| NobleTeam360 said: Kind of tempted to change my Dallas v Lions pick but I'll just hope the team stays motivated to win even with these last two games being pretty much meaningless. |
I've debated this with myself and some guys in the organization, and I think it will be a great test of the 'process' they have in place. This kind of situation is why the Joneses stuck with Garrett over the years. The team is so young now overall, with a few key veterans that have seen the pitfalls of losing focus/missing opportunities such as Witten and Romo (who is still very much involved from an analytical/prep guy, he is apparently God-tier in emulating the opposing QB playstyles to help the defense prepare, and helps Dak with film and reading the defensive looks in advance).
The company line is to treat this game and all games seriously, and that should generally have positive results with the overall talent levels at play here. This is a better team than they had in 2014 by a reasonable margin. Zeke is better than Murray, the O line has improved from raw talent to peak levels of talent+experience without being old yet, the secondary is FAR better than they were in '14, Lee is healthy, etc. The only drawbacks IMHO are Dez still finding chemistry/timing with Dak (you can tell they're trying to experiment and getting more creative with routes/etc though), and Witten changing from merely slow to completely glacial speed-wise. Whereever Witten is, that's all you can count on, YAC is a rare occurrence now. He can still block, still has good hands despite that unlucky fumble, and still runs the option like a total boss. We've seen him misused slightly of late, if it's 3rd and 8, then he needs to hit that mark. Perhaps it's because they failed a few weeks previously with going away from having 'hot' routes available, and they overcompensated by presenting the checks much more aggressively.
Personally I'd treat the game as an important one, the usual rest/film/practice all to the letter, but only play the starters for a half. That's enough meaningful snaps to complete the intensity and routine of the NFL weekly grind. Look at the halftime score as the 'final' score, then swap to 2nd and 3rd stringers for evaluation and depth polishing for the postseason, which greatly minimizes injury risk to key pieces moving forward. Anyone who watched the NYG/PHI game probably noticed about a half-dozen injuries to some key players on both sides. Some were able to return such as Wentz and Harrison, but dings, bruised ribs, deep muscle contusions, etc, these can be haunting down the stretch. There are about a half-dozen players whose loss would severely curtail Dallas's postseason hopes, and another couple dozen whose loss would harm peak potential and rotation quality. It would be a real shame in a meaningless game to see any of them hurt even minorly.
The opposing logic is to change nothing, and I respect that as well. If nobody is hurt enough to harm things, or overused to the point of sustained fatigue, then of course it makes all the sense in the world to keep as sharp as possible. This is why I dont like to see uninjured players sat for entire games.
Given what I know of the staff and decision-making, I expect to see all uninjured players playing the full final two games, perhaps with only a minor dip in snap counts for a few guys (Tyron, Zeke, Lee, Leary, and a couple of others in particular), with no real 'pulling the starters' happening at all before maybe the 4th quarter against PHI.
Watch the media with this, they and the fans will likely crucify Garrett if any of the stars or key guys get banged up.
All that said, I'm much MORE concerned with having the team come out of the bye with their hair on fire from snap 1. Hopefully the required intensity is achieved immediately, as I've noticed a LOT of teams come out of byes this year looking sluggish, out of sync, disinterested, sloppy, or just plain bad. That was something I noticed very clearly in the SEA@NE game earlier this season. Seattle played 'okay'. It wasn't a particularly exceptional effort by those guys. On the flip side, most of the NE guys just seemed to be sleep-walking out there, aside from Brady. I saw their receivers giving up on routes, saw their defense not hustling to the ball, people out of position with regularity, it was just a dead-legged spectacle. That's just one example, but a trend I saw quite often.
