When you’re America’s
team (say what you want about it) there will always be hate surrounding you. The
hates comes from the love that so many people have for the Dallas Cowboys.
Either that or they have beaten your favorite team in route to five super bowl
championships. So either you love the Cowboys or you love to hate the Cowboys, which
ever one it is, you have some love for the Cowboys.
I would like to take time to address the Stephen A
Smith’s of the world. The haters that love to spout out that “the Cowboys will
find a way to mess it up”, or “they’re a disaster waiting to happen.” Tony Romo
breaking a bone in his back isn’t considered a disaster waiting to happen. He
got hurt! Injuries are a part of the game. Had it not been for that Romo injury
the Cowboys would have made the postseason three straight years and may have
won a championship by now. The other type of hater I want to address is the sophomore
slump, and the “figured out” hater.
Many Cowboys hatters are hoping and praying that Dak
somehow falls back to earth, or isn’t as good as he looked last season. Look at
that from the other side, maybe last season was Dak’s floor instead of his ceiling.
What if Dak can improve on last year and turns out to be an all time great?
Those haters will be waiting a long time for something that will never come.
Last season Dak’s main job was protect the football! He
didn’t have to throw the ball 30 times, or complete 70% of his passes, or throw
for 300 yards a game. Even while protecting the football he posted a 104.9
quarterback rating, completed 67% of his passes and had a 5-1 touchdown to
interception ratio. That is what you call efficient! He didn’t have to throw
for 300 yards to get the job done. He didn’t need 40 pass attempts to move the
offense down the field. Prescott did all this while only throwing 4 interceptions.
I would say he did his job extremely well. This upcoming season he will have
time to review tape to see some of the mistakes he made. He will have a full
offseason to prepare as the starting quarterback (he was 3rd on the
depth chart until the third week of the pre-season). The point is, I don’t see
a sophomore slump coming. Even if his number drop slightly, say his completion percentage
drops to 63%, or his QBR drops to 100 he will still rank in the top 10. Dak has
shown the poise on and off the field, and the drive to be great. It will be
hard to lose all that in one offseason.
Now, for this “Figured out” notion. What is meant by the
Cowboys will be figured out? Will defenses stop the run game, will teams force
the Cowboys into more turnovers, what? In two of the last three season, the
leading rusher has come from the Dallas Cowboys. Darren Mcfadden even crack
1000 yards in the one season the Cowboys didn’t have the leading rusher. The
Cowboys have a running game that works, running the ball has been and effective
philosophy since the beginning of football. Thirty four super bowl winners have
ranked in the top 10 in rushing yardage. There isn’t anything to figure out
about the Cowboys. They are a run first team and have one of the better
offensive lines in the league. Zeke is also a very good running back. The
Cowboys are becoming the Broncos from the late 90s and early 2000s, when Shanahan was able to
produce an 1000 yard rusher every year. The scheme works and the pieces in the
scheme are very good. The only way to figure out the Cowboys is to stop the
run. Maybe defensive ends will stay home on the bootleg, maybe middle
linebackers and safties won’t get frozen by the play action, or maybe that won’t
matter. At the end of the day, teams will have to line up man for man and bang
in the trenches with the best offensive line in football. It won’t matter what
Dak does if teams allow five yards a carry. Aside from the defensive issues the
Cowboys have, there will be nothing to figure out. To all haters instead of
saying “They will get figured out this season”, try saying “My team better stop
that rushing attack.”
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