If you want balance, grab a chair at your local yoga studio or head to a Barnum & Bailey show to enjoy the trapeze act. For the Dallas Cowboys, and every other NFL team today looking to regain the ever-elusive Lombardi Trophy, it’s not about balancing – it’s about winning games. And to do that, you have to be relentlessly committed to adapting to what’s happening right in front of you, in real time, every time. So when the Cowboys walked off the field in Week 1 with a 31-29 loss to Tom Brady and reigning Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it wasn’t because they weren’t balanced in the run / pass game.
This is because despite having an excellent flight plan, they encountered self-inflicted turbulence. That said, pointing out the reasons the Cowboys actually lost isn’t the same as demonstrating the reasons they could have, and that’s why here: separate the two.
Entering the contest, the Cowboys knew they would face the best running defense in the NFL. That was supposed to be a challenge in itself, but let’s dig deeper into this point. Ezekiel Elliott, the two-time league champion who looks quicker, quicker and in the best shape of his footballing life, was still ready to face Ndamukong Suh, Vita Vea, William Gholston and Jason Pierre-Paul on Thursday night , and Travis Frederick wasn’t coming out of the tunnel for the Cowboys – leaving it to a sophomore talent Tyler Biadasz to avoid being intimidated by an extremely underrated Vea.
Plus, eternal All-Pro Zack Martin was also not going out of the locker room, booked for the COVID-19 roster just before Thursday and, as such, leaving a capable Connor McGovern (but not Martin-esque) in tandem with Biadasz while trying to dig tracks through a steel wall with a steak knife. And this is by no means a blow to Biadasz or McGovern – two very good players with huge potential – but rather to point out that they were simply overwhelmed, meaning the Cowboys had to look elsewhere for vulnerability.
Spoiler alert: They found him in high school and it made every yard of Prescott’s night meaningful.
Protection around the Cowboys’ edges was mostly stellar, with the returning starting tackles Tyron Smith and La’el Collins true to form, and it allowed Dak Prescott to unleash hell in the pass attack. Although he hasn’t played meaningful football (or much) in the previous 333 days and recently overcame a strained shoulder in August, Prescott illuminated the Buccaneers for 403 passing yards and three touchdowns. His only interception was a rope frozen through a keyhole in a triple blanket to widen CeeDee Lamb, but it became one of Lamb’s many falls and turned into a cutting edge drill for the Buccaneers’ opportunistic defense.
Over, It was Prescott and Amari Cooper who won the Super Bowl winning program from defensive coordinator Todd Bowles to the task, and often, to the point of frustration and anger visible on Bowles’ face at many points in the contest. If you had asked Bowles during the game if he would like the Cowboys to have more balance and instead retreat from Prescott’s onslaught to drive Elliott more and more into a wall with no windows or doors, he I would have given you a resounding “yes”.
And that’s why the Cowboys didn’t, because it was the wrong thing to do, and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore knew it. Prescott did too, and that’s why, although Moore initially called 28 scoring games, he allowed Prescott to come out of the script and change 12 – Moore said on Monday – based on the look. defensive on the line of scrimmage.
Ah, the adaptation.
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Moore and Prescott hinted at a seemingly fluid game plan in the early scripted parts of the game, when Prescott walked the field in the first offensive practice, mixing movement and a variety of routes that threatened a touchdown if not two drops. keys by Lamb and a false start penalty that blocked practice and resulted in a punt. Prescott moved the ball with relative ease from the Cowboys 2-yard line to the Buccaneers 44-yard line on a series that included six attempted passes for just three points, a 2-to-1 ratio that put Bowles and the Buccaneers on notice they would have to shoot if they wanted to survive Prescott’s return.
Was the punt due to Elliott not receiving three more transfers to strike a perfect balance? No, that’s because Lamb didn’t catch the ball when it was targeted and opened, and because the offensive line landed a penalty. Brady and the Buccaneers then scored a touchdown in the next possession, after being stopped in their first game, on a nine-game run that covered 94 yards in four minutes and nine seconds and included seven and only pass attempts. colon – – essentially doing what Prescott almost did, except for his receivers (Rob Gronkowski, Antonio Brown and Chris Godwin) who all made their catches.
Did the Bucs score on this record because of the balance?
No. That’s because no one dropped any catchable Brady shots on that possession.
And so it was that Prescott and Brady had a shootout that saw the former surpass the runner-up in all categories except the win column, but defeat does not depend on how many attempts Elliott does. did not get. Not only was Elliott mentally okay with letting Prescott cook, but he was in the trenches providing support as a pass blocker in Martin’s absence to ensure Prescott could cook – adapting his role in favor of giving the Cowboys a very real chance to shock the world in week 1.
Elliott finished with just 33 yards rushing on 11 attempts, and just looking at the stat line would make you think that’s unacceptable in a $ 100 million running back loss.
But what if I told you the Cowboys would probably have lost by two or more points to the Buccaneers’ rushed defense if they’d handed it to them 25 times, and without Martin in tow, just for the sake of balance? and probably to see him finish with less than 100 yards anyway; something that itself would have spawned a list of critical headlines that accused the Cowboys of being reckless in trying to hammer the running game while Prescott was playing well, which then leads to speculation that Prescott wasn’t at 100 percent healthy, or would the team have otherwise let them exploit the weaknesses of the Buccaneers defense?
It’s a spider’s web of illogicality that’s only suitable for casuals, and kudos to Moore and head coach Mike McCarthy for not returning to the decrepit 50/50 divisions of Jason Garrett and the former offensive coordinator Scott Linehan who, ironically, were regularly hooked up for forcing the problem. with Elliott when that’s not what the opposing defense was giving them.
However, suddenly, the paths of Garrett and Linehan are… missed?
It’s a strange fruit, so don’t eat it. Brady pitched 50 times and the Buccaneers only attempted 15 carries, compared to Prescott who pitched 58 times and the Cowboys finished with 18 attempts, but no one is saying Tampa Bay should have been more balanced – seeing as they won. The point is, however, that they almost lost with this run / pass separation, and that means it’s not really about the run / pass separation, but rather the execution (something in which the Bucs beat the Cowboys Thursday night). Also consider that Godwin himself made mistakes that nearly cost the Buccaneers the game (similar to Lamb for Dallas), but a controversial potential OPI in the final moments of the game erased them and put his team in position for a. match winner by kicker Ryan Succop.
You start to see more and more how the balance has nothing to do with the tone or the outcome of this match.
The playmakers did.
And with Collins likely ready to serve a five-game suspension, Prescott and the Cowboys had better continue to adapt and not force the problem like they have in the past, but rather demand that playmakers become more consistent in their games (including Zuerlein ). I would also be remiss if I didn’t ask you how strange it would have been to see Brady – who basically tortured cornerback Anthony Brown all night – backing up after seeing a clear advantage there and saying to himself : “You know what? I think we should run more. That wasn’t going to happen more than Prescott retreating against a defense that got 59.1 pass coverage, per PFF.
While they’re currently 0-1 to start the very first 17-game season in the NFL, and while there aren’t any moral wins in football, there’s still a lot of positives to take from the NFL. makes the Cowboys within 90 seconds of giving Brady a Super Bowl hangover on his own backyard, and seeing him take unusual falls from Lamb and a bad day from a returning Greg Zuerlein to make them somehow worse than the team that won the Super Bowl in February.
The Cowboys are all well aware of what Moore has done with the offense and they have now warned the NFL that Prescott is in perfect health, which will ultimately allow Elliott to thrive once again as one of the most talented guns. of the NFL; but when it’s time to do it, not when it’s not. So, no, they don’t need more balance. What the Cowboys desperately need is to win, and taking what the defense gives you in any given week, in any quarter and on any game is the best way to go. ensure that they accomplish this mission. Losing is still unacceptable in the NFL, so make no mistake about it.
Refusing to adapt, however, will ensure that that’s all you will do at this level of the sport: lose.
And often.
