I decided to jump into the posting rotation again after a two day absence. Working on an outside-the-blog project stole all my time but it's now finished. And unlike Chunky McNabb, I knew there was a deadline. Anyway, my absence was hardly missed as Rafael, Raul and Brandon were just killing it on Monday and Tuesday, with post after post. I love this blog merger.
Make the jump for some blog news and Pacman discussion.
The blog merger also brought us some records here at BTB, including the game day open threads. As Brandon posted yesterday, we had 3,286 comments on five threads. That's an all-time high by a large margin. You guys rock! I know some new members had some problems with the open threads here at BTB. I'm cataloging the suggestions I see and will send them to the tech team at SB Nation. Things like that won't change on this platform as easily as they might have with Raul on BSR. BTB is part of a network that has a great platform for blogging and much of it is run from a central location. Changes on each individual blog are limited to a few areas of control (mostly display options), the rest come from the mother-ship and have to be pushed out to all the blogs. So it can take a while to get some feature requests through the system. So be aware that I'm passing on the suggestions I see, but having them actually happen can take some time.
On using the open threads, I have some suggestions I posted before and here they are again. Keep the thread open in your browser. The comments automatically appear in the thread without the need to refresh. Use the ‘z' key to read new comments, the key will tab you through the comments and mark them as read. Then wait for new comments to come in, then hit 'z' again to read them. To post your comments, you can take the time to preview them then post them, or you can just hit ‘enter' twice when you've finished typing the comment and it will post. No need to scroll over to the ‘Post" button.
OK, I'm going to get back to football again as soon as I can watch the game again. I haven't even had time to do that this week. After that, maybe I can put together an abbreviated Film Review, although Raf has already covered a lot of that ground.
Adam "Pacman" Jones? Will the Commish put him back at the Ranch? We know Jerry Jones is going to take him back if he gets reinstated, and we should know the answer to that sometime later this week. A couple of articles about that here and here.
I've been all over the map about AJ. I didn't want him at first because I didn't trust him to stay out of trouble. But when I saw the trade terms I thought that was a pretty good deal so I tip-toed onto the bandwagon. Then when I saw him at camp and his play at corner at the beginning of the season, I went ahead and grabbed a seat on the band wagon. I wrote a few times that he was our best cover corner on the field, except when T-New was healthy, which hasn't been often this year. When Newman is on his game though, like against Moss, he can look like one of the best in the NFL. But Pacman's cover skills are pretty darn good and they looked like they were getting better as he was shaking the rust off. So having him back now, with Newman healthy and Mike Jenkins and Orlando Scandrick starting to get it, that would be a deep set of corners. Oh yeah, we have that guy Anthony Henry, too.
But I incurred a high ankle sprain jumping off the band wagon when he slipped up last month. I was totally frustrated with a guy being given a chance, after many chances, and knowing this was career-threatening is he messed up, and then he messes up. Yeah, the whole incident was more comical than menacing (fighting with your own bodyguard?) but he knew the deal.
I don't have any idea if the Commish will reinstate AJ, but if he does he's coming back to the Cowboys, Jerry has made that plain. One thing the Cowboys coaches have to do is get Jenkins and Scandrick continued reps in games if AJ is back on the team. You don't want to sit one of them all the time (Jenkins mainly because Scandrick is staying in the slot on the nickel) then have AJ mess up again and get suspended during crunch games in Dec/Jan. You need to have Jenkins rotating in for a good part of the game, he's getting better but game reps are the only sure way to keep that progression going. Maybe AJ can be the fourth CB for a while, until we get a better feel for how he's progressing
As far as him being a distraction, in normal circumstances on a normal team, this could be a huge distraction. But on the Dallas Cowboys, and during this year, it's more like throwing a twig on a raging bonfire; it's not going to make much of a difference. We have distractions to spare.
I think he could help us on defense and maybe in the return game. So I give the idea of his return to the team a mild thumbs-up.
Why in the world would he want Adam Jones on his team this season? Jones can't do anything positive for the Cowboys this year.