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Looking For Elite: What Tony Romo Means to Miles Austin's Game
Posted by Rafael at Monday, May 09, 2011
Part Five of Cowboys Nation's week-long chat with ESPN.com's football analyst K,C. Joyner looks at the rise and fall and possible resurgence of Miles Austin. Joyner raised a lot of eyebrows when he wrote a July 2010 ESPN Insider piece claiming Austin had surpassed Andre Johnson as the NFL's premier receiver. Austin failed to match his gaudy 2009, but Joyner suggests that Tony Romo's return could return Austin to the receivers pantheon.
Cowboys Nation: Let's flip the discussion over to offense. Miles Austin got a bad case of the drops last year. You could see it in camp, and it carried over into the regular season.
K.C. Joyner: He still ranked 23rd in YPA. He had a 9.0 YPA in 2010. Still top 25.
CN: He was emblematic of the across-the-board regression on the 2010 Dallas Cowboys. Everybody took a step back last year. Everybody. What was he in 2009? He was a top-5 guy, no?
K.C.: Yeah, he was a top-5 guy. But he's one thing to know, and let me preface this by saying I have thrown Jon Kitna under the bus many times in the past. I won't do it now, for a reason I'll reveal later.
Here's the big difference in Miles Austin from 2009 to 2010. He was a very good short-pass receiver, and he was in '09 as well. He had a 7.5 YPA on short pass attempts, which was 9th best in the league. He's still an elite short pass receiver in 2010, right.
Here's the key for Miles Austin. Tony Romo, and mind you he's only out there for for seven complete games and only has 51 vertical passes. That's a small sample size, but he had an 11.6 YPA on vertical passes in those games. That's 8th best in the league. So Tony Romo is a top-10 vertical passing quarterback.
Jon Kitna, on the other hand -- 78 vertical passes, 9.9 yards per attempt. That's 11th worst, so he's just outside the bottom ten. So you're talking a top 10 guy as a vertical passer and a guy who just missed the bottom ten. Kitna decided he wasn't going to take a lot of chances. So now you have Miles Austin, who's still a dominant short pass receiver, but now he's not a dominant vertical receiver as he was in '09, when Tony Romo was throwing him the ball. I think Austin can jump back up this list if Romo is throwing him the football again.
CN: Do you have enough data on Dez Bryant to put his game in context with Miles Austin's?
K.C.: Yeah. In overall yards per attempt, 8.3. 43rd in the league. Mid-line, as far as overall. Not awful, but not great. His YPA was in line with Mike Williams' in Tampa, if you want a rookie comparison. His vertical line was 11.2 yards per attempt, tied for 30th. That's good. It's a solid number. Short passes -- 6.2 -- tied for 44th.
None of his numbers are dominant figures. Any idea that he's going to take over for Miles Austin as the number one receiver in this attack? There's nothing metrically speaking to back that up. Miles Austin is still the number one receiver in this offense. That's not an insult to Dez Bryant, it's just right now Miles Austin is a better receiver and it's not a close race.
Hope for the Forgotten Cowboys Receiver?
Posted by Rafael at Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The last episode of my week-long chat with ESPN.com's K.C. Joyner looks at Roy Williams, who started the 2010 campaign with several strong games, then faded away with the Cowboys' season.
Cowboys Nation: I want to move from Dez Bryant to Roy Williams. I wrote a piece in July a couple of years ago on team whipping boys, when Pamplona was holding the running of the bulls. I called it the running of the goats, and I may need to revive it, because it seems that every year there's a small core of players the fans despise, and if they could, they would put on blue bandannas and run these guys off the team. The safety Roy Williams was a goat; Bobby Carpenter was a goat; Pacman Jones was a goat; T.O. was a goat; Flozell Adams was a goat.
For the last couple of years, Roy Williams the receiver has been THE goat on this team. The conventional wisdom has Roy holding the number two place until Dez Bryant kicks him off the team. What were his numbers last year? I was charting the receivers each week until Romo got hurt and Williams looked really good for about six weeks then he slowly faded into the background.
How did Williams compare to Bryant last year? Let's start there, since they're likely competing for the same starting job.
K.C. Joyner: Mind you, knowing that what you just said, that there were peaks and valleys, he had a really hot stretch early. I was advising my fantasy readers to add him to their lineups in September. And then he faltered and disappeared from there.
Overall, if you take it all together, and I think you want consistency over explosiveness, his numbers were better than Dez Bryant's. His overall yards per attempt was better -- 9.0 to 8.3. Bryant was better in vertical numbers. Dez was the more explosive player, thought neither one of them had a large number of vertical attempts.
Where Williams set himself apart? As a short receiver, on short passes, his YPA was 8.6. That was 3rd best in the league.
CN: That's been his game the last couple of years. When he wanted to, he would go over the middle, take some big hits and hold on to the football. That was Williams in every one of the first six or so games.
The Cowboys have had trouble in goal-line for the last several years. They cannot run the ball in that final ten yards and have to throw to score touchdowns.
K.C.: Yep.
CN: Roy Williams has been an important part of that package, because he's big and he can leap and he can box out, and Jason Garrett has a set of plays that get him the football in this area of the field. Williams has been valuable to the Cowboys here.
But he started dropping some balls. He had some fumbles. That fumble at the end of the Saints game on Thanksgiving Day, where the Cowboys were ready to ice that game, is how you go from being a hero to a goat in two seconds.
He's also got a P.R. issue he needs to iron out. When he drops the ball and the camera shows him on the sideline, he looks like he's laughing. He may be grimacing, but it appears that he's laughing and that drives the fans nuts.
K.C.: The key to understanding Roy Williams is that his best season came in Detroit when Mike Martz was his coordinator, and Martz just rode him, just kept on his case all the time. You've heard there are pat-on-the-back and kick-in-the-ass types of players. Roy Williams is a kick-in-the-butt type of player, and Wade Phillips wasn't going to do that.
CN: You just raised an interesting question that we'll have to wait to see answered. One of Jason Garrett's first moves after becoming the permanent head coach was dismissing receivers coach Ray Sherman, who coincidentally was one of the first assistants Wade Phillips brought in. Garrett replaced him with Jimmy Robinson, who has coached the Packers receivers the last few years and who has a reputation for being hard as nails.
The assumption in Cowboys land has been that Robinson is here to ride herd on Dez Bryant and make sure he doesn't squander his incredible talent, but listening to you, it makes me wonder if Jason Garrett feels that Roy Williams can be motivated to a higher level as well? Because he's a guy who can also give him a daily boot in the backside, literally or figuratively, however Williams may need it.
K.C.: One thing to understand about Mike Martz is that if one of his players isn't going full out all the time, or in the case of a receiver, if you aren't where you're supposed to be all the time, he'll move on to someone else. Martz has so much faith in his system that if you don't run his system the way he wants it run, he just won't put you out there. He doesn't care who you are. He really doesn't.
He told Roy Williams, you need to to be where I need you on every play and in '06 Williams stepped it up. But Martz has a unique personality. He works better with certain people who other people don't work as well with, even if you don't think their styles might mesh.
He does have a really positive selling style. He's not the kind of guy who actually says, "I'm going to kick you in the butt if you don't do exactly what I need you to do.'' It's more, ''Roy, if you do what you're supposed to do, you're going to be the best receiver in the league." He talks his quarterbacks up the same way, ''you know, you're going to be great.''
It has to be pressure applied in the right way, because I don't think that blunt, hard criticism will make Roy Williams click.
CN: But is he a guy for whom the right coach can move the needle, shall we say?
K.C.: Yes, I think so.
CN: That will be interesting to track, because the perception is that Williams could be gone as soon as the team can release him and Bryant shows that he's ready to start. Now, with Bryant having his own troubles, there's a line of thinking that the Cowboys may be forced to keep Williams as insurance. The team has never said it was ready to dump Williams and his big contract.
Jason Garrett may be looking at this and thinking, if Jimmy Robinson can get Dez Bryant and Roy Williams' heads screwed on straight, then I have three big receivers who can challenge a secondary.
K.C.: Look at it this way. Williams had that four or five game window where he was really good. If you're capable of doing that, you are capable of doing it for sixteen. He hasn't done it most of the time, but that's the coaches job, to get Williams to do it all the time. If Robinson gets three receivers going, then with Witten running out of the tight end spot, Jason Garrett doesn't have to go to Roy Williams and say, "I'm feeding you 150 balls this year and I need you to produce." He can say, "we're going to put you in situations where you can be successful. If you run the slant properly on the guys we match you up against, you're going 60 yards."
The Cowboys will look at it and think Roy Williams doesn't have to be the workhorse. He doesn't even have to be the 2nd option. He may be the 3rd or 4th, but if we give him 80 or so balls in favorable matchups, he can light it up. If he doesn't, we can move on.
Posted by Rafael at Monday, May 09, 2011
Part Five of Cowboys Nation's week-long chat with ESPN.com's football analyst K,C. Joyner looks at the rise and fall and possible resurgence of Miles Austin. Joyner raised a lot of eyebrows when he wrote a July 2010 ESPN Insider piece claiming Austin had surpassed Andre Johnson as the NFL's premier receiver. Austin failed to match his gaudy 2009, but Joyner suggests that Tony Romo's return could return Austin to the receivers pantheon.
Cowboys Nation: Let's flip the discussion over to offense. Miles Austin got a bad case of the drops last year. You could see it in camp, and it carried over into the regular season.
K.C. Joyner: He still ranked 23rd in YPA. He had a 9.0 YPA in 2010. Still top 25.
CN: He was emblematic of the across-the-board regression on the 2010 Dallas Cowboys. Everybody took a step back last year. Everybody. What was he in 2009? He was a top-5 guy, no?
K.C.: Yeah, he was a top-5 guy. But he's one thing to know, and let me preface this by saying I have thrown Jon Kitna under the bus many times in the past. I won't do it now, for a reason I'll reveal later.
Here's the big difference in Miles Austin from 2009 to 2010. He was a very good short-pass receiver, and he was in '09 as well. He had a 7.5 YPA on short pass attempts, which was 9th best in the league. He's still an elite short pass receiver in 2010, right.
Here's the key for Miles Austin. Tony Romo, and mind you he's only out there for for seven complete games and only has 51 vertical passes. That's a small sample size, but he had an 11.6 YPA on vertical passes in those games. That's 8th best in the league. So Tony Romo is a top-10 vertical passing quarterback.
Jon Kitna, on the other hand -- 78 vertical passes, 9.9 yards per attempt. That's 11th worst, so he's just outside the bottom ten. So you're talking a top 10 guy as a vertical passer and a guy who just missed the bottom ten. Kitna decided he wasn't going to take a lot of chances. So now you have Miles Austin, who's still a dominant short pass receiver, but now he's not a dominant vertical receiver as he was in '09, when Tony Romo was throwing him the ball. I think Austin can jump back up this list if Romo is throwing him the football again.
CN: Do you have enough data on Dez Bryant to put his game in context with Miles Austin's?
K.C.: Yeah. In overall yards per attempt, 8.3. 43rd in the league. Mid-line, as far as overall. Not awful, but not great. His YPA was in line with Mike Williams' in Tampa, if you want a rookie comparison. His vertical line was 11.2 yards per attempt, tied for 30th. That's good. It's a solid number. Short passes -- 6.2 -- tied for 44th.
None of his numbers are dominant figures. Any idea that he's going to take over for Miles Austin as the number one receiver in this attack? There's nothing metrically speaking to back that up. Miles Austin is still the number one receiver in this offense. That's not an insult to Dez Bryant, it's just right now Miles Austin is a better receiver and it's not a close race.
Hope for the Forgotten Cowboys Receiver?
Posted by Rafael at Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The last episode of my week-long chat with ESPN.com's K.C. Joyner looks at Roy Williams, who started the 2010 campaign with several strong games, then faded away with the Cowboys' season.
Cowboys Nation: I want to move from Dez Bryant to Roy Williams. I wrote a piece in July a couple of years ago on team whipping boys, when Pamplona was holding the running of the bulls. I called it the running of the goats, and I may need to revive it, because it seems that every year there's a small core of players the fans despise, and if they could, they would put on blue bandannas and run these guys off the team. The safety Roy Williams was a goat; Bobby Carpenter was a goat; Pacman Jones was a goat; T.O. was a goat; Flozell Adams was a goat.
For the last couple of years, Roy Williams the receiver has been THE goat on this team. The conventional wisdom has Roy holding the number two place until Dez Bryant kicks him off the team. What were his numbers last year? I was charting the receivers each week until Romo got hurt and Williams looked really good for about six weeks then he slowly faded into the background.
How did Williams compare to Bryant last year? Let's start there, since they're likely competing for the same starting job.
K.C. Joyner: Mind you, knowing that what you just said, that there were peaks and valleys, he had a really hot stretch early. I was advising my fantasy readers to add him to their lineups in September. And then he faltered and disappeared from there.
Overall, if you take it all together, and I think you want consistency over explosiveness, his numbers were better than Dez Bryant's. His overall yards per attempt was better -- 9.0 to 8.3. Bryant was better in vertical numbers. Dez was the more explosive player, thought neither one of them had a large number of vertical attempts.
Where Williams set himself apart? As a short receiver, on short passes, his YPA was 8.6. That was 3rd best in the league.
CN: That's been his game the last couple of years. When he wanted to, he would go over the middle, take some big hits and hold on to the football. That was Williams in every one of the first six or so games.
The Cowboys have had trouble in goal-line for the last several years. They cannot run the ball in that final ten yards and have to throw to score touchdowns.
K.C.: Yep.
CN: Roy Williams has been an important part of that package, because he's big and he can leap and he can box out, and Jason Garrett has a set of plays that get him the football in this area of the field. Williams has been valuable to the Cowboys here.
But he started dropping some balls. He had some fumbles. That fumble at the end of the Saints game on Thanksgiving Day, where the Cowboys were ready to ice that game, is how you go from being a hero to a goat in two seconds.
He's also got a P.R. issue he needs to iron out. When he drops the ball and the camera shows him on the sideline, he looks like he's laughing. He may be grimacing, but it appears that he's laughing and that drives the fans nuts.
K.C.: The key to understanding Roy Williams is that his best season came in Detroit when Mike Martz was his coordinator, and Martz just rode him, just kept on his case all the time. You've heard there are pat-on-the-back and kick-in-the-ass types of players. Roy Williams is a kick-in-the-butt type of player, and Wade Phillips wasn't going to do that.
CN: You just raised an interesting question that we'll have to wait to see answered. One of Jason Garrett's first moves after becoming the permanent head coach was dismissing receivers coach Ray Sherman, who coincidentally was one of the first assistants Wade Phillips brought in. Garrett replaced him with Jimmy Robinson, who has coached the Packers receivers the last few years and who has a reputation for being hard as nails.
The assumption in Cowboys land has been that Robinson is here to ride herd on Dez Bryant and make sure he doesn't squander his incredible talent, but listening to you, it makes me wonder if Jason Garrett feels that Roy Williams can be motivated to a higher level as well? Because he's a guy who can also give him a daily boot in the backside, literally or figuratively, however Williams may need it.
K.C.: One thing to understand about Mike Martz is that if one of his players isn't going full out all the time, or in the case of a receiver, if you aren't where you're supposed to be all the time, he'll move on to someone else. Martz has so much faith in his system that if you don't run his system the way he wants it run, he just won't put you out there. He doesn't care who you are. He really doesn't.
He told Roy Williams, you need to to be where I need you on every play and in '06 Williams stepped it up. But Martz has a unique personality. He works better with certain people who other people don't work as well with, even if you don't think their styles might mesh.
He does have a really positive selling style. He's not the kind of guy who actually says, "I'm going to kick you in the butt if you don't do exactly what I need you to do.'' It's more, ''Roy, if you do what you're supposed to do, you're going to be the best receiver in the league." He talks his quarterbacks up the same way, ''you know, you're going to be great.''
It has to be pressure applied in the right way, because I don't think that blunt, hard criticism will make Roy Williams click.
CN: But is he a guy for whom the right coach can move the needle, shall we say?
K.C.: Yes, I think so.
CN: That will be interesting to track, because the perception is that Williams could be gone as soon as the team can release him and Bryant shows that he's ready to start. Now, with Bryant having his own troubles, there's a line of thinking that the Cowboys may be forced to keep Williams as insurance. The team has never said it was ready to dump Williams and his big contract.
Jason Garrett may be looking at this and thinking, if Jimmy Robinson can get Dez Bryant and Roy Williams' heads screwed on straight, then I have three big receivers who can challenge a secondary.
K.C.: Look at it this way. Williams had that four or five game window where he was really good. If you're capable of doing that, you are capable of doing it for sixteen. He hasn't done it most of the time, but that's the coaches job, to get Williams to do it all the time. If Robinson gets three receivers going, then with Witten running out of the tight end spot, Jason Garrett doesn't have to go to Roy Williams and say, "I'm feeding you 150 balls this year and I need you to produce." He can say, "we're going to put you in situations where you can be successful. If you run the slant properly on the guys we match you up against, you're going 60 yards."
The Cowboys will look at it and think Roy Williams doesn't have to be the workhorse. He doesn't even have to be the 2nd option. He may be the 3rd or 4th, but if we give him 80 or so balls in favorable matchups, he can light it up. If he doesn't, we can move on.
