For most of this nightmare of a season, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has been singing the same tune: everything would be different if Tony Romo were healthy. He's alternately blamed himself for not properly addressing the backup quarterback situation and the coaching staff for not finding a way to win at least one game without their starter (prior to last Monday's win over Washington; the Cowboys went 0-7 during Romo's initial absence), but the overall message has been largely the same.
After Sunday's 28-7 loss to the Green Bay Packers, Jones finally admitted his team has more issues than just the stabiity of Romo's fragile clavicle. Asked whether Romo's absence was the only thing keeping his team from being in the same class as top NFC seeds Carolina and Arizona, Jerry demurred.
“I don’t have the heart to put us in with those clubs right now, because I don’t want to -- we’ve got more work to do than just get Romo healthy,” Jones said, per the team's official web site.
“We’ve got a lot of work. I want you know that there’s some things that we have to do better for us to have a healthy Romo and have an effective Dez Bryant,” he continued. “There’s some things we’ve got to really address and do better as we look over these last few games and the future. We need to do them.”
Just off the top of my head, a few areas of concern: rush defense, pass coverage, pass catching, special teams, and in-game management of the score and the clock.
Dallas allowed Eddie Lacy and James Starks to carry the ball 35 times for 195 yards and two touchdowns on Sunday. The Cowboys are allowing 113.8 rushing yards per game, which is in the bottom half of the league. They've yielded 13 rushing touchdowns, fourth-most in the NFL. They came into the game 21st in Football Outsiders' Adjusted Line Yards against (which assigns credit in the running game based on a percentage of yards gained on each run), 30th in Power Success (the percentage of time that, on 3rd or 4th down with 2 or fewer yards to go, a team allows a conversion for a first down or more), and 27th in 2nd Level Yards per attempt (yards gained per run between 5 and 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage). Those numbers highlight the issues at every level of the run defense.
The Cowboys have allowed the fourth-fewest passing yards in the league this season, but they have also faced the seventh-fewest number of pass attempts thanks to their ball control offense and the fact that they've been losing most of the time they've been on the field this year. They're 21st in completion percentage allowed and 19th in yards per attempt. Brandon Carr has been better this season than his first few in Dallas but has still not nearly played up to the level of his contract. Morris Claiborne has once again been one of the NFL's worst cornerbacks. And all of Dallas' safeties have been routinely victimized in the passing game.
Dez Bryant and Jason Witten are the Cowboys' only above-average passing game weapons with Romo out, and Bryant has been dreadful this season -- even accounting for his injury. He dropped three passes against Green Bay on Sunday, finishing with just one catch for nine yards. Cole Beasley's role has all but disappeared without Romo around, and the same is true of Terrance Williams. Gavin Escobar has been a complete non-factor in the passing game pretty much since he's been drafted. Beyond Bryant, there is almost no explosion factor in this group.
Kicker Dan Bailey has again been excellent, and punter Chris Jones has had a nice season as well, but Dallas' return and return coverage units have left much to be desired.
And that's all before we get into talking about head coach Jason Garrett's various clock, play call, and management issues, which would honestly take a dedicated post to really dig into. The point here, as Jerry finally said: this is a team that has a whole lot of things to fix by the time next season starts, beyond just getting their starting quarterback healthy.
