What Went Wrong in America’s Game of the Week 10/16/2011

What Went Wrong in America’s Game of the Week?
The Patriots vs. The Cowboys – A Match-up That Could Have Gone the Other Way

So as always, my morning kicks off in reminiscing and reading some NFL news.  Today’s article that piqued my interest was about the Cowboys vs Patriots.  For those who don’t know what happened, simply go look at NFL.com.  There’s tons of videos showing what happened.  But you should get the gist from this article.

So the NFL.com article says that Cowboys play calling on their last drive was an insult to Tony Romo and his skills.  In the last drive the Cowboys had in their game, they ran three (that is more than two but less than four) running plays.  Strategically it makes sense in any normal game.  The Patriots burned two timeouts of their three to stop the clock.  In a normal game, that would be huge!  But in any game against the Patriots, that means absolutely nothing.  New England Patriots nearly always run a two-minute drill all game long so leaving them two minutes is perfect.  When I saw this, I thought Cowboys were just putting their team on the defense’s back, since the defense had held the Patriots under 30 points.  This may seem like “Under 30 points?  That’s still huge because that’s not ‘under 10’.”  However, in 2010 Patriots had eleven out of 16 games that ended with 30 points or more. So far in 2011, the Patriots have scored at least 30 points in each of their five games.  So to be held under 30 points is amazing for the Cowboys defense.

So to place trust in them was not wrong.  The first issue that I note was noted by the NFL Network last night was the frustration in Dez Bryant on a red zone opportunity that the cowboys had.  Dez Bryant was only covered in a man-to-man situation which is always great for a star receiver, however, Romo did not recognize it or attempt anything his way, and the Cowboys had to settle for 3 points because of running the ball more than anything on the goal line (which didn’t put up their six points as you’d hope when you are ten yards or less to the end zone).

The second issue was all on the defense, and where to point the finger varies to multiple targets.  One issue was Rob Ryan’s relaxed play calling.  For three and a half quarters, the Cowboys were dialing up the pressure on Tom Brady and Wes Welker.  And for the last, and most important drive, the Cowboys then turned to a soft defense, and looked almost like a prevent defense than anything else.  And as I always say, a prevent defense prevents absolutely nothing (no defense should ever play “prevent”).  When something has worked for 55 minutes of game time, why change it?  Keep the pressure!  However, they did not.  And with that breathing room, Tom Brady made them pay.

Cowboys looked exceptionally better this weekend compared to the rest of the weeks.  But not only were they conservative on the offensive calling, their defensive calling wasn’t any better.  At least, this was my opinion on what went wrong.

But what do I care?  That winning catch pictured above helped me win my fantasy football match.  But still, I digress…