The 2009 Cowboys O-Line: Inside The Pass Protection Game (Part II)

The teams that were blitzed the least were teams with prolific passing offenses (Ind, NO, ARI in particular). We also have a prolific passing offense and a top 10 QB. My guess is that teams realized that we weren’t burning teams often enough when they did blitz and it became a blueprint for the opposition.

I would very much like for teams to fear blitzing Romo the way they fear blitzing Manning, Brees, and Warner. I don’t know what has to happen between those three points outlined to make this happen, but it is crucial to our success (also a big reason for a lot of our red zone failures).

We would know how to pick up a blitz by now. Or is it the teams not in our division that killed us last year?

If we know teams are going to blitz 40% of the time when we drop back, we have to plan on quick slants and dump offs. If they’re not coming and we see that there will be time to throw we should go to our second read, and that would be downfield.

Jimmy Johnson handled this delimma with Troy Aikman who was taking too many sacks by having him use 3 or 5 step drops, and get rid of the damn ball. Once teams realize you’re going to use a quick passing tempo they back off.

Kind of off topic, but WTF? Cleveland? Must have been their complete lack of a running game.

I think the OL and the RB’s and sometimes unopen WR’s have a lot to blame but if you look at this objectively it has to also be Tony Romo’s problem. This doesn’t happen to Brett Farve or Tom Brady, Payton Manning. They all have good Oline’s but they know how to read the defense and get the ball to the open WR.

I wonder how much of it is Garrett too?

is how deep into the play clock the Cowboys go. The ball is constantly being snapped with one or 2 seconds left on the play clock. Not only are you asking your team to hold their stance for a longer time (which might lead to more false starts) but this also does not allow your team to adjust for any late defensive alignment shifts as they have to snap the ball to avoid a delay of game penalty

Do we have the data to compare to what our opponents’ defenses did over the course of the year? Did they blitz us more than other teams? Or did we just play a number of blitz-happy teams, and our percentage was high as a result?

Other than our intuitive sense that we don’t pick up the blitz well and d-coordinators figured this out, can we definitively state that the defenses blitzed us more than their other opponents? This might yield insight into whether we truly were targets for defenses or just had a bad lineup of blitz-happy teams.

OCC, is it feasible to do this type of analysis?

Garrett’s biggest problem as an O-Coordinator IMO. His plays take much too long to develop which makes this offense susceptible to the blitz. He doesn’t utilize dump-offs to RBs or even the Fullback nearly as much as he should in these situations. His idea of a quick way to beat the blitz is the Witten curl route.

I find it shocking that with a quarterback with as quick as a release as Romo gets sacked so often. The receivers must not be adjusting, and they may be missing on hot routes in response to the blitzes. Otherwise, they just may be failing to quickly get off the line and into their routes.

By the way, completely off topic, does anyone else sign in using yahoo, and have they been having problems signing in? This is only like the second time I’ve managed to sign in in over a week. Most of the time when I try, I get an error message.

drilled Truax who was still low coming off the line. Truax made the catch and stumbled and rumbled for six or seven yards. I’d bet Witten would be good for much more. Of course, Gabriel was taller than most of this linemen. Romo, being several inches shorter than his, would probably hit the back of a helmet. Never mind.

Wow, I got quoted twice! OCC, you flatter me! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to see my humble little comments promoted to an article. :-)

I love the articles, especially thought provoking ones about the O-line. Keep it up!

This Pro-Football Reference article needs to be included in all these discussions. PFR looked at QB’s who switched teams and which stats (e.g. completion %, sacks, ints, etc.) stayed constant and which changed. If a stat stayed constant then clearly the stat was under the QB’s control. Sack rate was stable IRRESPECTIVE OF THE TEAM THE QB PLAYED FOR.

It’s pretty clear which performance category is least consistent from year to year and probably belongs to the individual quarterback the least. It’s probably the one the general public uses to judge a quarterback the most—interceptions. You rarely hear after a game about how the receivers caused the interceptions, or the bad luck of it all, or the game context dictated the interceptions.

At the other end of the spectrum, two performance measures stand out at the top—completion percentage and sack rate.

Tony took more sacks but he also threw a lot less INT’s. Sometimes its better to take a sack than to throw a risky pass and have a turnover.

PHL was usually pretty effective, but not as much this years sans J Johnson. In real-time individual OL are looking to engage, ours tends to turn to the next in their progression when they don’t see immediate pressure. Presumably, the RB or a TE is supposed to be the 2nd line of protection in that case.

Believe the causes are all of the above, as opposed to any one specific individual or group. In the case of the corner blitzes cited above – that’s just an example of the right call at the right time – something about our play call, protection was perfectly exploitable by that particular defensive call – it happens.

There is a reason the Cowboys get blitzed so much, and it isn’t neccessarily to put Romo on his butt.

When your opponent blitzes what’s the easiest way to pick it up? Keep your running back in to block the blitzer.
When your opponent blitzes another guy, what’s the easiet way to pick the next one up? Keep your tight end in to pick up the other guy.

As Cowboys fans, we say, “how can any team deal with all our weapons?” But if two of your best weapons in Jason Witten and Felix Jones have to stay back to block blitzers then that’s two great weapons Romo can’t use.

I think this was the root of our goal-to-go problems this year. Jason Witten was kept in to block way too much because Garret was worried about keeping Romo upright. Jason Witten is the best short-yardage reciever on this team and he was standing next to Flozel or Free instead of going out in pattern.

I just want to take a moment to point out that this is a great discussion and excellent articles. Understanding those aspects of the offense that are strengths and those aspects that need continued development is the way to get better. However, I do just want to take a moment to get some perspective:

Footballoutsiders.com ranks the Cowboys as the #3 overall offense in the league last year. NE and NO are ranked #1 and #2, respectively.

Again, I want to be very clear that I enjoy the discussion and love to see how the team can improve, but before anybody starts talking about this person or that person being horrible or worthless, or anything at all hyperbolic like that, I do think it’s worth it to remember that this was a very good offense last year. I would like to see more points, translated to greater red zone success and an increased FG percentage, but I also am careful to consider the desire of having one’s cake and eating it to. I mean to say that it’s easy to wish for fewer sacks, but that could mean a rise in INTs. Nothing on the football field occurs in a vacuum.

So yes, decrease sacks, sure, but I would love to see more points. So, perhaps it would be interesting to know more about when our sacks occurred. How did we rank in terms of red zone sacks? What about on potential go-ahead drives? What about early in the season versus late?