaten their Week 1 status. The Panthers lost yet another offensive linemen (that makes four!) in Jeremiah Sirles to a hamstring, and new Bengals starting left tackle Cordy Glenn hurt his shoulder. Levels of severity will vary, but the overall point is that you would rather not risk your most important pieces. The Cowboys’ only significant injury from Sunday night was when third-choice safety Kavon Frazier made the dangerously thin position even thinner when he separated his shoulder on a contested pass play down the field.
I realize many will disagree with the top of this piece. But when All-Pro Zack Martin cannot go because of what happened last week to his knee, and All-Pro Travis Frederick sits due to his fight with Guillain-Barre syndrome, you knew that the middle of your offensive line was going to be a mess for this Cardinals game. Your choices are to treat it as if it is the regular season and make the other starters play because “the show must go on,” or to save all of your solutions and ideas for when the games actually matter in two weeks against one of the league’s best defenses.
If you do put their understudies out there, along with Joe Looney at center and Kadeem Edwards at guard, you know your QB is likely to take a bit of a beating. Now, you can dig in and ask Dak Prescott to take that August beating to prepare himself for Carolina, or you can insist on preserving his health until it must be risked. Same for Ezekiel Elliott. Same for Tyron Smith. You have special players who will be asked to do special things in 14 days. For the life of me, I cannot understand why you would risk their health against the top available Cardinals defense – with pretty much everyone playing – who blitzes as much as just about anyone. Is it a good opportunity to measure yourself against a top defense? Sure. But, the cost-benefit analysis does not smile upon it.
You are welcome to feel like you wasted your evening and perhaps your hard-earned money on that spectacle, but I think the Cowboys did the right thing. Unfortunately, that means the following players did not step on the field for either health reasons or preventative health reasons: Prescott, Elliott, Smith, Martin, Frederick, Sean Lee, Xavier Woods, Datone Jones, Leighton Vander Esch, Dan Bailey, Noah Brown, and Maliek Collins.
By the way, the Cardinals also sat a few of their top players, most notably Larry Fitzgerald and David Johnson. But, of those who did play, allow me to share a few observations:
- I have looked at the start of the Cowboys schedule and I suspect an early storyline is going to be all about the offense without Jason Witten and Dez Bryant. That is predictable and it makes sense. But I think the storyline might develop into this: They open with five games against teams that all have very suspect offensive lines. Carolina is down at nearly every single spot but center. Then the Giants roll in with a much-improved group but the right side of their line remains a real mess and I think Randy Gregory can certainly get things done against Nate Solder. Then Seattle, which is trying to improve upon one of the worst lines in the league, but they are still far away from being solid. Detroit is next and maybe the best of the five, but hardly the five blocks of granite. The fifth of those first five opponents is Houston and let me tell you, they have a chance to be an absolute mess. Now, several of the QBs in those cities have some ideas to mitigate the mess of a line they have in front of them, but if you want to look for real mismatch possibilities, you may start with the Cowboys front seven – which I fully expect to be a strength this year and have not seen any reason to think otherwise – against some of the weaker offensive lines in the entire NFL. It gets much tougher from there as Jacksonville, Tennessee, and of course, Philadelphia feature much better offensive fronts, but maybe by then the offense can take over and carry more of the burden. But personally, I think that Demarcus Lawrence and this deep rotation of edge rushers that cause fits will line up well and have a potential advantage in all five of those games to start the season. And that could be huge.
- One key reason why I wouldn’t play Dak Prescott anymore in this preseason with a very limited version of his offense is that I don’t believe the Cowboys have a sufficiently reliable backup. I am not suggesting that Cooper Rush isn’t a nice story. But the moment he was named your backup in 2017 was the moment you should have started figuring out how you would upgrade from him in 2018. Mike White is making fine progress (I am planning a Mike White film room this week), but there are very few organizations that would allow a fifth-round rookie to be the No. 2 in his rookie year. The Cowboys like Mike White quite a bit and he will be the favorite to be the backup in 2019, but for now, they want Rush to be the backup and White the third option. This raises two questions:
- 1) How hard is it to carry three QBs on your 53-man roster? Do the Cowboys have room to do so, or do they think White can be hidden on the practice squad?
- 2) How much trouble is Dallas in if Rush needs to be your QB for a month in the event Prescott is hurt? I would argue that Rush is unlikely to accomplish anything as a backup QB. He inspires very little confidence, and while I realize he put up some numbers last year, I believe most of that was when the Cowboys “3’s” were playing the opponent’s “3’s” last preseason. The goal – and the reason teams have veteran backups like Josh McCown or Colt McCoy hanging around is the belief that maybe they can go 2-2 in a month without the QB1. I don’t think Rush can do that, so after watching him in camp this year and in these preseason games, I wish the Cowboys had a one-year bridge in camp to allow White his redshirt year and didn’t have so much invested in Rush. But, alas, they are counting on him to play an important role and that is quite disconcerting to me.
- I know we are spending a lot of time with this tight end spot, but we have to understand how big a role the Cowboys consider the position to fill. In 2017, the Cowboys averaged 93.3 snaps per game (ninth in the league) from tight ends. And while we could argue that is because they had Jason Witten and we all know he was not coming out of the game under any circumstance, we are still seeing how much they value the spot on early downs when they are constantly in 12 and 13 personnel. 12 personnel (under center) was easily their most efficient and productive package last year, where they were fourth in the league at 6.14 yards per snap in a league that averages 5.2. This year, the Cowboys can talk about a new offense and so forth, but we know what they have invested in their offensive line and their running back. That means they are going to keep trying to set the tone with their running game and that is going to require some tight ends performing up to level. This is why it is probably time for us to be honest about the conclusions from these preseason games beyond what I wrote last week. Nobody but Geoff Swaim looks ready for prime time. We can talk about the others in terms of one versus the other and whether Blake Jarwin is really better than Rico Gathers or not, and whether Dalton Schultz is a year away from having a grand impact, but again, where are they getting anywhere close to 93 snaps out of these guys every week? I really was hoping someone would step forward and there is no doubt the coaches are giving Jarwin and Schultz every opportunity to show they are a better choice than Gathers, but to this point, it would be disingenuous to claim that they have clearly outperformed him in game situations.Don’t think I am pounding the table for Gathers, either, as his down-by-down reviews are not much to write home about. I realize the fairy tale of the “Cowboys wanted Dallas Goedert and the Eagles stole him away” is purely fiction, but that doesn’t mean they were right. Should Dallas have placed tight end higher on their list of priorities when Jason Witten walked away before Day 2 of the draft? They made three more selections – Connor Williams, Michael Gallup, and Dorance Armstrong – before they selected a tight end. Schultz was the seventh tight end taken after the Witten news, so while I know the Cowboys weren’t infatuated with Goedert and wanted Connor Williams more, that doesn’t answer the question of, “should they have felt that way?” My takeaway from this preseason is that the Cowboys have four tight ends and I am not sure any of them are regular contributors besides Swaim, who is purely a blocker with very limited ability as a pass-catcher. In other words, expect TE to be a large priority in the next player acquisition cycle.
- Over the weekend, Derwin James dazzled with his play in center field and it did bring back a rush of Cowboys fans who were irate that Dallas didn’t get more aggressive in Round 1 this April. I admit to being on this bandwagon, too, because I thought Derwin James was a top-five talent in this draft and when he fell past pick #15 it was time to get aggressive on the phone. The price to jump up to #16 (Buffalo) to get James would have been either the Cowboys’ third-round pick (#81 Michael Gallup) or two lesser picks (maybe a fourth and a sixth). The Cowboys really liked James, but they liked Leighton Vander Esch more. In fact, if they were both there at #19, I believe they still would have taken LVE. I would have disagreed, but that doesn’t make me right or them wrong. I just think James is a dynamic player at a position of need. We also don’t know if Buffalo would have done the deal anyway, but this brings me back to another point: The Cowboys’ “meaningless” win in Philadelphia during the 2017 season’s final week is what dropped them to pick #19 instead of pick #16 in the first place. And that win might be the real link between Derwin James and the Cowboys for his career in Dallas lore.
- The Cowboys were a MINUS-8 in turnovers last night. The fantastic game finder at profootballreference.com does not catalogue preseason historical stats, but according to their game finder, there have been 19 occasions of -8 in a regular season or post-season NFL game. To nobody’s surprise, the teams with that negative differential are 0-19. But to my surprise, the last time it happened was during Super Bowl 27 when the Bills were on the wrong side of the Dallas Cowboys freight train in Pasadena. And that, boys and girls, is how last night was like Super Bowl 27.
- Let’s all forget about this one together. There was very little worthwhile to remember.
