DAL vs. PHI/ What Worked

What worked for Dallas against the Eagles:

1.  Although he went over a 100 all-purpose yards and had 3 TD's, I thought we did a good job of keeping Brian Westbrook in check.  Did he catch some passes and do some things against us?  Of course.  But he's a great player, and he's going to get his.  The thing you have to make sure of is that you don't let him beat you.  Although he had some decent pickups, he didn't have any of those HUGE backbreaking plays he always seems to have against us.  I thought we did a great job of stopping them on the inside draws and off tackle plays that he usually kills us on.
2.  Aside from the opening kickoff and one good return, I thought we played very well on special teams.  Felix Jones broke one for a TD and consistently got good yardage on his returns.  I didn't like that we had a kick return and a punt return called back on penalties, but it's obvious our return teams are much improved from last year.  On coverage, we held them inside the 25 for most of the night on kickoffs and didn't let them get going on punts, which we we didn't have very many of.  We were facing what, in my opinion, might be the best young 1-2 punch of returners in the league in Jackson and Demps.  And of course, Folk is automatic.
3.  Zach Thomas was the anchor of our defense.  He didn't miss tackles, flowed well to the ball, and did an excellent job of diagnosing the plays and reacting to them.  He also made a great play down the field in coverage on LJ Smith, though I think it was equal parts luck and skill.  He was, in addition, very effective on the inside blitzes, as he was against Clevelan.
4.  I thought we did a good job of taking advantage of the fact that the Eagles were selling out to stop the run.  I wish we would have taken more shots down the field, but when we did we had guys running open.  We connected on some big plays down the field, and had a couple of near misses to Witten and TO.  They both did a great job of running down the field routes and creating seperation.  I would have liked to have seen us take some shots down the field to Stanback or Austin though.  I think Stanback showed us on that Jones TD how fast he is.
5.  This game was a huge gutcheck for this team, and I think although it wasn't with flying colors, they definitely passed.  They were down early, made some big mistakes, and hurt themselves often, but when it came down to it, they made the plays they needed to for them to win the game.  Overcoming adversity is the sign of a championship caliber team, and we overcame plenty last night.  From the Romo mistakes, to the penalties, right down to the hype of this game.  We had several players leave due to injury, and their backups came in and played well during their absence.  I thought aside from his facemask, Watkins did an admirable job replacing Roy.  When Witten was in the locker room getting worked on, Curtis and Bennett made some nice plays to keep drives going.

What didn't work for Dallas against the Eagles:

1.  I know Romo put a strong emphasis on his footwork and pocket presence in the offseason, and we saw it on full display against Cleveland.  As well as that worked against the Brownies, it didn't against the Eagles.  Romo looked anxious and razzed on his first throw, and continued to for the duration of the game.  He was back to having those happy feet again, and, for the most part, didn't set his feet and throw with good mechanics.  It looked to me that several times he unloaded the ball too quickly in anticipation of a blitz that never came.
2.  The Eagles didn't do a whole lot of blitzing in this game (compared to their usual anyway), but when they did, it was very effective.  I saw several ole's and missed assignments by the RB's.  I know that Proctor missed the inside guy on one play and had to grab him, negating a big play.  The Eagles also routinely got good pressure in only bringing four guys, as it seemed our tackles consistently had problems with the speed rushes from Cole and Parker.
3.  I thought that we used Bradie James against Brian Westbrook too much.  Although James is fairly good at coming up and making sure tackles in the running game, he does not have a skill set that allows him to make plays in the passing game against an athlete of Westbrook's class.  Although he didn't shut him down by any means, I thought Kevin Burnett did a much better job of keeping tabs on Westbrook in space.  I had said in another post that KB and Zach Thomas as our two LB's in nickel situations would be very effective against a lot of the Eagles' personel groupings.  I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see that matchup a little more.
4.  I was both shocked and disgusted in the playcalling on both offense and defense last night.  Offensively, I would have liked to have seen us work out of the shotgun a little more.  It seemed to me that we had our most success, both running and passing, when we spread them out and gave them different looks.  I thought we were extremely ineffective at trying to run the ball straight ahead, especially in two back sets.  Delays seemed to be pretty effective against the upfield rush, and I thought we should have used them a little more to try and counterpunch their aggressiveness.  Defensively, we played way too much zone coverage.  We shelled out all of these draft picks for these guys so that we would have the ability to play man coverage, press receivers, and get after the QB a little bit more.  And yet what happened last night?  We played soft zone all night and let McNabb pick us apart, gave receivers 8-10 yard cushions, and futilely tried to get pressure with our four man rush.  And even when we did get pressure, the tackling was so bad that McNabb just walked out of the pocket and picked up the first down with his arms or legs.
5.  Penalties!  The most frustrating thing about the penalties that we took last night was that they were all bad penalties.  They weren't effort penalties.  They were all caused by a lack of discipline or poor techinique.  Had guys used better tackling technique last night and been in better position, we wouldn't have had so many broken tackles and facemasks.  Instead of going low and wrapping up, everyone was headhunting, and it cost us by extending a lot of drives.

Just my two sense on the game.  Feel free to add in what you thought we did or didn't do well last night.