I don’t know if you guys noticed but I didn’t do a proper Scouting Report on Thursday. I didn’t have the Giants on Tivo, they were on a bye. You guys know me, if it isn’t on the tape, then it didn’t happen. Kind of like Parcells needing visual evidence of Bigfoot, even though he’s standing in the room. OK, that’s a little extreme - I could work my way through the stats and what I’ve read, blah, blah, and then write something, but I didn’t.
So here's my "conventional wisdom, everybody knows that" scouting report.
The Cowboys can’t let Brandon Jacobs be the star of the game. If he’s rolling, that puts everything in New York’s favor. The crowd will love it. They’ll keep the Cowboys offense off the field. They’ll greatly reduce the chance for turnovers. And if they can get a lead, they can unleash their pass rush in the second half. All that could happen, and Tony Romo might still find a way to win, but I wouldn’t like the odds. So stop Jacobs first, and I’m keeping an eye on Tank and see what he does in that regard.
Next, the offensive line has to play like it has played. Those guys have been sensational. I didn’t get why Madden wouldn’t put them on the horse trailer last week. Just grab a Cowboys star logo, use a Sharpie to write their names on it, and stick it up on the trailer. Back to the game, the line just needs to do the same work they’ve been doing all season, and we should be OK.
I know there are all kinds of other things that need to happen, or could happen, to make a difference. But I'll take an offensive line that gives our skill players the time to operate and a defense that stuffs the run and makes an offense one-dimensional every time.
Here’s a link dump of all things Cowboys/Giants for a Friday afternoon.
The Breerman on the Giants pass rush.
Mac Engel matches up the ‘95 Cowboys, the last Cowboys team to go 7-1 with the current team. Food for thought, but whoever did the formatting on the position-by-position table at the end needs to be fired. C’mon DFW S-T, get down with HTML table formatting. Please
The DMN blog clocks in with a few items of interest. We worked out a FB today.
The Cowboys worked former Chiefs FB Ronnie Cruz out today, presumably to see if he can help fill the void left by injured rookie Deon Anderson.
The 6-foot, 237-pounder spent 2005 and '06 with Kansas City. As a rookie, he backed up Tony Richardson. When Richardson left for Minnesota in 2006, Cruz became the starter at fullback, but tore his ACL in Week 5 and missed the remainder of the season. He also played on all special teams for the Chiefs, which would be key in replacing Anderson.
Also from the DMN blog, Isaiah Stanback was actually practicing some today and hasn’t been totally ruled out. The DMN blog also pointed me to this article in the New York press about reporters talking to Manning and asking all about Romo. The article then compares and contrasts the two QB’s. It’s a pretty good read.
But Romo already has one Pro Bowl berth versus none for Eli. Manning knows he will always lose charisma comparisons to Romo, who smiles and scrambles his way throughout games, boyishly wears a baseball cap backward on the sideline and plays with more outward joy than any Dallas quarterback since Dandy Don Meredith. Fine.
All you ever wanted to know about Plaxico Burress.
Don Banks has the Cowboys winning the NFC East.
Here’s a video breakdown of the Romo to T.O. TD from last week by Baldinger at the NFL Network. It doesn’t tell you anything new, but covers the play from multiple angles. Fun viewing.
All week I’ve noticed, as I’m sure you have, that the storyline for the Cowboys/Giants game has been about New York’s resurgence. That’s fine, it doesn’t bother me too much. But I got kind of got mad when I sat through a purported 4 minute video preview of the game from the NFL Network, only to discover that about 3 minutes and 30 seconds of it is about the Giants and shows Giants highlights. WTF? It’s supposed to be a preview of the game, where are the Cowboys?
If you’ve found other articles or stuff we should read, give us the link in the comments.