I'd have to say this was about as encouraging a loss as the Cowboys could have. Their O-line was dominant and their top 3 receivers all looked amazing. And it's obvious they have for the most part excellent personnel on the defnsive side of the ball and that they'll do better against a lesser offense than Minnesota's... the only huge concern they should have at the moment is that secondary.
I agree that our passing was good. Our O-line did a good job. Our rushing yards weren't that great with only 74 yards but we were playing catch up the entire game so we were airing it out most of the time. The D, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired. The pass rush was non-existent. Their QB had all day long to pick and choose where he wanted to throw the ball. They ran the ball pretty well. We had poor tackling. The D didn't make a play the entire game. The secondary was just scary how bad they were. I don't like our chances if this is how our D will be. Eddie George has been a major disappointment in my eyes. He did jack sh*t all preseason and he did jack sh*t his first game. Is this guy really washed up or just in a rut? He is rushing worse than Emmitt was when he was here. He should be relegated to third string if he keeps this up. I expect a lot more from him and I'm not seeing it. I think Parcells biggest blunder so far as coach of the Cowboys was his lack of aggressiveness in pursuing defensive players for our secondary early in the off-season. They did nothing and they were all snatched up by other teams. Now, he's saying none are available. Well, your damn right their unavailable cause you didn't go after them early on. So, now were stuck hoping our young, inexperienced players mature and improve. I hope this gamble pays off but, based on the preseason and first regular season game, this could be costly. Makes you wonder why they released Mario Edwards if they are so hard up in the secondary.
When someone asks me who my favorite NFL team is, I always give this reply: "Who are the Cowboys playing against this week?" -- droxford
*This sucks. I was going to post earlier and I had a pretty good post going along, but I screwed up and accidently had it deleted. I'll try posting what I had earlier, but I'll probably miss something* Eddie George has played pretty much to what I expected him to play. He had like 3.1 YPC, IIRC, which is about where I guessed he'd be around. He's still a little slow hitting the holes. I don't know if he is still looking to find a rhythm or if he is just that slow. If he could just hit the holes a bit better, he could probably get maybe .5 more YPC, especially behind LA and FA. I'm ok with Richie at the HB, mostly because I assume he'll do about the same amount of stuff as he did last year, although he'll probably run a little more. As for him and George,when I say he has a better burst, I was meaning he seemed to hit the holes better, not really have the speed to run to the outside, although he probably does that better than George as well; I think he had like a 30+ yd run in the preseason which was on an outside run. I'm not really concerned with the running game. We seemed to run ok, even without JJ and for some strange reason, the urge to run to the outside with our slower backs against a fast Vikings defense; I don't know why we just didn't keep running behind LA and FA. If we were going to run to the outside, I would have rather had Lee running. Hopefully, JJ will be good to go next game and he may be able to help out on those outside runs. Even if the running game sucks, which I doubt, we won 10 games last year with a bad running game and the Pats did pretty good without one as well. Of course, those two teams did something else great which is my main concern... Man, that defense. I will say again that the D had some tough things to defend. Randy Moss, even without the stats, made the defense make mistakes just by being on the field. We had to keep at least one guy on him all the time, even when he was at the water cooler. With our secondary concerned over him, that allowed the other Vikings to step up, and they sure did. I never realized how good Daunte Culpepper was. He seemed to make a lot of good decisions. We could have blitz him more, to add a pass rush, but I'm sure that would have been suicide considering the coverage we would have on their receivers. Even if we did blitz him, he's such an athlete that he would just knock us over or just outrun us. I wish we could have gone against a 40 yr old QB. The defense did play bad, but it probably looked worse considering how good the Vikining's offense is. As for the mistakes in the offseason, I agree to some of them. I didn't really care so much at the time when Dallas decided to stick with Hunter and the others at CB instead of paying the big bucks for a CB who probably didn't quite deserve them. Since Edwards was nothing special and we still had the #1 defense last year, I thought at least one of the corners would step up and play well. Well, they haven't really and while Edwards still isn't special, the hole left by Woodson is pretty big, although it may have been almost filled up had we had a veteran DB to pick up the load. There goes my 20/20 hindsight. The Martin cut is something I didn't really understand as well. He is a good blocker and seemed to have improved on being versatile, which is something Parcells likes. I guess he wasn't versatile enough or something. The JJ pick, on the other hand, I'm ok with. I did want Jackson, but the idea of having 2 1st rd picks next year sounds pretty good. JJ probably isn't going to be a great back, but he does seem to have great speed and has the ability to be elusive, something the team needs from the running game. For this team, he is a good enough back, IMO. If worse comes to worse, we got 2 picks in the 1st rd next year to spend on a college back or we can trade them to a team who has had a bit better luck with running backs. Those are the thoughts I got right now. I do hope the injuries to Gurode and Walter aren't as bad as they thought. I think I read that it wasn't, but here's to hoping they aren't even more. We got great protection for Vinny and we need to keep that up.
