Brett's Cowboys Corner

Another home loss for the Cowboys, 28-25, hey at least the Cowboys kept it close…right? In reality, the game was 28-6 going into the 4th quarter. Dallas had strung together three touchdown drives, an onside kick recovery and the defense forced a 3-n-out.

The first three quarters of this game felt similar to last week. The Ravens came in with the idea of attacking our run defense and that is exactly what they did. They open the game with Jackson picking up 13 yards on the read option and the floodgates opened from there. The Ravens passed a few times, only quick play action dump-offs, which both featured poor tackling and allowed for big gains. The first true passing situation the Cowboys forced upon Baltimore was 3rd and 9, five minutes into the 2nd quarter which was a stop and later punt.

The sad part, the Cowboys did stack the box and play to stop the run…but with poor defensive line play, especially for the interior, the Ravens offensive line threw them out of the way and blocked linebackers.

I could write a dissertation on all of the things wrong with the defense and how their run defense is performing. But here is a screenshot that sums up a lot of it.

Where is Mazi going?

By the way Lamar picks up 9 yards and a first down on this play.

Lamar Jackson had ZERO throws into tight coverage, because he did not need to risk anything. Since the run couldn’t be stopped, he only attempted 15 passes on the day.

Lamar Jackson averaged 3.2 air yards per attempts in Week 3, his lowest mark in a game in his career.

Jackson completed 11 of 14 passes under 10 air yards for 169 yards; his only pass over 10 air yards resulted in a 13-yard touchdown to Rashod Bateman. Jackson completed 11 of 13 passes for 173 yards and a touchdown when targeting open receivers (3+ yards of separation). Jackson has targeted an open receiver on a league-high 94% of his total pass attempts this season.

This passing strategy is how Baltimore prefers to play their games, and Dallas made it look easy for them.

On the other side, Dak has to throw the ball 51 times because he has no run game, Dak threw the ball into a tight window 35% of the time, some could be on his decision making but there needs to be some blame on his wide receivers creating no separation.

The Dallas offensive line provided no help, as Dak was blitzed 16 times.

The playcalling did not show any improvement, McCarthy is still trying to find a rhythm and still has not given up on these running backs, and in two games now before you had time to blink you were down 14-3.

It seems we are still scared to have big losses that we don’t do anything creative and it is all conservative. The routes are still all curl routes, no movement down field and still refusal to use your best receiver like the Bengals use Chase or the Vikings use Jefferson. Our plays look great when we are down by a lot and just firing the ball around when we are desperate, but when it is still ‘close’ we are too scared to have the offense be the reason we lost.

Its now time to talk about the two superstars.

A caveat if you will…I still think these two guys are standout players and can be your only source of hope at times, they are exciting to watch when they are dominating.

But on Sunday, September 22, 2024, Micah Parsons and Ceedee Lamb did not play to their level of expectation.

I called for a big game for Parsons, and he was a non-factor through the game, the camera zooms in on him early on and he already seemed out of breath. I get that he is double-teamed all day, but I have to imagine so are TJ Watt and Myles Garrett, but they are still racking up 15+ sacks and TFLs all year.

As for Lamb, something was off early on, maybe it was frustration from the defense but he had his first catch on the second drive where he converted a first down in the redzone, he got up and tossed the ball on the ground with no usual first down nose swipe or anything…I get that we were losing in the moment but still, that type of good vibes is what helps create good momentum. A lot of visible frustration on the field and sideline all game. A redzone fumble and on the three touchdown drives in the 4th quarter and only one target to Lamb.

Those drives in the 4th quarter were a glimmer of hope, but the easy explanation was in my film review of the Ravens last week, they do not finish games well at all and they were trying to blow that one. That is why we needed to keep it close.

Again before I rant for an hour, let me conclude with this about the current state of the team.

Mind you these are almost all issues many called for to get addressed in the offseason and were lightly patched up or plainly ignored.

• You’re DTs are not NFL players
• Your offensive tackles are turnstiles
• RB room has one average guy in it
• WR room is an upset superstar and the rest are just guys
• Safeties aren’t helping
• Linebackers aren’t as good as we thought from Week 1

But of course, never fear, we can always look to add more talent to the team during the season and look toward the trade deadline to get some talent in here to help now since we have a lot of draft capital.

From Owner and General Manager, Jerry Jones:

welp.