Keys to the Cowboys game on Turkey Day

Although turnovers was a close second…..

I thought DezGate was media hype too but you’ll probably hear from a few of our resident “LoveDezHateTheFO” crowd……

He is an outstanding player who poses serious problems for any defense he faces. In another post I talked at length about Witten and the problems that he presents. In my somewhat incoherent post I said:

“As you mentioned earlier the first issue is figuring out what exactly to do about Jason Witten. He is absolutely lethal and may very well be the best Tight End we have faced all season (even including the frightening Rob Gronkowski). The yhave some similarities in body type and syle but Witten has more experience. He understands all zone coverage concepts and he recognizes defensive formations with a keen eye. He is lean and fast but also has awesome physical stature and power. As the old saying goes "As a defensive coach you can Roll speed, bracket quickness, but against immense frame, disciplined body positioning and ball skills you can either get beat or interfere." Witten is that good and its hard to put to much emphasis on him because the Cowboys have so many other weapons. One thing that i know teams have done with him and something ive seen teams do against Gates this season (notably KC on monday night week 8) is double him every snap in the redzone and shake up how you double him (what form of double coverage and with what personnel). Its a sacrifice that Nolan will consider. When we cover him man on Thursday it will mostly be with Burnet IMO, but Dansby, Mitchell and Sean Smith will all also get snaps against him.”

As for Dez Bryant I am more nervous about him than you are it seems. I preperation for the Bills last week i spent alot of time watchign them play over the few weeks prior on Game Rewind. So the Redskins, Jets and Cowboys games. What jumped out at me very quickly was how much a talented Bills secondary struggled to find any good matchups with Dez Bryant. Whether they covered him with Terrence McGee, Drayton Florence or Leodis McKelvin (and all three got snaps against him in man coverage) they struggled. He is similar in some ways to Brandon Marshall in his upper body size and ball skills.That type of reciever is incredibly hard to cover. Combined with the fact that The Bills were not able to put sufficient pressure on Romo and they were getting lit up.

As a defense we also have to be prepared for the deception the Cowboys use on offense (it isnt only the Ryan brothers). On example of a play is in the Bills game comes with 12.26 to play in the half, the Cowboys have just taken over after a missed field goal, first and ten with a 14-0 lead. The Cowboys came out in a trips set formation with Witten at the tip and at the line of scrimmage, Laurent Robinson behind and farther toward the sideline, Tony Fiametta at the bottom of the of the bunch formation. (Murray is the back and Dez Bryant is at the bottom of the screen single wide) The Bills are in an unbalanced 4-3 defense cheating toward the heavy side of the offesnive formation.Terrence Mcgee is covering Dez Bryant in press coverage at the bottom of the screen and Drayton Florence is playing zone at the top of the screen (fairly tpical response from an NFL defense to this look. The Bills are playing a two deep safety shell. Essentailly to make a long story short the Cowboys bring Fiametta in motion presnap to identify the coverage and send him into the flat which drags the outside linebacker (Danny Battan)with him. Witten runs an intermediate pattern into the middle of the field toward the first down marker through the zone coverage being played by Kelvin Sheppard and Geroge Wilson gets lured just a bit onto the route. Laurent Robinson runs a great route. Right at Drayton Florence and holds him in his zone, uses leverage and burns him with a double move. Drayton Florence and George Wilson both got out of position and payed the price for it badly. A well designed formation and play that froze the defense because of the unbalanced formation, good deception and intuitive sense upon the routes based on the look.
Our defense which relies so much on zone coverages has to be careful of these things.

but anyway I think it all comes down to our D if you think about it we could have won the Giants game Denver,Clevland and maybe the Texans game if our D played well enough in the fourt quarter and did not give up big plays

I didn’t do an all of the above because I was looking for what everyone thought was THE key to the game. My post states that all of these are keys.

I listed getting pressure on Romo because an uncomfortable Romo has horrid games based on recent and not so recent history.

big feet helped him walk on the snow

Is I can actually enjoy the Thanksgiving meal at 1 p.m. and not catch any flak for parking myself in front of the TV at 4 p.m. Can’t wait! Go Fins!

but I don’t think we got enough pressure up the gut on Romo. The pressure we got came from the edges and Romo eluded it long enough to complete some key passes in the 2nd half, and that doomed us in the end. From a lot of fans post-game comments I read, you would think we failed across the board. I thought the Fins played a complete game for the most part, and failed to make 1 or 2 key plays which was the difference between a W and an L. If our record going into this would have been 6-4 or 5-5, I think most fans would have said “great effort, tough luck”.

0-4 in the red zone on TD opportunities won’t win many games though.