Usually, I'm reluctant to post Randy Galloway articles because I think his constant negativity, his sensationalism for entertainment purpose only, and his sloppy writing are things I could do without. But he definitely has the most interesting article out there today, so go check it out. There are a lot of quotes from Mike Zimmer about what went wrong in December.
"I will say the 3-4 didn't have anything to do with how badly we played in those final four weeks. Then, in Seattle, we kind of got it going again, and I saw some reason for hope."
But in that playoff ouster, [Roy] Williams was beaten twice in coverage for touchdowns, and on one of those, [Bradie] James was also burned.
"Well, we couldn't cover anybody for four weeks," Zimmer added. "Teams were spreading it out on us, and we were attempting to stay in base coverage."
Why? After a long pause, Zimmer said, "I don't have an answer for that."
There it is, they had no answer for the adjustments that teams made against us. That was the most frustrating thing about the end of the season. The Cowboys just didn't seem interested in making any adjustments to counteract the beating they were taking.
We've heard plenty of conversation about how the Saints, specifically Sean Payton, knew how to beat us and exposed that to the rest of the league. For me, this is a little too simplistic. Teams play against their former coaches and players all the time, so it's not like playing Payton was a novel occurrence that was somehow special. Even if Payton did expose our defense - and offense to some extent - this happens all the time in the NFL. It's how you bounce back, it's how you recover and make adjustments so that it doesn't happen again that really matters. But the Cowboys never did that, and that's my greatest disappointment with Parcells and Zimmer down the stretch. They refused to make the required changes to get the team going again.
Asked what he would have changed, scheme-wise, for next season -- Big Bill permitting, of course -- Zimmer said, "create more problems for the offense and get more DBs in there for coverage."
A week ago Tim Cowlishaw declared Bill Parcells done in Dallas, now he's not so sure.
Capers' new deal is for three years and an estimated $8.1 million, team sources confirmed. His salary in 2007 will be $2.6 million, equal to that of Washington Redskins assistant head coach/defense Gregg Williams, but Capers will get raises of at least $100,000 per year in 2008 and 2009.
Capers' current deal was set to expire on Sunday; he would have been able to talk with other teams, but he would not have been able to sign with another team until Feb. 1.