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Don’t let the Philadelphia Eagle game fool you, the Dallas Cowboys still have plenty of issues

The Dallas Cowboys traveled to Philadelphia yesterday. Both the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys are licking their wounds. Neither team was playing well. Both teams had huge problems on their offensive lines. Both Tony Romo and Michael Vick have been turning the ball over so frequently you have to wonder if there are bonus incentives in the contract to do just that. In my mind, the question wasn’t who was going to win this game. The question was who wasn’t going to lose.

Going into this game, I was highly critical of the Dallas Cowboys special teams. They’ve been especially awful. On Sunday, they turned in a mixed performance. DeWayne Harris ran back a punt. The special teams made a positive play, a welcome surprise. Brad Sham, long-time voice of the Cowboys, said that the Cowboys were first in the league at covering punts. Okay. That’s probably exactly right. Sham is rarely wrong, but we continually have kick returners fumbling the ball. On Sunday, it was no exception. Right after the defense gave up a cheap touchdown to Jeremy Macklin, Dunbar fumbled the subsequent kickoff. The Cowboys were lucky and were able to recover it. We simply can’t have that. Our punter shanked not one, but two punts. That’s not winning football.

Our number one draft choice, Morris Claiborne, was singed last week by Roddy White and Julio Jones. One would figure that he would try to make up for last week’s performance by playing a solid game this week. You would be wrong. Claiborne committed six penalties! Offsides and defensive holding were his specialties. Offsides? Seriously? I don’t get it. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-11-03T18:17:00-04:00November 12th, 2012|NFL|Comments Off

Cowboys came to play — finally

I predicted that the Atlanta Falcons would come in and dominate the Dallas Cowboys. Thankfully, I was wrong. If the Dallas Cowboys can play like this every time I predict they will lose, I’m going to predict a loss every week for the rest of the season. The Dallas Cowboys limited their turnovers. They still had eight penalties including, if I’m not mistaken, three defensive offsides. Yet, for the first time this year, it appears that the Cowboys play defense. I don’t know what was different today. The Cowboys simply got after Matt Ryan. He was harassed all day. He had a fumble plus two interceptions and four sacks. This is why the Cowboys won 37 – 21.

I don’t know what’s wrong with Roy Williams. In 14 games (including yesterday against the Falcons), Roy Williams has 31 catches for 428 yards and two touchdowns. He has yet to record a 100-yard game. Heck, the tight end for the Houston Texans had more than 100 yards receiving yesterday. Roy Williams may be Jerry Jones’s worst acquisition ever.

One of the big differences for the Dallas Cowboys over their last two games was that they had a receiver that actually got open — Miles Austin. Austin had another two touchdowns and had over 170 yards receiving. Maybe we should’ve listened to Michael Irvin when he said that Roy Williams probably belongs in the slot.

Two things happened today which made the Dallas Cowboys victory possible. First, Tony Romo did not turn over the ball. Romo made plays. He scrambled and got out of trouble and still made accurate throws, including a touchdown to Patrick Crayton in the back of the end zone. I cannot reiterate how important it is for the Cowboys not to turn over the ball in the league where parity exists. Also, Tony Romo found the accuracy he had lost for weeks. He was hitting wide-open receivers right on the numbers. Romo also scrambled lke he had to. The combination was a wonderfully effective game. Secondly, the defensive line came up huge. They put pressure on Matt Ryan, which he hasn’t seen in weeks. They also did a pretty good job of not letting Michael Turner run wild. The combination allow the Cowboys to have their best game in more than a year.

Now can the Cowboys keep this up for the rest of the year?

By ecthompsonmd|2009-10-26T01:13:20-04:00October 26th, 2009|Sports|Comments Off