Dallas Cowboys Game Tape Review: Defense

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

Thanks for the Football 101. It's very unusual for a D giving up over 4.5 Yds/Att to suddenly become a monster inside the 10. Of course it's harder to run inside the 10 because your options are cut down. But the same guys on the DL are still on the field inside the 10. And they're going against the same OL that has been kicking their ass up and down the field. Fine, you can put 9 in the box, but now I've got an extra TE and a power run formation. Bottom line, the chances of a D giving up a huge yds/att number and stuffing the opponent consistently inside the 10 is slim.

We actually were whipped in the run game, but because of piss-poor coaching and Garrett being to much of a "genius" for his own good Dallas didn't take advantage.

You made a logical jump somewhere and I lost you. My bad.

We agree on the Cowboys' management of the game being a huge component in only getting 7 points. We didn't play "7 points" good on defense that day.

I have little concept of how you've interpreted what I've written about our run defense. I argued that:

1) We didn't give up big plays, runs or passes
2) Dallas can't play whole-field, slow-paced football the way we forced them to play
3) Other teams are going to throw on us frequently as well
4) If we can perform like we did against Dallas with just seven guys in the box, and play the run to the level we did, we'll be fine

I'm a little confused about why people are concerned about getting our run defense to post sub 4.0 YPC numbers. It'd be nice for sure to excel in all facets of the game, but if teams actually ran the ball 60% of the time against us because they thought they could sustain an offense that way, I'd be thrilled. That's good for us.

I don't remember saying anything about having a great red zone rushing defense one way or the other. I feel that if we put a lot of guys in the box to stop the run, teams are going to throw on us there too.