Blogging The Boys
Every week, we gather to discuss the latest news about the Dallas Cowboys and seek our writer’s perspective on each headline. Welcome back to the roundtable. This week we have myself, David Howman, Tom Ryle, RJ Ochoa, and Sean Martin
Mike: The biggest culprit in Cowboys-Bears was the pass rush, or more precisely, the lack of one. Caleb Williams wasn’t sacked, Dallas mustered very little pressure, and once the pocket turned into a lounge, Chicago feasted. The lack of pressure resulted in damaging explosive plays like a 35-yard strike to Rome Odunze and a 65-yard flea-flicker to Luther Burden III. That avalanche made the secondary look worse than it truly was and the coverage busts showed up, but they were symptoms of a quarterback getting to read the paper back there.
By comparison, the offensive line was the least of Dallas’s problems but still struggled at times with two sacks and seven hits allowed, which isn’t ideal. Rank it this way, lack of pressure comes first, the secondary ranks closely behind , and offensive line comes in third. If blame is a pie, the pass rush gets the biggest slice, the secondary gets a closely sized piece and the offensive line gets the crust.
Tom: That’s a hard call to make, but just because there were so many wide open receivers, I have to go with the secondary. The lack of pressure probably contributed to that, but the lack of coverage is just egregious.
Sean: I’ll preface this by saying this week is going to be a fascinating debate in the age old pass rush vs coverage, chicken or the egg problem, because both were really poor against the Bears. As far as which was worse, I’ll go with the secondary because at least there were a few pressures at times. Still, being the first defense to never get a sack against Caleb Williams is bad, but they were rushing with players that have at least gotten sacks before. The “back of their baseball card” says they can do it over time. I don’t think there’s any stats that point to Malike Hooker and Donovan Wilson being good cover players, or what the Cowboys can do about Trevon Diggs not being able to play single man coverage reliably, so that is the bigger concern coming off this loss.
Howman: Secondary, without question. The pass rush wasn’t ideal but they looked worse because Caleb Williams had plenty of options to throw the ball quickly. Busted coverage assignments and just poor techniques were rampant all day long, and you just don’t win many games like that in the NFL.
RJ: It has to be the secondary. They got absolutely destroyed over and over and that it happened against a team who had a moribund passing game it was particularly deflating.
