Did you see ROMO try to wipe out his WRs today, especially in the 4th quarter. If you have a desire to catch a ROMO pass, you put your life in danger.

I've lost confidence in Tony Romo.

Although I can agree with this in microcosm to the one possession you're referring to, the wideouts had a particularly awful day. In fact, it's their worst game of the year.

I saw several times where the wideouts made the wrong reads (examples; last play of the game, INT to Austin when he turned in), jogged through routes, didn't come back for the ball or find zone gaps, or didn't read blitzes. I saw plays like this in other games, like Romo's first INT in the Giants game, but I haven't seen anything like what they did today.

I'll be interested in seeing how Denver does against another team we've played, so I can see if Denver's defense is pretty good or if we really just stunk it up.

I also saw plays where the receivers were wide open but needed to be 7' tall to reach Romo's passes. It must have been the thin mountain air...

Yes, plenty of bad passes to go around. I would especially be perturbed at the 3 interceptions that we should have had on Orton, but dropped. Much like the two we should have had on Manning. It's the kind of thing that's coming back to bite us.

Then we have something in common, I hate his wide receivers too!

post of the day

whether you like it or not they miss Owens presence on the field. they have got to come up with another big time receiver that defenses respect.

No doubt Owens being gone hurts, to be honest I though I would never say this but...........I don't think Crayton and Miles would be jogging around if T.O. was here. Have a feeling whenever he used to yell on the sidelines it got people's butts in gear. Someone needs to put some life into Romo whenever he gets down, instead of going to the bench and pouting. Don't grin whenever the other team scores to take the lead either.

Owens was their best player, he's gone now and it makes a huge difference. Roy Williams is not the answer, especially with the other mediocre talent at WR and Romo throwing the ball so wildly. That's a cold hard fact some will never admit to!

If we were talking about Owens circa 2007, I'd agree with you. As it stands he hit a wall, and you can't run an offense through a wideout with a sub-50% success rate.

But after these last three games, and after watching most of the receivers basically walk around while the offensive line tried to hold off 6 or 7 rushers, this group needs to step up. They've all been better than this, and there's no excuse for running poor routes because of inexperience.

It's not the entire problem, we still need to make the tight ends the focus when teams are trying to blitz us to death, but this is the most negative trend over the season that I've seen.

is it the wr's or the accuracy of the qb? romo has not looked the same since the thumb injury. he lowers some of those throws to where the wr's dont have to climb a ladder or get hung out to dry we arent talking about how poor we are at that position.

I agree.

it's sad that there are too man "what if's" surrounding this team. its dissapointing when we should have at least 1 loss by our name and not two. phillips & garrett arent going anywhere yet im afraid.

the cowboys are just looking for their identity. Im not sure if they are a solid rushing attack with a good defense, or a team with lousy receivers a unstable qb and a stable of injury prone running backs...Right now its looking like option number 2.

but i hope not...When felix comes back this team will be different. He is their playmaker right now.

Muli-choice

A. Romo is just like some High School QBs. who sees the reciever's dad at Church or down town and the dad says you better throw to my boy , and rather than deal with the dad he has blinders on and throws to that boy or his friend.
B. With each bad pass the pressure builds to make the next one better.
C. If you can not deal with a dim w. blonde how do you deal with a wr.

Romo started out fairly decent with conservative throws in the first half. Can't remember the number, but it was 8 for 10 or 9/12 or something like that.

However, when they started to try and go to the wideouts, Romo had to hold the ball quite a bit. He's checking down to his 3rd or 4th target most of the time.

This continues on to the 2nd half. From the views I can get off the angle, there are wideouts running poor routes, or quitting on routes. At various times some of the receivers run the same routes into each other, instead of 'leveling'.

During the interception, Bailey is clearly inside of Austin to take away the slant. This is the same play Roy Williams ran in the same spot before the Barber TD. Austin turns into coverage instead of sitting on the sideline.

To top it off, Romo has several throws that are just off-target. Roy Williams gets hurt on one when he's defenseless.

You just make too much sense in your posts! It makes Romo's passes look worse when the receivers keep changing there effort. You can't run hard for part of the play or take a play off. Run your stinking routes like the ball is coming to you! So what if you get tired. Someone can sub in for you if your gassed.

Austin needs to feel the db's better and play away from their coverage. Romo has hard enough time escaping the lineman back there. Romo also needs to find the open receiver more often. There were several plays where he took a poor choice and should have simply took the next read in succession.

I agree with StoneKelly. We wouldn't be talkin about this if ROMO was consistent. You can blame the receivers all you want, but ROMO hasn't been passing well at all. Dallas' receivers aren't the best in the league, but they aren't terrible. I did think R. Williams should have toughed it out and been in at the last of the game. If R. Williams is in, Dallas wins the game.

Tatum, I don't think we can pin this on something that's mutually exclusive. I can blame the receivers because when I can see what they're doing, I can see why Romo may be struggling and too many times going through progressions and checking down because no one is getting open.

When Roy Williams lazily sits at the top of his route and can't clear out the zone, and this causes Crayton's corner route to be flooded, I can see who is making the mistake.

When Crayton isn't running the correct level, we can see who has screwed up. When two wideouts on the opposite side of the formation find themselves meeting midfield, one of them has made a grievous error.

When Austin turns in on a route that causes an interception, and we see what he did wrong compared to the same play Williams ran, it isn't hard to figure out why Romo may have been a bit exasperated with him, or why Brady has done the same with Joey Galloway or why Delhomme has done the same with Steve Smith.

This doesn't take away that yes, Romo has been off. The reasons could be fairly numerous:

a) Second-guessing to stay conservative and avoid "mistakes". We've seen Delhomme and E. Manning doing the same.
b) Bad receiver play.
c) Poor footwork (either because of pressure or otherwise)
d) Good defense (Denver plays NE next I believe. I'll wait and see.)
e) Poor scheme/playcalling. We're not throwing to our tight ends or moving wideouts around the formation.

Quite frankly, it could be all of these.

Then why did we not make the playoffs last year and correct me if I am wrong but t.o. is not really tearing it up in Buffalo.




If the cowboys wanna win they better run the ball and run it a lot.

Not a valid argument IMO. They didn't win a playoff game before TO either. He still caught more TD passes than any
NFL WRs in the previous 3 years.

The Buffalo comment has no validity either. If you put Peyton Manning on the Buffalo Bills would they be winning? No.
You can't put 1 player on a bad team & say he isn't any good because they can't win. The Bills have one of the worst 2 or 3 QBs in the league.

TO was a jerk......but he put up numbers. None of the current WRs are putting up #1 WR stats and they are playing on team that is expected to win.

"Then why did we not make the playoffs last year and correct me if I am wrong but t.o. is not really tearing it up in Buffalo."

It was not T.O.'s fault for not making the playoffs last year. It was mainly because of the injuries to the key players we had.

austin screwed up big time on the int by bailey. that wasnt romo's fault. romo is more effective as a scrambler. moved around and made a play to sam hurd. where was martellus bennett? you have a guy light up training camp, who's supposed to play a bigger part in the offense, where was he? a 6'6" target in the end zone against smaller cb's gives you a nice matchup.

Totally agree. However we were told that this team was going to a run-oriented offense. Of course that hasn't happened
which leads one to think "What in the world are these coaches thinking!"

He's terrible.

It's getting old dude, crying about injuries, every team has thm, some are just capable of overcoming them. It just so happens the Cowboys can't. But that want stop you from using it. Good luck you'll need it.

I'm with you on the excuses. I've heard injuries, bad luck, etc etc etc. Some one (who skipped out after being challenged) even said the Cowboys were too young, when in fact they were one of the oldest teams in the league.
It's been well over a decade since a playoff win. It's not one person's fault, it ain't bad luck, and it ain't injuries.
It's a lack of leadership, not enough talent, and not enough hunger from top to bottom to do what's necessary to
win. PERIOD

Examples?

Its still fact that injuries were the biggest reason for not winning last year. Each year teams have different reasons why they win and lose. Validity is real but every ones opinion of if it matters is just that. Opinions. No team can escape when injuries happen to key players. Occasionally they get lucky and a backup steps up and ends up turning into a really nice player. It doesn't happen often. Sometimes teams end up playing better because of the new combos being formed. You never can determine what will happen. You use stats and gut feelings as to how to move forward. My points that I bring up I'm not concerned about what happened the last 10 years. Quit living in the past. We have different players and coaches. Move on. This team did not lose or win 10 years ago. All this stuff is so elementary I'm amazed people close off their perceptions.

It's not perception, it's reality. Dallas has not won a playoff game in well over 10 years. I don't want to become the Cubs who no matter what they do can't win. Philadephia won playoff games with injuries. So did New England. It's not a one year "injuries got us" scenerio. It's over a decade of it. It's time to quite excusing it and demand better. And that starts with Jerry Jones and the head coach.

All teams, even Dallas has won playoffs with injuries. They are no different. You can demand better all you want but it doesn't do any good. My explanations on this were quite clear. No I haven't heard that injuries were the reason they haven't won in the last 10 years. I stated for last year it was the main reason. It's not always about the injuries. I believe I already alluded to some of the different things that take place.

Yeah. I think all of us Cowboy fans have come to that realization.