A Touch of Hostility... Week 13
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And now you know why I hate Kickers. All the talk of him being money and automatic and a Pro Bowl player are out the window.
No, I am not dropping that loss in his lap, but he was shankapotamus yesterday.
No, this loss needs to be dropped right on the coaching staff and pretty squarely on Jason Garrett. It has been discussed to death, but humor me while I add to it. There was no reason not to use our timeouts and try for more yardage for an easier kick for Bailey. None, zero, zip, nada. Yeah I get it that you wanted to burn the clock up so the Cardinals had no time to try anything, but that still could have been accomplished with 2 timeouts. Not one left, two.
I really don't understand Boniol and DeCamillis wanting him to take a timeout and I don't understand him taking it either. I know icing the Kicker doesn't work, but it did yesterday and we are the ones who iced him. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
No doubt about it, we're going to hear all about how it is December. November's over and all that jazz. It is relevant until we rise above it. Historically this team's worst month is December. I'm not just talking about the 16 years of whine festival, I am talking about our entire 52 year History.
There is no doubt this team is headed in the right direction. I stand by that. A loss does not derail that. If you believe it does then you believe 15 teams yesterday are going in the right direction and 15 are going in the wrong direction. We're talking big picture here. The big picture the DFW media is dying to get this team to talk about and they won't. Well, I will.
I also stand by the comments I have been making side by side with my commentary on direction, and that is that we are not elite. We cannot show up and make teams quake and pee and play flat. Every game we need our guys to hustle and play hard.
Some are doing that. Some are falling short. We do have some holes.
Let's start with an obvious weakness. We simply were a far more efficient Offense with Tony Fiammetta healthy. If you want to tell me he is our 2011 Offensive MVP I am not going to argue much. I don't know what the hell he is battling, but if he truly does make it back for the Giants game I suggest you watch the difference in our run game. It is stark.
In my enthusiasm for the approaching game against the much hated by me Cardinals, I suggested that Murray could have a huge game and top 1000 yards for the season yesterday. I tip my hat to the Cardinals for playing out of their minds defensively. Fox had some stats about their recent games being much stronger Defensive efforts. I had not noticed, but we all had to yesterday. Murray got stone walled, Romo got dumped on his backside, and the points I expected to see remain absent from this team.
There's no excuse for that either. We controlled the clock yet again. We amassed the yardage needed to put up points. We didn't turn the ball over. Still we come away with a mere 13 on our ledger. Unacceptable.
I can't pin it on Tony Romo either. He was solid enough yesterday under pressure to have had a much better day. Once again, the inexperience of the OL comes to the forefront. The run blocking was not up to par, neither was the pass protection and we paid for it. When you look at the what could have been, we paid for it dearly. A two game lead in the NFC East over the Giants was a mighty succulent feast to be staring at. Now we're squinting at a one game lead and they are the silhouette on the horizon approaching.
If we had won yesterday, a win next week guaranteed us the NFC East for the 18th time and our 22nd overall Division crown. Well, I still believe that is our destiny in 2011, but the road to claim it just got a bit harder.
I seem to remember a lot of people telling me that Patrick Peterson was a great Punt Return guy but was struggling at CB. If that is struggling at CB what is Terence Newman doing? For my money the battle between Peterson and Bryant was one of the best I have seen all year and I would pay good money to watch it happen again. Both are supremely talented and each got the better of the other at various times yesterday. I enjoyed watching that more than I enjoyed the game. To me, that is exactly what football is supposed to be all about. I think he is exactly what I predicted he will be, and that is the best CB in the NFL since Deion. He's on the way.
Matt McBriar was perhaps the difference between an Overtime tilt and us getting blown yesterday because he completely negated Peterson as a Punt Return weapon.
Overtime. In Jason Garrett's short career this is our 4th overtime. All on the road, and until yesterday each one had been won by us with a FG. unlike the Washington game where I said I never doubted they would miss and we were going to win, yesterday I never had that confidence. When we lost the coin toss, I figured we would never get the football.
I lay that directly at the feet of Rob Ryan. Garrett takes some heat, so does Ryan. What exactly are our DBs being taught right now that is leading to this subpar, penalty filled, atrocious play? Where is the tackling? We held the Cardinals to 13 points in regulation and I am more than happy with that. We forced some FGs instead of TDs and I am happy with that. But we seem to be praying that incompletions save us and force punts so the Offense can bail us out by moving into position for a FG. I hate that strategy if it is what we are trying to do.
Only a couple of guys on the Defense played with much fire yesterday. I was delighted to see Jenkins back, and thought he was solid but not spectacular, but Newman is playing awful. I don't think I have ever seen him worse.
A lot of players were slipping yesterday and that makes me wonder why we didn't change cleats. Or maybe we did and that didn't work. So why didn't we start jamming their WRs at the LOS? Anything to disrupt rhythm. And how does a Rob Ryan, aggressive approach Defense that supposedly was playing for revenge for the Cardinals firing his entire family, allow a team to find a rhythm? I realize we lost Ware to a stinger and he is our biggest disruption, but there is no excuse for not jamming the receivers.
Gonna be a long week, but a good week. Don't fear December folks. Fear the Giants. They are a real entity. A magical, mythical voodoo about a month is nothing more than superstition. It comes down to execution by the players and coaches. Yesterday we saw precious little of it from far too many of them.
This team is still headed in the right direction, but that doesn't mean we get there this year. There's a distinction there. I hope you can all see it. Take care of the Giants and the bile we all threw up yesterday is just an unpleasant memory.