Carolina at Dallas

This is basically the battle of surprise teams out of the NFC. Both teams have had some guys step up, almost out of no where, to lead there team on. Hopefully, we can do it better than them.

Carolina will be pretty tough to run against, I think, and QC will probably get some pressure from the front seven. Carolina's D-Line is pretty good and won't let much get through, I imagine. Kind of sucks to play these good defenses right when the offense begins to go on a slump, though that may be a chicken/egg thing.

The bottom line of Dallas is to score points. I read an article somewhere about defense can't win you anything. Dallas has played GREAT D lately, but haven't won. TB was held to 16 points, pretty much around that good D threshold, and NE scored 12. That right there is some great defense. Kind of reminds me of my high school basketball game that we played last week. We held a team to 7pts in the 1st, 21 in the half, and 41 in the game, but that was meaningless since we could barely get past 20 ourselves for the whole game. Defense is a great thing to have, and makes things easier, but we need some offense so that we don't lose games where the other team is in that >20 area.

Now, I know that is a lot easier said that done. The other teams' D have been playing Dallas very well, especially Quincy. Couple that with a running game that doesn't help too much, and struggles should occur. However, we've had our shots a few times these past few weeks. There have been maybe 1 or 2 "big play" opportunities for Dallas that we just haven't been able to take advantage of. It is a over/underthrown ball by Quincy, a dropped pass by our receivers, a penalty on somebody, or our RB's just needing to make one move to go from a 5yd gain to a 25 yd gain.

Of course, it sure would help if we could get some points from special teams, or the defense.

BTW, Adrian Murrell got waived, for those who didn't hear, so that they could resign Jamal Brooks, who would provide some insurance in case Al Singleton, who is probable with a shoulder injury, can't go. It sounded like they didn't want to let a young guy go, only to get picked up by someone else. Murrell, at 33, doesn't really have that same risk with him. I've liked what I've seen from him, so maybe we could get him back after this game.

Also, Kurt Vollers, who's been taking the place of Ryan Young when he has been hurt, has apparently done well enough to at least challenge Young at that spot. Don't be surprised to see some things happen on the O Line that you didn't expect.

 

Sorry for posting so long after the game, but I've been kind of busy. I guess non-Cowboy fans will have to wait another couple of hours so that they won't see this on the 1st page.

Interesting game that was played, that's for sure. With the way Dallas has been playing, I would have expected a combine score in the 20-25 range, let alone both teams scoring in that range. I guess our offense was finally able to step up and help the D, which had some problems today...(though I think the refs may have had some say...) We still didn't run the ball too well, but maybe it was just me, but Troy seemed to be running with a little better, especially in the 2nd half. He still wasn't getting a lot of yds, but he seemed to be doing a little better than usual, all against a great Carolina D-Line.

Of course, a big problem on offense that we have is getting the ball to our WR's. Quincy has been a little off in some of his passes, but I also think that the WR's need to catch the ball. I'm not saying Quincy is throwing great, or even good, but I think that if he can get the ball to touch your hands, you should catch it. I realize that some of the catches were hard to make with a defense, and being off-balance, reaching out to catch a bullet pass, but we don't have a MVP QB, and if he can get it in you hands, you should catch it. There were a lot of passes that were incomplete that went off guys' hands. The commentators seemed to put a lot of the blame on Quincy, but I didn't quite agree. (then again, Troy Aikman may not quite understand. ) Of course, Antonio Bryant had a HOOOOOORRIBLE game. It must be his confidence or something because he was making some spectacular catches last year and now he can't even catch the simple ones that hit his hands with no defender near him. Hopefully, it should come back to him, but the Cowboys can't wait too long for him if they continue to struggle offensively. At least Witten is starting to show up. I really liked getting him in the draft.

On defense, it was obvious that we were getting beat on our little blitz coverage thing. Teams are beginning to pick apart Newman, who I, as well as others I assume, thought could easily man up on a guy going deep and not let him get the ball. He is a rookie, but if we are going to continue to blitz, which we may do since we don't have a great pass rushing d-line, he will need to learn how to be aware of where the ball is.

Got a game Thursday against Miami, and only a few days to plan for it...granted, so does Miami. Basically, the rest of the games are all huge games, especially with the emergence of Philadelphia.