FanPost

The Good, the Bad, and the Dak, Week 3: Philadelphia at Dallas

The Good:

1. Balanced Offense: People can always enjoy individual games where one player has a great day... a lone running back has over 100 yards rushing, a QB throws for close to 500 yards in the game, a receiver has multiple touchdown catches. They're always good statistically for that player, and sometimes they even help the team win. However, showing a balanced offense in many ways is better... For if opposing defenses are at a loss on whether to guard against Dak and the receivers or Zeke and Pollard in the same game, that can improve a lot of things going forward.

2. Zeke and Pollard on the ground: Both had very good nights, under a hundred yards individually, but Zeke was only 5 yards short of that, had 2 touchdowns and averaged 5.6 yards per carry and while Pollard only had 60 yards... he only had 11 carries and still averaged 5.5 yards per carry. In this, both RBs had a very good day.

3. The Defense: I'll admit I've been down on this unit a bit to start the year... and they were a bit of concern coming into the game, but the unit played well forced points and only gave up 14 points to the Eagles, and with one of those two scores coming in "garbage time." The unit got turnovers, one of the rookie DTs got a sack, Parsons was all over the place, and even Jaylon Smith played reasonably well. Now, granted, this was against the Eagles... but if the defense can put up more nights like this... they'll take a huge step up from last year.

4. Offense in the Red Zone: This has been something that people have loved to complain about... "the Cowboys are bad because they can't score in the red zone... they never score in the red zone..." Well they scored today. They got there 5 times, and Zeke had two TD runs and Dak had two TD passes... and would have had a TD run if it weren't for the "indisputable evidence rule" on replay.

5. Smart coaching decisions: McCarthy had some good moments in this game, and I like the decision to go for it the two times they did it. For one thing, the Eagles offense never really got going and two they came in situations where we were in a position to put them away with the attempt. One worked... and one should have...

The Bad:

1. Biadasz and Williams: In many respects they didn't do too bad... but at the same time, both seemed to have trouble with whoever was opposite them. Biadasz got bowled over Hargrave that lead to the first Eagles score of the night, a fumble in the end zone, and Williams ended up having a few holding penalties that hurt the Cowboys trying to move the ball. Now, on one drive those penalties were overcome and at times both did well enough to allow Zeke and Pollard to run and gave Dak time to throw... but they were still a big part of things that did not go well, what few things there were.

2. Bad coaching decisions: McCarthy, while he made the right call to go for it in the Eagles end of the field... he ALSO made some bad decisions going into the half. Now, granted he'd lost a time out to a failed challenge, but as the first half ended, the defense stopped the Eagles and he had the opportunity to get the ball back to his offense to get a score going into the half. And yet there was never a time out called. He had two to use and didn't use them. The defense forced the punt, but there was only a few seconds left before halftime by the time that Dak came onto the field.

3. Indisputable evidence: That is what cost the Cowboys a touchdown on a QB sneak. The call on the field was that Dak didn't make it in... and from the field in real time, particularly where Dak was when the whistles were finally blown, I could see the original call. BUT he DID get in. You could see in the replays that he got a bit of a push and did extend the ball forward when viewed from above. And that was the only camera angle where you could see where the ball was...

And the ESPN announcers even said they felt it was a score based on what they could see, but they noted that the angle from above was not directly over the goal line, and thus couldn't be definitive and the angles from the sides that were more in line with the goal line didn't give a clear view of the ball. And this then becomes a problem. If all angles NEED to show concrete evidence, the above camera angle needs to move so that they can look down on the goal line, particularly when one knows the offense is going to try a QB sneak.

In this, that's a failure on ESPN's part to not have cameras that could show things definitively from every angle. I'd also argue the refs had poor judgement in not recognizing Dak did get a small push from the one inch line and did extend the ball forward, and know that logically the ball had to have crossed the plane. It's not like he has tiny arms.

4. Eagles play calling: Now, I don't normally bring in the other team in these segments... but in this case, this really plays a role in the game. Much of the greatest worries on defense last year came from the fact that our defensive front couldn't stop anyone. Teams could run on first down and run on second down... and some never even saw third down. It became something where our pass defense was irrelevant last year because we couldn't stop the run. And through the first two games where Tampa Bay as a team averaged 4.3 yards per rush and the Chargers averaged 5 yards per rush... the rush defense wasn't all that much better this year from last year. It's better... but not by much.

As such, I figured that the Eagles would look at our offense, look at their defense, particularly when they lost another defensive player trying to tackle Zeke during the game, and say, "the best we can do is run the ball. It'll open things up for Hurts in the passing game, it will keep the Dallas offense off the field, and could lead to points." It would seem like a common sense thing to do. But for reasons I can't fathom... they refused to run the ball, unless your counting Hurts running, and many of these were plays that were intended as passes and he had no one open and was escaping pass rushers... and even Hurts only had 9 carries. And the Dallas defense did largely limit Hurts...

But they did struggle with Miles Sanders who averaged 13.5 yards per carry... but he only had two carries through the entire game. They barely ran if at all and essentially ran a game plan that helped our defense, and then hurt them. And by halftime... even if the Eagles realized, "hey we need to run more," the lead was reaching a point that they couldn't run the ball. So, on one level, I thank them for an incredibly bad game plan... but that should still be a warning to the defense as well to work on dealing with the run defense. Because not every team is going to decide to not run the ball as the Eagles did.

The Dak: Dak's night was good... He had some deep passes, including the 40 yard strike to Lamb that set up the first TD, and the 22 TD yard pass to Schultz in the 4th quarter. And at 21/26 he completed 81% of passes, which then means even if most of his passes where short, he was still effective with those passes to move the sticks and ultimately lead drives that would lead to points. Three TDs, including two thrown inside the 20, are all very good things.

In this, there wasn't too much that went bad with Dak's night. One could argue he held the ball to long at times, including the sack/fumble in the first quarter that lead to the first Eagles score, but these instances weren't that frequent. Someone might also argue on that he didn't throw for a lot of yards... and sure, that'd be something for stat-heads to argue about, but between completion percentage, touchdowns, and effectiveness in the red-zone and the fact that the Dallas offense as a whole wasn't running through one guy, complaining about yards would seem rather... odd.

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