THE OFFENSE
Despite the loss of Tony Romo, the Cowboys offense was still pretty good. There were a lot of times where the play calling would make you scratch your head and one yard gains from Marion Barber became more frequent than Seinfeld reruns. Still, whether it be Romo or the resurgent Jon Kitna, the Cowboys were able to move the ball better than average for most of the year. A lot of this has to do with the skill of both Romo and Kitna and the receiving weapons the Cowboys have. Still, no one can be thrilled with this offensive machine that constantly had either broken parts, or squeaky cogs, throughout the entire season.
The problems start with the offensive line. Down right abysmal. This group was more than an achilles heel for this offense throughout the entire year. They were slow and weak the entire year. Aside from LT Doug Free, the unit seemed old, tired and lackadaisical. Colombo was repeatedly speed rushed into submission from the right side, Leonard Davis could barley get out of his stance before he was beat and Andre Gurode is so retarded he just snaps the ball whenever he's tired of squatting down. The smartest player on the line, Kyle Kosier, is constantly hampered with injuries. (His replacement Phil Costa is about as assertive as a mall security guard).The Cowboys have a collection of relics (plus the less talented Gronkowski) protecting their quarterbacks which is why Tony Romo finished the season on IR and why there was not so much of a pore for the running backs to run through.
The running game for the Cowboys was also rancid. Marion Barber is done. Finito! Get em out! His body once hit defenders like a massive bowling ball. Now he's rolling down the lane and knocking over no pins. In every single short yardage situation, supposedly his specialty, he hit the defenders like a pilates ball. Felix Jones did get more touches this season but he proved that, although gifted with great agility and speed, he truly needs to have the field opened up for him to cause any sort of measurable damage. Tashard Choice was banished to the bench for almost the entire season after his miscarriage in week one right before the half. I think he deserved a shot at more carries and he did get a few more at the end of the season. He proved that he was a talented back worthy of carries but he too, is nothing special.
The receiving corps and quarterbacks were the best part of this team in 2010... Tony Romo did not start the season as sharp but I still believe he is a good quarterback. His mobility often concealed the masquerade of an offensive line that the Cowboys shuffled onto the field every sunday. His balls were more inaccurate than usual to start the season but I think that he will take some cues from Jon Kitna's assertive leadership and come back extremely strong next season.
The receivers were inconsistent but showed us that they can be deadly next season. Dez Bryant looked like T.O. in his prime for much of the season until his ankle injury. Although he often doesn't know the routes to run, he was almost uncoverable. Roy Williams had his bad moments at terrible times (game-changing fumbles) but he also caught a lot of important passes this year and showed that he can contribute. He will be a good third receiever should the Cowboys choose to retain him. Miles Austin looked fantastic early on but seemed to disappear as the season stretched on. He did catch a good amount of touchdowns but his stats toward the end of the season were unimpressive. He dropped a lot of balls and it seemed that the big contract he recieved over the off-season has tainted his focus. I still think he has a few things to prove. Jason Witten started off slow and I thought that his skills were in decline. He was not the big play threat as much this season but a lot of that has to do with the QB. He still led the league in TE receptions and eclipsed the 1,000 yd mark again. He is well on his way to Canton.
Now that Garrett is officially the coach we can finally turn the page on this disgrace of a season and look ahead. More analysis of what the Cowboys need to do ahead.
Friday, January 7, 2011
2010 Season Wrap-up: Defense
THE DEFENSE
After Wade, the lugubrious play of the defense was a main culprit in this season's failure. Check this: No Cowboys defense has ever...NEVER EVER...given up as many points as this wretched group did this season. Whatever idiot suggested that Alan Ball could be a starting safety in the NFL should be run over multiple times with a dump truck. My gripes with the defense have to start with Ball. He, along with Gerald Sensebaugh, ran a secondary that allowed Quarterbacks to drop back, lick their lips, and FEAST on the Cowboys defense all season. The corner backs did not play well (See Jenkins v. Green Bay, or Philadelphia...Newman looked like an old man... Scandrick's overachieving finally caught up with him) but seemingly on every touch down the Cowboys gave up through the air, our last image was of Alan Ball running off screen a few seconds too late. A lot of the times that the CB's looked like they were beat, it was obvious that they were expecting help from the saftey's over the top...help that rarely came. Then I had to be repeatedly insulted by Alan Ball's tennis ball tackles where he would bounce right off of anything that moved. (Also...Dave Campo, the secondary coach, sucked as a head coach and clearly still sucks as an assistant coach. He might be less than 5 feet tall and you expect players to listen to him? Get him out).
The play of the linebackers also suffered this year. Bradie James and Keith Brooking both looked straight up OLD. For some reason the Cowboys are afraid to play high draft picks so Sean Lee wasn't even given much of a chance to spell the two aging linebackers until late in the season. What did we find out? Lee (if he stays healthy) can be one helluva line backer. Brooking, while his pregame speeches are still fiery, is just too old to be a starting lineback in the NFL. On the outside Anthony Spencer made a great effort to make everyone forget about his great efforts on the field last year. He played most of the season as if he actually didn't know where the Quarterback lined up on the field, because I rarely saw Spencer in that general area. On the other side, Demarcus Ware did lead the league in sacks with 15.5 sacks but it seems that during some of the key games this season, when the boys backs were against the wall, Demarcus was also shut out a lot of the time.
The big guys down in the trenches on the defensive front also significantly lacked in production this year. Jay Ratliff, arguably one of the best nose tackles in the game had a subpar year, his sack and tackle totals diminishing by 1/3 compared with his average of the past two years. In a 3-4 defense the ends and tackles are not normally supposed to accumulate mind-blowing stats but the bottom line is Igor Olishanksy, Stephen Bowen and Jason Hatcher were not eating up enough space for the linebackers to make plays in the running game and they, along with the rest of the (very vanilla) defense, failed to pressure any quarterback with any form of consistency. The entire, and by that I mean every single player with the exception of D-Ware, defense could use an upgrade. (Obviously this is impossible in 1 offseason, so lets start at saftey and work our way forward).
After Wade, the lugubrious play of the defense was a main culprit in this season's failure. Check this: No Cowboys defense has ever...NEVER EVER...given up as many points as this wretched group did this season. Whatever idiot suggested that Alan Ball could be a starting safety in the NFL should be run over multiple times with a dump truck. My gripes with the defense have to start with Ball. He, along with Gerald Sensebaugh, ran a secondary that allowed Quarterbacks to drop back, lick their lips, and FEAST on the Cowboys defense all season. The corner backs did not play well (See Jenkins v. Green Bay, or Philadelphia...Newman looked like an old man... Scandrick's overachieving finally caught up with him) but seemingly on every touch down the Cowboys gave up through the air, our last image was of Alan Ball running off screen a few seconds too late. A lot of the times that the CB's looked like they were beat, it was obvious that they were expecting help from the saftey's over the top...help that rarely came. Then I had to be repeatedly insulted by Alan Ball's tennis ball tackles where he would bounce right off of anything that moved. (Also...Dave Campo, the secondary coach, sucked as a head coach and clearly still sucks as an assistant coach. He might be less than 5 feet tall and you expect players to listen to him? Get him out).
The play of the linebackers also suffered this year. Bradie James and Keith Brooking both looked straight up OLD. For some reason the Cowboys are afraid to play high draft picks so Sean Lee wasn't even given much of a chance to spell the two aging linebackers until late in the season. What did we find out? Lee (if he stays healthy) can be one helluva line backer. Brooking, while his pregame speeches are still fiery, is just too old to be a starting lineback in the NFL. On the outside Anthony Spencer made a great effort to make everyone forget about his great efforts on the field last year. He played most of the season as if he actually didn't know where the Quarterback lined up on the field, because I rarely saw Spencer in that general area. On the other side, Demarcus Ware did lead the league in sacks with 15.5 sacks but it seems that during some of the key games this season, when the boys backs were against the wall, Demarcus was also shut out a lot of the time.
The big guys down in the trenches on the defensive front also significantly lacked in production this year. Jay Ratliff, arguably one of the best nose tackles in the game had a subpar year, his sack and tackle totals diminishing by 1/3 compared with his average of the past two years. In a 3-4 defense the ends and tackles are not normally supposed to accumulate mind-blowing stats but the bottom line is Igor Olishanksy, Stephen Bowen and Jason Hatcher were not eating up enough space for the linebackers to make plays in the running game and they, along with the rest of the (very vanilla) defense, failed to pressure any quarterback with any form of consistency. The entire, and by that I mean every single player with the exception of D-Ware, defense could use an upgrade. (Obviously this is impossible in 1 offseason, so lets start at saftey and work our way forward).
Cowboys 2010 Season Wrap-up Part 1
I call this the 2010 season wrap-up but the season was really wrapped up 3 years ago when the Cowboys hired Wade Phillips. One could argue that the season was over as soon as the feebily inept Alex Barron held Brian Orakpo in the season opener against the Redskins. Perhaps it was the week after their bye when Marc Colombo receieved a crucial "excessive" celebration penalty for essentially falling down, setting up Chris Johnson and the Titans with great field position to punch in the winning ticket against the befuddled Cowboys. Maybe it was that fateful first Giants game when Tony Romo squirmed on the turf, his 2010 season expired. The straw that broke the camel's back was the debacle against the Green Bay Packers. The Cowboys were embarrassed up and down the field. Mike Jenkins played with his balls in his stomach, and the rest of defense acted like children who know nothing of personal pride. At this point, the last flame had been doused, the 2010 Cowboys season, one that began with such grand expectations, was painfully extinguished.
Under Interim coach Jason Garrett the Cowboys rebounded, somewhat, and finished with a 6-10 record. Still, this season will go down as the most dissappointing and most repulsive in the franchise's history. Never in NFL history, has a team been touted so highly and stumbled so far before the burden of those expectations. There are many reasons for this collapse and I am surprised that more people didn't see it coming. It all must start with the coaching style of Wade Phillips. At best, he's been a moderately decent NFL coach throughout his career. No one should be impressed with his 1 playoff win with a team as talented as the Cowboys have been under him. He ran camp cupcake in the preseason every year and the very moment that Dez Bryant was injured in this year's pre-season, baseball caps replaced helmets. The ending result? One of the softest, under-achieving, pudding-cake teams in the entire league and one of the most despicable regular season's in franchise history.
Under Interim coach Jason Garrett the Cowboys rebounded, somewhat, and finished with a 6-10 record. Still, this season will go down as the most dissappointing and most repulsive in the franchise's history. Never in NFL history, has a team been touted so highly and stumbled so far before the burden of those expectations. There are many reasons for this collapse and I am surprised that more people didn't see it coming. It all must start with the coaching style of Wade Phillips. At best, he's been a moderately decent NFL coach throughout his career. No one should be impressed with his 1 playoff win with a team as talented as the Cowboys have been under him. He ran camp cupcake in the preseason every year and the very moment that Dez Bryant was injured in this year's pre-season, baseball caps replaced helmets. The ending result? One of the softest, under-achieving, pudding-cake teams in the entire league and one of the most despicable regular season's in franchise history.
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