Blogging The Boys
What a difference a week makes.
It feels like ages ago now, but last week the Cowboys were coming off a dominant win over the Jets that restored hope in the defense while offering continued optimism in the offense.
The latter part is still there, largely thanks to Dak Prescott playing at an MVP level, but the defense reverted back to its worst form and cost the team a win over the middling Panthers. Now, all that hope is gone, replaced by the soul crushing cynicism that has marked much of the past eight months for Cowboys fans.
Is there anything good left in this world? Our own Tom Ryle and David Howman have some thoughts.
Tom: I’ll give you something that could be good. Every team in the NFC East has at least two losses, so from a standings viewpoint, Dallas is right there in the thick of things. The next game is against the Washington Commanders, and a win against the team that just dropped a close one to the Chicago Bears would certainly make us all feel better. The Cowboys certainly have the offense as they lead the league in yards per game and are third in points scored.
Now for the bad news: You don’t get to 2-3-1 with that kind of offensive output unless your defense is epically putrid. Each week, they seem to either make the opposing QB look like Tom Brady with a stronger arm, or the lead back is racking up yards like Adrian Peterson in his prime. Unless they can fix things, they are destined for another dismal finish.
Doubts abound about coming up with any kind of solution. In his weekly hit on 92.1 the Team, the local sports station for East Texas, Mickey Spagnola laid out what may be the biggest concern. They simply don’t have the players they need to win at the line of scrimmage. They can’t really do much if anything about that now. Those draft picks they got for Micah Parsons may lead to some future solutions, but those are not going to help now, and we will likely see another year of Dak’s prime slip away.
David: With all due respect to Mr. Spagnola, I don’t even think it’s that deep. They have the players in the trenches to win, but not in this scheme.
Matt Eberflus wants his defensive tackles to get up the field and penetrate. Osa Odighizuwa and Solomon Thomas excel there, and Kenny Clark has been better than expected in that regard. But when it’s all you do, offenses know that. Week after week, we’re seeing oodles of trap and wham concepts in the run game that spring loose, at which point the running back is able to juke Kenneth Murray (it’s always Kenneth Murray, for some reason) out of his shoes for a huge gain. In fact, each of the last two weeks, Dallas has surrendered at least six runs of 10+ yards, leading the league for both weeks....
