I finally got to go back and watch the game again for a film review. But since it’s already Wednesday and the Breerman did an excellent takedown of the game here, I went through it relatively quickly. So below is not a true film review, just some surface observations of the game.
I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with Tony Romo. I counted eight passes before his injury that were off-target, some wildly off. He had receivers open but just couldn’t hit them. After he got hurt with 10 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter, he really looked about the same as before. He had a few pass that sailed wildly that probably were influenced by the thumb, but he also made some solid completions after that, too. He really whacked his hand on Leonard Davis’ helmet, in slow-motion you could really see that was the injury moment. One thing I did notice is that he got impatient in the redzone. He had T.O. open on a crossing pattern but he threw it too soon. He needed to wait another half-second for Owens to clear the linebacker and the referee. Another time he threw to Sam Hurd in the corner of the endzone but if had waited a bit longer Jason Witten was one-on-one with a linebacker and was just beating him to the inside.
I thought Bradie James bounced back to have a really good game. He got the sack on a flea-flicker play because he waited to diagnose the play and realized it was a pass and no one was coming through his zone. So he just shot the middle to get the sack. He also had another good middle pass rush combined with some good play against the run game.
It was good to see Anthony Spencer get two big hits on McNabb on third downs to ruin the plays. The kid is going to be a player once he gets more time on the field and little more experience. Like learning when to follow the RB into the flats, he gave up a big play to Westbrook out there.
Jay Ratliff was everywhere, he had a fantastic game. Tank Johnson also had a couple of good plays running down a screen pass and deflecting a pass at the goal line.
Kyle Kosier struggled a little bit in the game. He wiped out a 3rd down conversion with a holding call and got beat into the backfield on a couple of occasions.
The Breerman says that Chris Mortensen says that Bill Parcells will probably take the VP of Football Operations job in Atlanta.
The Breerman’s take:
It should be noted that the Tuna's got a sparkling rep for cleaning up some mighty messy situations. When he took over the Giants, they'd posted just one winning season in the previous decade. The Jets and Pats were long-time laughingstocks, who'd combined to go 3-33 in the year before Parcells. And the Cowboys were 5-11 three years in a row prior the Tuna's arrival, and still feeling the effects of hanging on to a decaying dynasty for too long.
Still, I'm not sure any of those circumstances were quite the disaster that this one in Atlanta is. But history's proven that betting against the big guy in the face of adversity's not real smart.
Update [2007-12-19 15:31:52 by Dave Halprin (Grizz)]: ESPN now says that Parcells won't join the Falcons and indicated that Miami revised an offer to him so he might be leaning towards a job in South Florida. [END UPDATE]