BiteyMax's Next Day Non-Emotional Thoughts

As usual my “non-emotional” thoughts from yesterday’s game. Feel free to share your own, argue with mine etc…
23-16 Cowboys, we move to 2-1 on the season and now must set our sights on Chicago. It would have been really, really nice to win this game and start 3-0 but it wasn’t in the cards. Last night was a reminder after a 2-0 start that while we’re seeing progress and promise, we still have a way to go building this team. Still, if we go back in time 4 weeks, every single one of us would sign up for 2-1 going into the Bears game…


Offense:

16 points scored, 9 coming on field goals. Its notable the shortest (made) field goal was 42 yards and Barkley’s touchdown was from 36 yards out. We’ve had games where we’ve gotten to the red zone and just couldn’t close, last night we struggled to even get the ball inside the 20. Not a good game for the offense though there were some bright spots.

Jones – Very rarely do you outline an offensive output like I did above and say the QB played well, but I feel like this was the case last night. While the box score reads 20/37 for 196, no TDs and 1 INT it’s a touch misleading. Jones was sacked 5 times and Dallas pressured him more than Jones has ever been pressured in a single game. Every time he dropped back someone was at his feet and I know someone will say “this has been the case the last 2 weeks”, last night was far worse… While Jones still isn’t going to be confused with Josh Allen, he played a solid game last night in a bad situation.

RBs – This is just Barkley as him and Jones split all but 2 carries. Barkley continues to run like a new back. Decisive, less dancing and more than once he just took what was available rather than dancing and taking a negative play. While a huge portion of his yards were on the TD carry, his YPC weren’t horrible before that (just under 4) and Barkley has always been a “big play” back. Good game by him, I really hope this continues all season.

WRs – This group is interesting to say the least… Before I get into anything, Shep’s injury on the last offensive play didn’t look good and this may be it for him as a Giant. He’s been hurt most of his tenure here and has never been an all pro or pro bowl player, but Shep is a good WR who plays his butt off on a weekly basis. Hopefully I’m wrong and he’s okay, but I don’t think it’s the case. For the rest of the crew them underwhelming is going to become a weekly trend, we need someone to step up here. Shep saw 1/3rd of the targets last night and while Golladay played more than last week, he did nothing to make us want to see more of him, he also had a big drop in crunch time. Sills is limited athletically, and James is better than advertised but still scares no one. Someone needs to step up in this group, maybe Robinson when he gets healthy, maybe Toney gets his head together??? A core of Sills, James and Golladay isn’t going to cut it.

TEs – I need all 22 to comment on the blocking but we’re starting to see more of Daniel Bellinger and he looks like he can be a solid player. With the lack of talent at the WR position Bellinger stepping up and establishing himself as a safety blanket for Jones would be huge, especially with Shep out. Sadly, I’m more confident Bellinger can step up than our 71 million dollar man at WR.

OL – This felt like watching last year’s offensive line. Collapse after collapse from every part of the line except LT where Andrew Thomas continuously had his man blocked out of the play. I didn’t see Parson’s lined up on Thomas a lot, but I know when they did Thomas put him on the ground at least once. For the rest of the line, I’m hoping this is their motivation game because they got it handed to them yesterday. We expected Neal to have growing pains and I’m fine with that, but the interior is full of vets and they need to show more consistency. Knowing he was hit with a family tragedy early this year, Feliciano has been underwhelming as has Glowinski (in the passing game). Bredeson never had expectations and hopefully Lemieux can come back and play better. Its notable that this group run blocks much better than they pass protect.


Defense:

23 Points given up to a back up QB and 176 on the ground. This was our worst defensive performance of the year and I’d still make the comment that we gave the offense a chance to win. Still, just like the offense there are some holes that need to be cleaned up. At certain points in the game we get the reminders that we’re not fully “built” yet.

DL – The most obvious comment to make here is that we missed Leonard Williams. Bad contract, bad trade for him, but he’s still a very good player that effects the game. Not only does his lack of presence explain the 176 rushing yards, but he’s instrumental in collapsing the pocket on the rush. Outside of Lawrence, who played well and pushed the pocket, the DTs we rotated to replace Big Cat were continuously pushed back at the point of contact. The good news is Williams heals quick, but you can see his value when he’s gone.

EDGE – We were excited to see our shiny new toy last night in Thibodeaux as well as the return of last year’s rookie sack leader Ojulari. Unfortunately, it didn’t net us much as we had 0 sacks and the 2 players combined for only 2 tackles. We were quick to remember that Ojulari missed a lot of camp and KT is a rookie, we’ll get more out of both moving forward. Ward continues to be the best in holding the edge and had 6 tackles, its notable that Dallas attacked the edge a few times when Ward was out of the game. Something to watch for, especially if Williams misses extended time.

LB – I split edge and interior LB up today. Whenever you give up 176 yards rushing you have to assume that the LBs didn’t play well, I’d say that was the case today. On Pollard’s 46 yard run you were able to see one of the LBs (I believe Calitro) take the wrong gap leading to the run, the same thing happened last week on McCaffery’s long run. On Zeke’s TD Crowder had a good angle on him and the hole filled yet didn’t even attempt to wrap on the tackle, instead he opted to try and take him down with a shoulder. Result was a missed tackle leading to a TD. We can ask questions all day about releasing Martinez, but it’s been 3 weeks and no one has picked him up, there must be more to that story.

CBs – For 3/4s of the game I sat and watched thinking our corners did a really good job but then I blinked and all the sudden CeeDee Lamb was having a really good game. The reality is that for 3/4 of the game our corners did play well, but CeeDee is a good player and did what good players do, he stepped up in crunch time. All in all, 215 yards passing on 31 attempts with the front 7 getting 0 sacks, I can’t fault the secondary on this one. The were put in a tough position and did the best they could, next time we need to do a better job blanketing the WR1 crunch time, but they held their own most of the game.

S – I’m still on the boat Xavier McKinney is our best defensive player and both him and Julian Love should be getting extensions. The 2 combined for 20 tackles last night, moved all over the formations from the box to single high to covering the slot and played well wherever put. Belton got bailed out on a drop by CeeDee early in the 2nd half but was quiet otherwise, he’s a rookie and it shows sometimes but I think we have something with him moving forward.

Coaching:

Hard game to comment on the coaching. There were no crucial, gutsy decisions that needed to be made nor was there anything glaring with the game plan. The bottom line is we got beat up in the trenches and its very hard to do much else when that happens. On offense I do think Kafka did what he could to give Jones an opportunity and I’d again reference that we scored most of our points after halftime which shows we adjusted. On defense Wink lives and dies by pressure, that was the case last night. There were things we could have done better, but all in all the defense game the offense an opportunity to win the game.

Conclusion:

We can look at these one of two ways: we lost to Dallas again…, or we’re 2-1 after a stretch where most expected us to go 1-2 or 0-3. I prefer to see us as 2-1 going into a winnable game against a Chicago team that may not be able to exploit us where we’re weak. Some of the bad we’ve seen is fixable, such as the offensive line which should improve as they play together more, but some things will linger all season such as the lack of talent at WR. The good news is that the front office seems to now understand that we need to rebuild our roster (which has already started) and yet the coaching staff we have now seems capable of keeping us more competitive during this time than the last 3 coaches we’ve had. Its early in the season and things can go a lot of ways the rest of the season but 2-1 was a good start and I think this staff will keep the season entertaining for us fans. Now let’s go beat the Bears.