Grading the “Romo Friendly” Offense: Week 10 vs Green Bay

Published on 17 November 2009 by Ryan Ritter in dallas cowboys

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All good things must come to an end, and the Cowboys fantastic play on offense the past few weeks has done just that. For all intents and purposes, the Cowboys were basically shut out as Roy Williams late TD was most definitely an irrelevant occurrence against a defense that was playing incredibly soft. Everything that went wrong seemingly did. Romo looked awful and seemed to be on the turf more than he did on the ground, receivers were dropping passes, and turnovers absolutely killed the Cowboys.

Buckle up everyone – this won’t be pretty.

Just How “Romo Friendly” Were We?

Romo went 24/39 for 251 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, 2 fumbles (lost 1), scrambled three times for 16 yards, and was also sacked 5 times.

Just think about this for a second, Romo completed 61.5% of his passes and that was with his receivers coming up with some inexcusable drops, yet the Cowboys didn’t even come close to winning. Of course though, Romo will be roasted for his 2 turnovers; however, the INT was on a hell of a play by Green Bay in the Red Zone and the lost fumble came on a sack in which Romo was absolutely drilled. It is extremely hard for me to point the finger at Romo for being the sole cause of the Cowboys’ ills in this game.

Checking the Balance

Dallas ran 58 plays with 14 rushing plays. That is not a typo. The Cowboys ran 14 rushing plays in the whole game and 3 of those were by Romo (QB sneak, QB draw, and recovering his first fumble on a botched play). Taking into account the 5 sacks Romo feel victim too, that is 44 called pass plays by Garret, meaning we went 75.9% pass on the day, handing the ball off to our three-headed monster only 11 times.

I just don’t get it. Romo is getting lit up all day long, so in order to take pressure off of him, you keep defenses honest by only running the ball every 1 out of 4 plays?! This is simply inexcusable and there is absolutely no justification for passing that much in a game in which you were tied for the entire first half, and were never down by more than two scores until late in the fourth quarter.

There is a difference between being pass heavy and flat out stupid with your play calling. I can see around 60% pass being justified; however, anything remotely approaching 70% is mind boggling, and having a pass percentage over 75% is like you are playing Madden (poorly).

As far as targets go, here were the results for the day:
Miles Austin – 9
Roy Williams/Jason Witten – 8
Patrick Crayton – 7
Marion Barber – 4
Tashard Choice/Martellus Bennett – 2
Kevin Ogletree – 1
Romo again, did a fantastic job of spreading the ball around the field. That is eight different targets and all eight got a reception. The top targets were of course the best receiving options we have and Romo was clearly not fixated on any one man.

Simply put, Romo did his job.

An Offensive Comedy of Errors

Everything that could possibly go wrong for the Cowboys did. Somehow Dalals managed to give up 5 sacks in a single game against a defense that only had 13 coming into the Sunday’s game. Roy Williams connected with Romo in a big way, being hit in stride for well over 30 yards…well until he fumbled to end the play, and I’m not sure whether or not that was better than him dropping passes that hit him in the facemask.

The Red Zone was equally comical. The first trip inside the 20 ended with a sack and missed field goal by Nick Folk. The next trip was Romo’s only interception. And finally we punched it in when Green Bay was already celebrating victory towards the end of the game. We may have ended 1/3, but 0/2 is really a better picture of the situation.

To say things just did not go well is an understatement.

The Verdict

So who do I blame this mess on? Well I have a few different options; however, none of them have the name of Tony Romo though. The offensive line was flat out awful and receivers were dropping passes and fumbling the ball; however Jason Garrett should take the majority of the blame.

When you call more passes than I ever would in a game of Madden, there is something very wrong. Garrett was simply asking for disaster by putting his team in awful spots continuously. By calling pass plays so often, Green Bay was able to call their defense like they were playing Madden as well, blitzing without any worry of being burned. Not only that, but you have the Green Bay line pinning their ears back and going for the sack every play for the same reason. There is no way you can even remotely keep a defense honest when 3 out of 4 plays will be pass.

Garrett, when I said Keep It Simple Stupid, I didn’t mean completely abandon your running game just because you tend to have success with the pass. Seriously, what’s wrong with 4.4 yards/carry for the game, especially when your passing game is only giving you 4.9 yards/attempt? I just cannot fathom the logic you used here because there was none.

Garrett simply did not create or execute anything that resembled a game plan — instead he wrote a book on how to ensure the Cowboys never had a fighting chance to win.

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