- Joined
- Apr 7, 2013
- Messages
- 120,133
By Bob Sturm Dec 20, 2021
At the risk of being a broken record, allow me to take you down an important road that is required after Week 15 in the NFL’s Sunday slate came to a close.
For many years, I have also covered the National Hockey League. In fact, there is a pretty good chance that I covered the NHL for a longer amount of time than the NFL — even though I am old enough that both span a few decades now.
When following hockey, I fell in love with several phrases of “hockey coachspeak” which I have often applied to the NFL. At least, I believe the origin of the phrase comes from hockey men who spin their phrases with redundancy and emphasis every winter. The one I go to regularly is “they don’t ask how, they ask how many.”
Now, this phrase can mean goals scored in a game or wins in a season. They don’t care how you put together the total number, of goals or wins, but rather the only thing that truly matters is what that number actually is. The sum is much greater than the style with which it was amassed.
They don’t ask how you beat New Orleans, Washington and New York on a three-game December road trip. They simply ask: How many wins did you bring back to Dallas?
Three. That’s the answer and the only answer that matters. Dallas played three and won three. Because of that, the Cowboys return to Dallas with the unlikely record of 10-4 as they prepare for two straight home games through the holiday season.
The Cowboys’ win versus the Giants on Sunday was underwhelming and quite frankly, subjectively boring. It lacked too many moments of crisp offense to offer the encouragement that Kellen Moore has his troops headed back in the right direction. They still seem frustrated with the deeper and continuous zones Dallas keeps facing. It is taking away the shot plays and the fireworks in a similar fashion that Kansas City was frustrated earlier in the year. The longer Dallas looks offensively constipated, you can believe this is how more and more teams will continue to throw these looks at them.
They see what you don’t do well and they make you prove you have fixed the issue or you continue to get it. So, it is not complex to scout Dallas right now. The league found out the hard way in the early part of the year that bringing pressure and matching up in man coverage was not going to work. So, they eventually swung all the way around — that and the schedule has fallen where the zone-heavy divisional opponents are all bunched together for December. Either way, the Giants played about five snaps Sunday in man coverage out of 71 offensive plays. Washington last week played five of 85 plays. That is 10 snaps in Cover 1 out of 156 overall plays for the past two weeks. Dallas has struggled to find chunk plays throughout. So, I ask you, what do you think we will see moving forward?
These zones are soft and they are deep. They are heavily populated the deeper you go, so Dak Prescott can either take five yards at a time, or he risks throwing it into bodies where his guys are outnumbered. Obviously, you can not completely capitulate, so this is where the big passes have to find their targets and avoid passes being broken up or even dropped (CeeDee Lamb). And as you can see, the more they deal with frustration and the word getting around the league, the more they want to force the action and show everyone they are fine and this is no problem. They press harder, tense up and cause their own issues. It is a big circle of frustration and it feeds itself.
This is why you cannot lose sight of that phrase: “They don’t ask how, they ask how many.”
The “they” in question is the league. The standings. The reality of winning games. Dallas was asked how many this morning and the answer is 10 wins out of 14 played. For that reason, the Cowboys woke up as the No. 2 seed in the NFC despite starting Sunday as the No. 4 seed and then seeming to disappoint their fans with an effort that did not satisfy the “how” question, as in, how well did you win?
That doesn’t matter to “they” because they only need to check the boxes of either win or lose in this league.
“They” is not the fans. We know that the fans are freaking out. Heck, the players might be internally dealing with doubt, too. Nobody who runs with this organization can bear another disappointing demise when the chips are down. Nobody wants an offensive slump when it feels like the defense has been nearly perfect and the offense has not cashed in. Think about it: The Cowboys defense has found 12 takeaways in three weeks since DeMarcus Lawrence has returned — 12 on a three-game road trip in December.
Can you imagine? How is this possible? Keep in mind that in most games each team only gets the ball about 12 times. That means in the past three games the Cowboys have allowed four touchdowns and taken the ball 12 times! That is other-worldly and championship-caliber.
Sadly, though — assuming there is anything sad about a winning streak of road games — is that Dallas has failed to score more than 27 points in any of these games despite the free lunches that the defense continues giving them. If Dallas would start cashing them in more often, it might be the best team in the league. For now, Dallas is a frustrating tease.
Again, these are good problems because they come in wins and lessons can be learned without the pain and suffering. If your worst days come with a happy locker room and some coaching tape to stay hungry with, you are doing OK. Yes, bitter fans are saying, “If this was in the playoffs, they would have lost.” Well, no disrespect to Jimmy Football, but this isn’t the playoffs. How do I know? Because Mike Glennon was over there. We know that isn’t happening in the playoffs, so relax. There are plenty of things to stress about, but a good portion of the Cowboys understated offense recently is any game plan had to know that going in, Dallas needed the win. It also had to know that Dallas will not play a top 20 and maybe even a top-25 QB on the entire trip.
OK, combine those two. You need a win badly and you are playing compromised offenses through and through. Should you then risk your good sense and start chasing the highlights or should you do exactly what is needed to be sure that 7-4 converts to 10-4 if you don’t do anything too silly? I can tell you that Mike McCarthy is not a “high-risk for no reason” kind of coach and he is as pragmatic as they come. He likes wins more than he cares about the social-media reaction and if those teams are going to sit in deep zones and allow Dallas to bleed them dry over three hours of risk-less football, then order it up for him and he will take it right now. That is how you win games in this league and McCarthy is 50 games over .500 as an NFL coach in the regular season. There aren’t many coaches who get to 50 games above .500, I assure you. It would take an awful lot of 10-win seasons for sure. You get there with a relentless ground-and-pound style to grab ugly wins against substandard opponents and you don’t let them breathe. And aside from some late silliness in Washington — which probably dictated how much he wanted to avoid that in New York — Dallas suffocated all three of these teams.
Well played. And again, huge and special marks to a defense that was again led by the fantastic Lawrence, who had five splash plays and basically made two takeaways happen all by himself. The punching out of the ball from Saquon Barkley in the second quarter was nearly as special as his plowing up the middle to cause Glennon’s feeble interception throw that landed in the waiting arms of Jourdan Lewis in the first quarter. Lawrence has been a massive force in the past three weeks and has taken this defense from Micah Parsons and friends to a front with a few massive problems to account for and deal with.
Style points are lacking and offensive crispness and efficiency are way out there. Since the Kansas City game, the Cowboys are 32nd — dead last in red-zone efficiency at 33 percent. They have just six touchdowns on 18 red-zone drives in the previous five weeks telling you that they are dropping points all over the place and that is flat-out unacceptable. It must get fixed because they will need more points very soon and to only get on average about 13 points for every three trips in the red zone will not cut it. We can argue that third-down and red-zone efficiency numbers are among the two most important metrics for a playoff offense and while third down was much better against the Giants, the red zone was another frustrating day.
To this point, this column might seem contradictory. On one hand, my view is the win is the piece that matters, but then I point out that it isn’t a matter of style points, but rather details. Details do matter and we should need more.
Again, don’t forget the big one: “They don’t ask how, they ask how many.”
To really pound this point home, let’s visit with a few other teams that were above the Cowboys in the standings. We shall start with Arizona.
• The Cardinals were rolling into Week 14 and 15 where they now have lost two straight against the reeling and COVID-suffering Rams at home and then the unthinkable on Sunday where they were absolutely routed by the Lions in Detroit where Arizona was a 12.5-point favorite. They were humiliated by Detroit with so much on the line. The once 7-0 Cardinals are now 10-4. Simple math there reveals they are 3-4 since Oct. 28 and I submit that the No. 1 seed back then is now the No. 4 seed and trying to hang on against the Rams.
• The Packers needed a failed two-point conversion against the Baltimore Ravens, who were playing without their star QB Lamar Jackson, so Tyler Huntley nearly pulled off a massive upset to beat a fantastic effort from Aaron Rodgers. Now, this is the team that had the successful day, but they were nearly a 9-point road favorite that survived on one snap of the ball. They checked the win box by the slimmest of margins.
• And then Tampa Bay started its Sunday as an 11.5-point favorite over a Saints team that was playing on the road without its head coach and, of course, still starting the same Taysom Hill who Dallas saw two weeks ago. As you know by now, not only did Tampa Bay offer up the No. 1 seeding to Green Bay by losing this game, but it also didn’t even score a single point. Tom Brady was shut out for the first time since 2006.
Again, don’t lose sight of what matters. They don’t care how you get the win, they care if you got the win. Dallas was an 11.5-point favorite and won comfortably, by a rather ugly 21-6 final.
The Cowboys were expected to run over a feeble opponent by two scores and they did. Should we hold a parade? No. They were expected to accomplish a task and they did with plenty of room for comments about how weak it seemed. Yet, they still emerged with a 10-4 record which has its own history. Dallas has reached 10-4 three times since 1990. In 1993 and 1995, they were 10-4 and ended by winning the Super Bowl. In 2014, they ended the year at Lambeau Field with McCarthy challenging a catch by Dez Bryant. We can certainly speculate if this season will take a trip to Green Bay and could include a Super Bowl. Who can say?
But, I promise you, ladies and gentlemen of this jury, the hockey coaches who have all the wise clichés will tell you that Arizona and Tampa Bay would love to complain about an ugly win this morning. Green Bay and Dallas got them and they got back on their airplanes and felt some level of satisfaction for that day’s work on the entire flight.
The ugliest win is so much more fulfilling then all the pretty losses. There is no debate to be had.
Maybe next week, the Cowboys will find a win where the offense can feel better about itself. And maybe everyone will smile for that Christmas gift.
Still, we must never forget that they only ask how many at the end of the season. Dallas has to be prepared to have at least a few more. Regardless of style points or methods.
