RolStoppable said:
You should hate Dallas for losing to the Giants. That truly ruined everything. Giants@Redskins could have been a game where both teams ended up staying at home. |
I think it turned out to be a best-case situation for the Cowboys personally. Less informed Dallas fans were saying 'oh, only 1 loss after 11 wins in a row, etc, etc', but the truth is that :
Dak played well enough in game 1 to win, but a few things went wrong, and the team lost by 1 point. Then he steadily improved week on week to a truly masterful performance against the Ravens in game 9. A game, by the way, which utterly destroyed any concept of Dak being a bus driver or easily rattled by blitzing, or dependent upon Zeke. Zeke got crammed that game, and then they blitzed like mad, trying to copy how the Eagles had rattled Dak earlier in the year. Dak obliterated them with pinpoint targeting on the run for 300+ yards, 3 TDs, zero picks. He was so effective that it turned the run game back open as the Ravens defense got worn out from the constant aggressive defensive playcalls by Balt.
At THIS point, I think Dak might have started to get slightly lazy, for someone so young, it might be a little dangerous to read press on such a hot streak. It was around this time that Michael Irvin made his now famous statement that he wanted to see a loss, for a refocus/reassess/overcome gut-check. Instead, what we got was three successive weeks of decline. A mediocre bus-driver performance against WAS on Thanksgiving of about 200 yards, 1 passing TD, 1 rushing TD. A fairly bad performance against the Vikings with JUST enough scambles and conversions to stay in it, which almost certainly would have been a loss without a lucky kickoff muff. And then an absolutely horrendous trainwreck of a performance against the Giants @ NJ. The Giants defense played well that night. But they weren't really as good as the Ravens and Vikings defensive efforts to be perfectly honest. They both stuffed the run and forced Dak to beat them with passes, of which he did against the Ravens, but did poorly against the Vikings. Against the Giants Zeke had nearly 100 yards in the first half, but they strangely went away from the run almost entirely in the 2nd half, and Dak was god freaking awful. His mechanics were broken, passing off his back foot, backing up in the pocket to take sacks (a huge psychological 'tell' with QBs), not rotating his hips/shoulders with passes, and missing wide-open checkdowns and slants with regularity. Combining a very good defensive effort by the Giants with a disastrous effort by Dak = loss. It's mind-boggling that it was only a 3-point loss, but IMHO : it was exactly what the Dr. ordered. Obviously the near-loss in Minnesota was not enough to refocus things, it took a true L to the face to get him kicked back into gear.
Against the Bucs his mechanics were night-and-day fixed. He looked 'back' to how we was before that 3-game dip. Not throwing off his back foot, getting good hip rotation, showing great read progression and the ability to be decisive in a flash, and completing his passing motion with no hitch.
He 'ate the cheese' I think previously, and being the focal point of a truly embarassing loss was a great dose of medicine. Lesser QBs might have crumbled from that point forward, but he overcame, learned, and improved.
The loss ALSO had the fantastic effect of making a lot of the Giants players get HUGE heads, lol. Some of the press and articles were just hilarious this past week. After Dak goofed horribly in NJ, and then they beat a banged up Lions team, they were talking all big and bad, superbowl this, blah blah blah, and seemingly forgot that Eli is an INT machine, their O line is a bad joke, and Spagnola's idea of defensive depth is to play his guys virtually every snap in a season, despite common sense and the concept of fatigue and injury risk.
I think if Dallas had won two weeks ago, it would have merely prolonged the 'believing your own press' phase of mediocre/poor performances by Dak that had begun to settle in.
But 32 of 36? Good grief. He was in full control in a game that was never even close, against a team that had annihilated the Seahawks and downed the Chiefs in an impressive 5-game win streak in which their defensive numbers were staggering, and with one of the best WRs in the league this year. If not for some self-inflicted penalties and stupid playcalls (Lucky Whitehead jet sweep needed to be erased from the playbook months ago) that game would have been a complete blowout.
The Giants have a good defense, a terrible offense, a bad QB, a bad head coach, and a top 3 WR. It will be interesting to see what they do in the off-season. I think the general idea (and one I was frankly expecting) was that their offense last year was 'good enough', and to focus on improving their defense. They did just that, but their offense went from pretty decent to horrendous for no clear reason other than McAdoo IMHO. Their defense went from atrocious to top-5 at the same time. Last year's offense with this year's defense is probably a 12+ win team. Last years defense with this year's offense is a competitor to the Cleveland Browns.
