NFL Winners and Losers: Injuries, QB not only reasons for Cowboys’ woes
Jason Garrett said after Sunday’s game that he would consider making a change at quarterback next week, swapping out Brandon Weeden for Matt Cassel.
That’s all well and good, but it’s too simple to scapegoat Weeden for everything that has gone wrong for the Cowboys during their three-game losing streak.
Where is the offensive line that was supposedly going to be one of the greatest ever? It got outplayed last week at New Orleans, and this week the Cowboys couldn’t run the ball again. Sprinkle some blame on the front office for assuming Joseph Randle, Darren McFadden and Christine Michael would seamlessly replace DeMarco Murray. They haven’t. The running backs gained 82 yards on 21 carries.
The running game has been mediocre all season. The Cowboys are tied for 13th in the NFL at just 4.1 yards per attempt. Defenses don’t need to worry about deep passes with Weeden at quarterback, but that doesn’t totally explain why the Cowboys’ line is not winning at the line of scrimmage. WIthout Tony Romo, the Cowboys’ highly paid and highly touted offensive line, the real foundation of last year’s NFC East championship, needed to take over. It hasn’t. That whole unit has been a disappointment.
The defense hasn’t been good. Tony Romo and Dez Bryant being out of the lineup wasn’t the reason the Cowboys missed four tackles on a 59-yard touchdown by Julian Edelman. It’s not the reason the Cowboys couldn’t get their assignments right on an 80-yard touchdown by C.J. Spiller in overtime against the New Orleans Saints. Dallas is 21st in the NFL in yards per play allowed.
Weeden isn’t very good. He has Checkdown Charlie Disease. He refuses to throw downfield. It’s not doing the Cowboys any good. Cassel won’t be the answer either. Romo’s injury stunk for the Cowboys. It’s really hard to overcome something like that. But that’s life for the Cowboys now. They had to figure out a way to survive until Romo and Bryant returned. Other injuries haven’t helped, but they blew three 14-point leads against the Atlanta Falcons in Romo’s first game out, and then lost to a putrid Saints team. If the Cowboys wanted to make sure they were still alive when Romo returned, they had to figure out a way to win a game like at New Orleans. Nobody figured Dallas would beat New England on Sunday, but the Cowboys didn’t even give themselves a chance, and that’s not all because Weeden refuses to throw it more than 10 yards downfield.
So the Cowboys are 0-3 since Romo got hurt. Maybe Garrett will switch to Cassel this week, which will appease those who want to blame injuries for everything. But it’s more than that. The offensive line, the running backs and the defense all needed to carry a little weight with some key players out. Instead, they’ve gone the other way and made the situation worse. By the time Romo is ready to come back, there might not be much to come back to.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 5 of the NFL season:
Tyler Eifert: Andy Dalton will get most of the credit for the Cincinnati Bengals’ fantastic comeback on Sunday, and he deserves it. But Eifert needs a ton of credit too.
Forget Eifert’s two touchdowns, which came when the Seahawks seemingly blew coverages. His circus catch against tight coverage for 25 yards with less than two minutes left put the Bengals in position to tie the game with a field goal.
When Dalton was criticized for struggles last year, rarely was it mentioned that he was without weapons like Marvin Jones and Eifert last season. Eifert is clearly a difference maker. His return from missing 15 games last season has given a new dimension to an offense that is playing very well right now. We’ve known for a couple weeks that Cincinnati is a legitimate Super Bowl contender. Eifert’s big step in his third season is one of the reasons why.
Mike Pettine: Remember when everyone wanted Johnny Manziel to start in Cleveland? Nobody’s asking for that now.
Give Pettine credit. The Browns coach didn’t waver when Manziel had a decent game in a Browns win over the Tennessee Titans in Week 2. McCown came back with games of 341, 356 and 457 yards the past three weeks. The Browns don’t have a ton of skill position talent but McCown is giving the offense some punch, and he was the biggest reason the Browns pulled off a surprising 33-30 win at the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday.
Pettine coaxed seven wins out of the Browns last season. They’re just 2-3 this season, but with a last-play loss at the Chargers last week mixed in. The Browns are often lumped in with the dysfunctional teams in the NFL, and with good reason, but Pettine seems to get more out of the roster than others might. He certainly made the right call sticking with McCown, even when that was unpopular.
Todd Gurley: The Rams lost, but it wasn’t Gurley’s fault.
There shouldn’t have been much thought that Gurley’s big game against the Cardinals last week was a fluke, but Gurley erased any doubt Sunday. He looked great in a 159-yard game at Green Bay. He had a 55-yard run. He ran tough when he had to, and had the quickness and speed to peel off big plays. The Rams gave him 25 carries before the third quarter was even up, which isn’t wise for a player coming off an ACL surgery, but hopefully they’ll understand that soon and not run him into the ground by mid-November.
The Rams lost because Nick Foles was really bad. He completed 11 of 30 passes for 141 yards and four interceptions, one of the ugliest lines a quarterback will put up all year. And kicker Greg Zuerlein missed three field goals. And still the Rams lost by just 14 points at Lambeau Field. A big reason the Rams didn’t get entirely blown out was the effort of their star rookie running back.
Eagles offense (maybe?): The Eagles offense showed up on Sunday, after having a pretty good second half last week in a loss at Washington. There’s a caveat: The big game came against a Saints defense that might be really, really bad.
But let’s look at it in a positive light. Sam Bradford, although he missed some throws he needs to make, had 333 yards. Nine different receivers caught passes. DeMarco Murray played his best game by far, with 83 rushing yards and a touchdown, and 37 receiving yards. Ryan Mathews (who continues to look much better than Murray) continued to plug away with 73 rushing yards and a touchdown on just eight attempts.
The Eagles will have to keep this rolling against a good defense to convince everyone they’re back, but there were good signs. That’s good news for them going into a big Monday night game against the New York Giants next week. With a win over the Giants, the Eagles might look like the favorite in the division again.
LOSERS
The winless Detroit Lions and Jim Caldwell: One of the reasons Caldwell got the job as Lions head coach was that he was the one who would “fix” Matthew Stafford. Well, no. Stafford is playing the worst football of his career.
Caldwell told Stafford at halftime against the Arizona Cardinals that he was benching him if he threw another interception. Stafford threw another interception in the third quarter and Dan Orlovsky came on. Caldwell said after the game that Stafford is still his starter because duh, but it’s not like there’s some light at the end of this tunnel.
Stafford has six touchdowns and eight interceptions this season. The guy with maybe the NFL’s strongest arm rarely completes anything downfield anymore. The terrible offensive line factors into that, but Stafford isn’t providing much value to the offense. He’s not good at being a safe quarterback and is not making any plays anymore either. The coach who was supposed to fix Stafford hasn’t done it.
And now what of Caldwell? His flat-line sideline demeanor has always been held against him in public opinion, but the Lions seemed to take on that persona in a listless blowout loss. They’re 0-5, the only winless team in the NFL. Will it get worse from here? Stafford is getting paid too much for the Lions to move on from him. Will they just find someone else who can “fix” Stafford if Caldwell can’t get his team to play better the rest of the way? It might depend how bad it gets. And judging by Sunday, it might get really bad.
Gus Bradley: Speaking of coaches who will start to be evaluated pretty closely, you have to wonder how much time Bradley has left in Jacksonville. The Jaguars aren’t showing many signs of improvement. On Sunday, they gave up 38 points to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a loss. That’s bad, especially for Bradley, who came on as a defensive guru.
The Jaguars are 1-4 and that was a pretty ugly loss on Sunday. You have to wonder, with Dolphins coach Joe Philbin fired this week, if Bradley’s seat is now the hottest in the NFL.
Bad coaching decision, part 1: The Cowboys had fourth-and-2 at the New England 5-yard line. It was late in the third quarter and they trailed 20-3. Now, maybe at that point you assume the Patriots will not score at all in the fourth quarter, and it makes no difference in what order you score 17 points. That’s a terrible assumption, but it must be what Jason Garrett was thinking, because he sent on the field-goal team. Dan Bailey made it to make the score 20-6. The Cowboys didn’t score again. That’s insanely conservative for a team that was a huge underdog against a great Patriots offense.
But that call looked like Bill Belichick’s and Bill Parcells’ defensive game plan against the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV after …
Bad coaching decision, part 2: I can’t tell you how many times I have seen teams this season throw well short of the sticks on third down. I didn’t see it as much as usual this Sunday, but that’s because the Miami Dolphins were on a bye. But the worst case of the season came late in the Oakland Raiders’ loss against the Denver Broncos.
On fourth-and-19 in the fourth quarter, trailing 16-7, the Raiders threw a screen pass to Marcel Reece. It gained four yards. This actually happened. In a game that counted in the standings.
“That was the call we went with,” Carr said afterward, according to Vic Tafur of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Well, it was a terrible call, one of the worst all season. The Raiders needed to waste two timeouts just to get the ball back, then kicked a field goal (following a deep pass that drew a pass interference … hmmm, maybe that would have worked on fourth-and-19), and time ran out after an unsuccessful onside kick. But other than that, the screen pass to a fullback on fourth and forever was an inspired choice.
Denver’s offense: I’m not going to make this about Peyton Manning. No reason to keep going over the same old storyline there.
But when will Gary Kubiak’s offense, especially on the ground, show up? For the second time in five weeks, Denver’s defense outscored the team’s offense. The offense didn’t score. The defense had a crucial pick-six from the marvelous Chris Harris late in the game, with the Raiders driving and the Broncos leading just 9-7.
Kubiak has led a good running game at every one of his stops, but it hasn’t shown up in Denver yet. C.J. Anderson had 22 yards on 11 carries as the Broncos continue to show a ton of blind faith that he’ll simply turn it around. Anderson has a 2.6-yard average this season. Ronnie Hillman wasn’t much better Sunday, with 21 yards on seven carries.
At some point Denver needs to find an offense if it wants to make a Super Bowl. The defense is great, but the Broncos can’t depend on interception returns to provide the points. Instead of focusing on Manning’s arm strength every week, maybe we should wonder when Kubiak’s run game is going to start producing.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
