Week 3 Analysis: 3-0

I'm really enjoying Sunday part of the 2008 football season. As for the Saturday part, I'm practically ready for the season to end.

The Cowboys are playing well, meanwhile the University of Tennessee is playing like a bunch of "volunteers" (Hey Coach! Can I try football? Let me play! let me play!)

That's another post, though. Let's get to Dallas' game against the Pack attack at Lambeau.

Offense:

Back in his home state, Tony Romo began the game with a bit of a struggle, throwing a pick. Although I have no numbers to back this statement up, I feel like Tony Romo might be amongst the best in the league at recovering from a mistake. He did it last week after fumbling in the end zone against the Eagles. He did it yesterday after throwing a pick, he begins the next drive ready to prove that that wasn't his best.

Romo ends up throwing for 260 yards, going 17 for 30. With 1 TD and 1 INT. Not really outstanding numbers, but Romo seemed to be able to connect when it mattered most (3rd down conversions).

The reception king of the game, as usual, is Jason Witten with 7 catches. Miles Austin had only 2 receptions but went a total of 112 yards. The Packers had T.O. doubled all night, sticking Woodson on him from the first snap to the last. It's a choice defenses have to make. You have to pick 2 of the 3: Double T.O., Double Witten, or have a good pass rush. Yesterday the Pack attack sacrificed rushing the QB. Green Bay dropped their safeties back and Dallas took what the Packers' secondary gave them. It wasn't until late in the game when we started going over the top(a la Miles Austin), but that was when the Packers began changing their schemes a little bit because of the damage MB3 had done.

Speaking of Marion the Barbarian, he rushed 28 times for 146 yards and a TD. Also, Marion lost the first fumble of his career. Felix Jones wasn't bad on the ground either, going 6 for 76 yards and a TD, giving him a TD in each of his first 3 games.

Another first of this game, was Romo's very first intentional grounding penalty, twice! Romo had never been flagged for that in his career, until yesterday. Other than that, penalties weren't horrible. This was the first game I can remember in a long time when our opponent had more penalty yardage than we did (68 to our 54).

Defense:

This was a very good defensive game for us. The entire game, the Pack attack had two devestating passing plays (one to Jennings, one to Driver). One was a mental mistake from Adam Jones (I still don't know if I'm allowed to call him Pacman?) and another was a missed tackle from A. Henry. Other than that our defense wasn't giving much of anything. The longest run we gave up was 9 yards. Grant was held to 54 yards on 13 attempts. Jennings did catch 8 passes for 115 yards, but other than the already mentioned 26 yarder, it was just a few year and a few there.

We got to the quarterback 5 times. That makes it a total of 9 times between yesterday's gamed and last week's game, meaning we got to the quarterback 9 times against the NFC's two best offenses besides our own. The pass rush was what Wade was known for when he was with San Diego and it's nice to see that his system is working with the big D as well.

Solid execution on both sides of the ball yesterday. We'll need the same next week when we are back home against the Redskins. Life in the NFC East is crazy, with over half of your games being rivalry games.

Week 3 game ball - Marion Barber