For the past two weeks, I have been doing a double take on my calendar and making sure the month does indeed read November and not December. For the second week in a row the Cowboys again only managed to place 7 points on the board, but thankfully we happened to be playing a team that wanted to lose worse than we did.
Once again, I am searching for answers on just who is to blame for this week’s offensive disaster. Last week, I placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Garrett going beyond pass-happy. Did history repeat itself once again this week?
Just How “Romo Friendly” Were We?
Romo went 15/27 for 158 yards, 1 late TD, 1 INT, and 2 rushes for 4 yards. He also failed to make a single reception to a wide receiver until he connected with Miles Austin in the third quarter.
Ouch.
While the Redskins do have the best passing defense in the league, and receivers were once again dropping balls, Romo was definitely not helping his cause. Despite having a 55.6% completion rate, Romo had one of his more inaccurate games in recent memory. While you can still make a valid argument that his receivers should have made more plays for him, there is no doubt that Romo was not his usual self and left balls behind, over, and under his receivers all day long.
There are just no two ways about it, Romo had an awful performance.
Checking the Balance
The Cowboys ran 61 plays and 33 of those were rushes. Even if you want to take the two Romo scrambles away, that would make the Cowboys, for the first time this season the Cowboys were ran a majority of running plays all season long (50.8% rush to be exact and taking the Romo scrambles away). And low and behold, it was effective as the Cowboys racked up 4.6 yards/rush and only one play resulted in a loss.
One interesting thing to note though, despite all of the success with the run, we for some reason had an aversion to the play action pass, as I absolutely cannot remember seeing a single one all game long. This is slightly mind-boggling to say the least; however, I am not going to pin the blame solely on that. While Garrett is still dabbling in questionable playcalling, I can’t really pin the offensive troubles on his play calling. Romo was struggling against a great passing defense, so Garrett stuck to the run as long as possible just as he should.
As far as spreading the ball around, Romo did seem to do a decent job on that. Jason Witten led the day with 8 targets with Miles Austin following closely behind with 7. We then hit a slight drop (pun slightly intended for this receiver) as Roy Williams finished the day seeing 4 passes come his way. Martellus Bennett followed closely with 3 targets. Crayton turned one of his two targets into our much needed touchdown. And rounding out the day was the trio of John Phillips, Marion Barber, and Felix Jones whom each had a lone target.
That’s eight different receivers thrown too; however, only six came down with a reception. Interesting to note though, was that Roy Williams failed to record a reception despite his 4 targets.
So yes the ball was spread around, but due to a combination of inaccuracies by Romo and stone hands from Roy Williams, the passing game never got off the ground.
The Verdict
Let’s just cut to the chase shall we? There really isn’t anymore analysis that needs to (or really can) be done to find the reason why the Cowboys were so ineffective against the Redskins.
That blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Tony Romo this week.
Romo had a running game that was working well and actually being used behind him; however, he failed to deliver the final blows with his arm. Now granted, he did look banged up for the majority of the game, but I will not use that as an excuse for him, nor will I expect him to use that as a crutch.
This game should’ve had all the makings of a complete and dominating blowout; however, our passing game was the culprit that caused us to fall just short. If every receiver had a performance like Roy Williams, maybe I would be little more lenient on my judgment; however, when I have to watch nearly every receiver attempt to perform a circus act to even get a hand on the ball something is very, very wrong.
Garrett has seemed to rebound from last week’s awful play calling. Hopefully Romo will follow suit Thursday. As we’ve established before, this offense is very Romo driven. More often than not, as Romo goes, so goes the offense.
Let’s hope all goes well this Thanksgiving.
