Week 1: Dallas Cowboys @ New York Giants

[Aftershock9958]

Quote: Originally Posted by coogrfan

http://sturminator.blogspot.com/2012...rm%27s+Blog%29 A few salient (and deeply depressing from a Dallas pov) points: "(since 2008) the New York Giants have run 230 pass plays against the Cowboys 3-4 defense. And in those 230 passes over the span of 3 seasons and 6 games, the Cowboys have sacked Manning 4 times or once every 57.5 pass plays (as a comparison, the Cowboys averaged a sack every 14 pass attempts against the league last year). And to make it much, much worse, over those 230 pass plays, DeMarcus Ware has 3.5 of the 4 sacks. That's right. The rest of the Cowboys defense, with 230 chances at getting to the QB, only Jason Hatcher has tallied even half of a sack. Pitiful may not properly sum up this reality." "It has been and will be well documented how the Cowboys offensive line has very little success keeping the Giants DL off of Tony Romo (9 sacks against in 2011). "(Eli's) AVERAGE game against the Cowboys over the last 3 seasons: 24-38-365-2-1 for a QB rating of 101. That is average, as he has done much better than that."

Oh, this one is easy. All three of your points go directly back to how a defense impacts a QB - and it's summed up so eloquently by your final point, Eli's average.

We can agree that yes, Dallas' pass rush hasn't exactly gotten the job done - in general really, but more so against the Giants. We can also agree that their line has been a point of worry for some time now.

All that being said... Against New York, Romo is on average 23-33-281-3-1 for a rating of 112.1 - my point being that the three things you posted don't really account for much. What I take from the first two things is that Eli is generally not harassed, while Romo is consistently harassed, yet that hasn't made much difference considering Romo has a better TD/INT ratio, a better completion percentage, and a higher rating.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying one is better than the other or anything of the sort, but I really really dislike useless statistics, which those are.

[coogrfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by cjonesfan921

Our DL play isn't terrible though. I mean no Raitliff tonight will hurt though. Cowboys problem has always been Secondary. This year it will probably be average Safety play. Our LB are solid. Lee picked up where he left off in pre-season and Carter and Connor should be sufficient. Excited to see if Butler can step up. Sensabaugh is consistent, but he isn't great. It'll come down to Church and Sensabaugh. I think this defense has a shot to be REAL good, as long as Carr and Claiborne don't disappoint.

The secondary has been bad and needed fixing, but make no mistake - taken as a group, our front seven has been atrocious the last three seasons. To repeat: in the last six games against the NYG the Cowboys have a total of 4 sacks, 3.5 of which belonged to Ware (NY has sacked Dallas qb's 14 times in that same period).

If that doesn't change you could have a couple of Deion clones back there and it wouldn't make much difference. Someone other than Ware must step up and provide at least a hint of a pass rush.

[bcruise]

*Watches the Madden 13 intro on loop to prepare for tonight*

[cjonesfan921]

Quote: Originally Posted by coogrfan

The secondary has been bad and needed fixing, but make no mistake - taken as a group, our front seven has been atrocious the last three seasons. To repeat: in the last six games against the NYG the Cowboys have a total of 4 sacks, 3.5 of which belonged to Ware (NY has sacked Dallas qb's 14 times in that same period). If that doesn't change you could have a couple of Deion clones back there and it wouldn't make much difference. Someone other than Ware must step up and provide at least a hint of a pass rush.

Those numbers can be misleading, I would love to know other stats, such as hurries, knockdowns, etc.

Pressure matters. We may not get there, but are we hurrying him up? I would lvoe to see those numbers.

[coogrfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aftershock9958

Oh, this one is easy. All three of your points go directly back to how a defense impacts a QB - and it's summed up so eloquently by your final point, Eli's average. We can agree that yes, Dallas' pass rush hasn't exactly gotten the job done - in general really, but more so against the Giants. We can also agree that their line has been a point of worry for some time now. All that being said... Against New York, Romo is on average 23-33-281-3-1 for a rating of 112.1 - my point being that the three things you posted don't really account for much. What I take from the first two things is that Eli is generally not harassed, while Romo is consistently harassed, yet that hasn't made much difference considering Romo has a better TD/INT ratio, a better completion percentage, and a higher rating. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying one is better than the other or anything of the sort, but I really really dislike useless statistics, which those are.

Useless? The Giants have sacked Dallas QB's 14 times in the last 6 meetings; Dallas has only 4. If you don't think that fact has played a huge role in the Giants 5-1 record vs Dallas in that span, I don't know what to tell you.

[Aftershock9958]

Quote: Originally Posted by coogrfan

The secondary has been bad and needed fixing, but make no mistake - taken as a group, our front seven has been atrocious the last three seasons. To repeat: in the last six games against the NYG the Cowboys have a total of 4 sacks, 3.5 of which belonged to Ware (NY has sacked Dallas qb's 14 times in that same period). If that doesn't change you could have a couple of Deion clones back there and it wouldn't make much difference. Someone other than Ware must step up and provide at least a hint of a pass rush.

Quote: Originally Posted by coogrfan

Useless? The Giants have sacked Dallas QB's 14 times in the last 6 meetings; Dallas has only 4. If you don't think that fact has played a huge role in the Giants 5-1 record vs Dallas in that span, I don't know what to tell you.

Pretty useless, yes, and cjones hit the nail on the head about them being misleading.

To start with, you're talking about the last six meetings. You're not wrong to say that Dallas has only sacked Manning four times in the past six meetings, or .6 sacks per game. However, that is misleading because the first three games in that 6 game series accounted for only one of those four sacks. We've sacked Eli 3 times in the past three games, which is exponentially better than 4 times in 6 (albeit not great).

Continuing, you're talking about how NY has picked up 14 in the same period - that doesn't account for the fact that there was two games, back to back, which they didn't sack our QB once, and that in just last year alone they put up almost 2/3rds of those sacks.

You can talk about their 5-1 record and how their 14 sacks played a part in that, but we can also talk about how they spanned two consecutive games without a sack against us, and how the one loss came to the utterly immoble Jon Kitna.

Those stats are useless.

[cjonesfan921]

I don't want to say they are misleading, I just would love to see MORE numbers.

How many times was Eli hurried? If Eli is hurried and completes a pass, that's not on the DL, is it? I don't have numbers to back up, but I would venture to say overall, our DL is not the reason we lost games to NY. Our Secondary, poor tackling by our Secondary, penalties, and some miscues were bigger reasons.

Well that and the Giants executed. Don't want to make it seem like they didn't!

[ImaGamer_OS]

I have the New York Giants winning here by 10-14 points. NYG are at home and whilst they have some questions on offense, Dallas have more with Romo safety blanket Witten likely out tonight (has it been confirmed?).