Week 5 Analysis: 4-1

Even before I begin with the stat breakdown, what we all really care about, is that Ocho Cinco didn't score a touchdown and didn't kiss the star.

Now that we got that out of the way:

Offense:
Romo threw yet another pick. Do you think maybe he'll go a game without throwing an INT? He did throw 3 TD passes though.

It was kind of a reverse problem of last week. Last week everyone (myself included)was screaming that our running game was non existant, only giving The Barbarian 8 attempts and Felix Jones not receiving a single touch. This week, we ran and ran and ran while Romo only threw the ball 23 times (14 completions)

The reception leader was Jason Witten, who had 8 for 79 yards and a TD. "The player" only had 2 catches for 67, one of them a TD catch. He was doubled up all night but probably lays awake at night wanting to know why we don't throw it at him while he's in double coverage (or, as is the case last week, wonders why we didn't throw it at him when we threw it at him 20 times).

Even though it limits the damage he can do on the field, I still don't mind him being double-teamed. Why? Well, if you take away those 3 players ("the player" plus the 2 players defending him" then we have an advantage by playing 10 on 9 football. Make sense?

Now to the running game. Marion Barber had 23 touches for 84 yards. Felix Jones had 9 touches for 96 yards and 2 TDs.

Throughout much of the past few seasons, Cowboy fans (or even non-Cowboy fans) were claiming that although Julius Jones was starting, Marion Barber was the better back. I wonder when the same thing is going to be said about Felix Jones. I haven't heard too many people mention it yet, but it's coming. Look at the numbers. Felix Jones is averaging 9 yards/carry (27 attempts - 244 yards). In those 27 touches he hasn't fumbled the ball. Marion has fumbled 3 times in his 93 attempts while "only" averaging 4.2 yards/carry.

OK, obviously Felix won't keep up 9 yards/carry if he's getting 25 chances each game and there is nothing wrong with a back who averages 4.2 yards/carry. It's just something interesting to keep an eye on. I wonder when the mumbling will start.

Defense

Make no mistake about it, we won't be a Super Bowl team if our defense continues to play at this level. We are week at coverage from our Strong Safety. We are weak at the pass rush (at least 5 of our front seven players are.) Ware and Ratliff each had a sack in this game. Besides Ratliff, none of the other linemen can be counted on to get to the quarterback.

On the season our linebackers are outsacking our lineman...not that that is absolutely horrible, but our linebackers don't get quite as many chances. Greg Ellis, formerly a DE but now a LB has 2, Zach Thomas has 1, Demarcus Ware has 5. However across the line, we know Ratliff can sack, Chris Canty has one but we dont' have any from Tank Johnson or Marcus Spears.

As far as the rest of our defense goes on the game, Adam Jones led the team with 5 tackles. Greg Ellis had an interception. No Newman.

Other comments:

Well, it's hard to say exactly if you call this a close call or not. True, we almost let a 17 point lead get away from us, but we did win by 2 scores. I'll chalk this up to one of those cases where you come back from halftime and fall asleep because (you think) it's in the bag. I'm hesitant to say that "we got away with this one" although that's what a lot are saying. Some also are saying that this was a "less than impressive win". So exactly how do you beat a team that's 0-5 and still impress people? Maybe I took that a big too far, we shouldn't have let them come back like that.

As each week passes we are showing more and more signs of weakness. We continue to slip in the power rankings. We have the Cardinals next week, let's see if we can straighten a few things out.