Mick Shots: Another Gloomy Monday

I'm gonna miss it. Everson Walls, Mickey Spagnola. We're waiting the arrival of Bill Jones here in our SWBC podcast studio at the Star on this Monday afternoon. And did someone hold the press conference and tell us that Bell is inactive? Oh? Maybe that was happening. Bill is inactive today. He was one of the he didn't make it to the forty eight man Rock. There you go, There you go. After the Cowboys nineteen to nine lost to Kanzie City Chiefs.

And I'm sure Everson, we all not only had that picked the winner right, but we had the score right too, right man. I was so off. I mean I was as off as you can be. Not only did my score so way off my pick to click. I mean, Paula didn't even really hardly touch the ball. Seems like, you know, well he he had I think he had the most carrious did he really well? Let's see, I was when I look, I was just so lost in the boredom of the game itself. See here, here's why

you lost tract of him. I think his first carry was thirty one yards ye, and then he had six carries for nineteen crazy, so that's three yards a shot. Zeke had nine carries for thirty two yards, and he was nursing a banged up knee that he suffered in the first half. It was the same knee sprain that he's been dealing with, and they had to kind of you know, regulate his snaps and he didn't get as many stamps as he his knee or his ankle or both. Well.

I was told knee how he said in a press conference something about the twisted ankle, But when I talked to the medical folks after the game, it was basically irritating the knee that's been bothered him now for a good three weeks. Yes, yeah, I was going to say a month. So what were your overall impressions of what took place. You know, I gotta say, we had so

much hype related to this game. We're looking at the numbers by both teams, especially even the potential of this quarterback matchup that was just going to create fireworks throughout the entire stadium. And to look at what happened. The lack of output really, to me by both teams, especially by both quarterbacks, it made for a very I just say, uneventful. It was an uneventful affair. Can I call it that? Yes? Absolutely, because it was. I was so bored, not just frustrated,

like I said, I definitely frustrated, but definitely bored. Yeah. And here was the weird thing. And this is what I wrote about in my column this morning. Had we had you told me before the game that the Cowboys would hold Kansas City to nineteen points, Cowboys win, Cowboys. When if you had have told me they held the

Kansas City Chiefs to just two touchdowns, Cowboys winboy. And if you had told me Patrick Mahomes is only going to complete twenty three or thirty seven passes for two hundred and sixty yards, get sacked three times, intercepted once, and finished with a seventy one point nine quarterback blowing them out. It's a runaway, right, that's it. It would

be a runaway. And had you told me that the Cowboys would not score a touchdown for the first time in twenty seven games and Dak would only throw for two hundred and sixteen yards and all they would score is nine points, I'd have told you you lost your mind.

That's it. That's true. But all that took place, and that's how the Cowboys ended up losing the game nineteen to nine and falling to seven and three, but still has the second best record in the high for the second best record in the NFC, and no matter what happens tonight, that's going to go out throughout the next into the next ball. And as a matter of fact, it's the second best record in the NFL because everybody in the NFC, I mean in the AFC as least

lost three games. Is in um Tennessee eight and three, Baltimore seven and three, Kansas City now seven and four, and all of a sudden they're in first place. Nobody wants first place, right because as soon as you get there, then you have a hiccup. And it's not just a hiccup. Sometimes it's it's just straight up barfing, you know what I'm saying. So I thought the best summary of that game, better than Mike column, was what Andy Reid had to

say after the game. I don't know if you They asked him if if this was a statement game for the Chiefs, and as a response was every week is crazy in this league. So I'm not sure there are any statements. There's not a lot of consistency going out right now amongst the NFL. Here, every week is a big time challenge. I'm talking about wins and losses haven't been consistent. There are ups and downs, and teams are favored and they get beat I mean, it's crazy crazy.

There you go, that's the best I thought. I was like, I was trying to write and sum it up in my words, and I go, no, I'm just gonna let them do it for me. That's it. Right. Well, let's look at the top teams. Buffalo, I don't know what the heck is going on with them. To me, they are the only team that's more baffling than the Dallas Cowboys right now. They've got all this talent and then all of a sudden you find these weaknesses that pop up out of nowhere, like like whac a mole or something.

So when you when you when you go from one week to the next, you're up here and everyone's on the badwagon. And as soon as you lose, not just the Cowboys, right, as soon as you lose, whether you're Buffalo, whether you're Tampa, where you're the Saints, you know, everyone's like, now you are, you are vilified for the rest of the season, of course, until the next week comes, and then we have a whole nother narative. So Buffalo, not only do they lose, Indianapolis beats them forty one to

fifteen at home. The Packers get beat by Minnesota thirty four thirty one jack against us right, and that game wasn't even close till the end when the Packers came back and tied it up. Baltimore supposed to be great, right, seven and three, Well, they struggled to beat Chicago by a field goal sixteen. Back up Andy Dalton coming in Carolina, Oh, Cams back, They're gonna get righted right. Washington beats them twenty seven twenty one. Feast baby. The Chargers, who we

had given up on them. Right, they beat Pittsburgh forty one thirty seven, So yeah, it just kind of continued. Then you know, there's the Cowboys following suit with their loss. New Orleans can't win a game now, right, Philadelphia forty or twenty nine? Hey, watch out for the NFC East. Watch out for the NFC East, and especially those Philadelphia Eagles. Yes, that's something we can talk about another time. But they're scoring, they are scoring, they are winning, and there they are

winning with guts. I mean, that's that's the thing that I was hoping for yesterday. And I always talked about my admiration for the Ravens teams like Pittsburgh to where it got so much going on all the time, quarterbacks out, COVID whatever, you know, age, you know, all kind of excuses. He trying to get rid of, the coach sending down to college football. He's cussing out all the press, and here we are. You know, every week, something silly happens, and it just doesn't make any sense to me how

you can be so up and seem invincible. And I'm not just talking Cowboys, but all of these teams that are supposed to be They talked about Josh Allen in Week four. Oh, he was an MVP already running away. Yeah yeah, then Jets, Jets, the Jets come along. I mean, it's not like he was handicapped by anything. They have his team. I mean, we got a few injuries like everyone else. But you don't even score a touchdown at home against the Jets. I think it was a home game.

And for them to be faulting like that, and for the Cowboys to be faulting, I just sat up there yesterday and I just shook my head and it still doesn't bring me solence that that other teams are going through it. That does not make me feel better. It's an excuse, but I gotta wonder what are we doing to where we are so inconsistent and every week in this league, you hit the reset button, right, So tell me your thoughts on why you think this Cowboy offense

just faltered again. It's Kansas City offensive line line. It's just it is what it is. That defensive line came out is amazing. The husual suspects with Jones. We knew Jones was going to be a problem, right, We talked about this last week. He's got to be the AFC Defensive Player of the way. Here we go again putting somebody in the problem. Right, we just we can't help ourselves. We're going the road. We just make somebody famous. Three

and a half we do. Somebody told me that he did one of the postgame shows on TV and they said he had three and a half sacks. He goes, no, I had four, and they go, no, officially, you had three. He goes, well, somebody's gonna have to answer to where my other half sack? And I think forced to fumble. Well, look here's his line. They're still trying to block. They

can't find him. So he ends up with five tackles, three and a half sacks for twenty yards not not just at the line of scrimmage, right, two tackles for losses, three quarterback hits, one past defense he deflected it at the line, one force fumble, and one fumble recovered. Who does better than right? Yeah, And unfortunately for Micah Parsons, he might have been the NFC Defensive Player of the Week. That would be Parsons would be number two in this regard, right because he had a hell of a game. It

just needed them to win. Our defense was amazing, Yes, they really were, and I was impressed by them, because when you have an offense that's so inadequate and you have these letdowns of the turnovers and interceptions in bad places, Dak's interception to Ceedee Lamb. It just lets you know when you do something that is ill advised, it can cause dominoes to fall. Never it's no way that you're supposed to throw an interception in that in that part of the field when we have a chance to have

points or at least kick a field goal. Gotta have at least the foot points you're gonna get something. It had you kicked the field goal there and you got twelve, you're always within one score on score of tying the game, and we had just that. It was a momentum changer before that to put us in position to where we are. So now you you just can't throw an interception right there. And it's not just a guy made the great play. It's an OK play, but you threw it to him,

not to the receiver. CD left plenty of room on the outside, plenty of room on the outside for him to look, and he was not. He wasn't ahead of him. But if you could go back show the faith. You've got all kind of answers for that. He was feeling it. He was hearing. Let's they seeing ghosts or hearing ghosts, that's what That's the way it was, because they were whether they're blitzing or not. Kansas City had constant pressure on him. Sacked five times. I believe I saw where

he was hit eight times. And this tells you how much pressure he's under. They had nine passes defense. That means they're getting their hands on his best. So he's trying to fit in. So to me, at least I will, you know, give him five at one point, but yeah,

at least four. And look, here's the deal. You know, it's very noble of them to rest on this next man up thing, but as I always say, the reason they're the next man up and at some point you get diminishing returns, right, So you know everybody was ready to put Terrence Steele in the ring of honor. Well, they better get him off the left hand. That's crazy, right, I saw one point first one. Well, yeah, I don't know what is going on. I don't know if he heard the snap or they were on a silent count

and he didn't have it right. Oh man, he was still standing. He's still counting everybody else it was Clark, right, Yeah, he's sacking back and he's still stand. Uh man. When when you got games like that and you see a unit having the problems, First of all, Tylon Smith should get paid whatever he asked for, any time he asked for it. I hate to see my boy Zach struggling.

He gave up one to Chris Jones. Yeah yeah, I mean, but you can still see that even when he when he didn't give one up, it was just he was part of the unit that was being overwhelmed and creating that uh claustrophobic look that Dak had back there, creating the ghost. Yeah, there you go. Lele Collins struggled and you know, while they didn't have a penalty at left guard, I don't know that McGovern. You know, times when you better take a penalty right the way, that's the way

that he was. I'm not sure if you know, Okay, good on the better against the penalties right, And I'm not sure he played better than Williams there. He's strong. None of them played well, let's just be real. None of them played well. So we did not improve on the offensive line it off and I understand there was you know, the crowd can get noisy there and you have trouble with the snap count. But still he had

to do it better, you know. And Dak, I mean Dak Zack stood up after the game and said, you know, if you had told me that the defense was going to play this well, we were gonna win. And we didn't hold up our end of the bargain meeting the offense. And he put it on the offense. Andy, shit, that's good that he did, because you can't you can't play it off on anybody else. I mean, that was the he spoke the obvious, but sometimes you have to go

ahead and admit to that. I just really thought that as much as we are strong in so many areas, it was that game was still within our reach. And when you talk about Dak, we'll talk about Dak's elius. You know, the pressure that was that Dak was getting. Let's just be real. He's had pressure before. I mean I heard them say it before this season started. The number one passer under pressure. Yes, that's what he's known for. But not yesterday. For some reason, it seemed to get

to him more than any other team. It couldn't have been the crowd. Cowboys offense has been out. There's so many This is nothing new exactly. So the only thing that's new is the fact that we couldn't perform. And I was extremely surprised. Like I said, not just that you made the mistakes, but in the crucial areas that they were made. You cannot You cannot let anyone but ceedee Lamb have a chance at that ball go into the end zone. Now look at the domino effect. He's

got to play defense. Now, now he's got the concussion, you know, he's got to go. And then they get the ball to start the second half. Yeah, so we're gonna come up with some key points in this game. I've got about four points where the Cowboys had an opportunity to take advantage and the fact that next man up at wide receiver didn't work out so well either. Will return to mix shots in a moment in the

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As we continue on mix shots, Everson Walls Mickey Spagnola here in the SWBC podcast studio after a dreary Sunday for the Dallas Cowboys losing nineteen nine to the Kansas City Chiefs, who moved to seven and four in first place in the AFC West. Now we were talking about next man up. We talked about the offensive line, well wide receiver. It seems like when it rains, it pours

at a position. The Cowboys found out on Friday. We found out after our show that Amari Cooper had tested positive for COVID and now he's probably missing ten days, which will include at least Thanksgiving, and since he's not vaccinated, he uh, it will be ten days and he's got a test negative twice before he can get back. So so we're starting we're talking about starting from Friday Friday, correct, Yes, and that gets into the week of the New Orleans Yeah, man,

should and you have to recover. Yes, And as we've seen nobody has recovered earlier is close contact ask but guys that have had it that tested positive have not recovered. It's been ten days to two weeks. Yes, it seems like. So you don't have him, you get that surprise on Friday. So okay, you know Cedric Wilson's gonna start. But here's

what happens. And I always say this, Okay, that's great, but now one injury away and now what Now you're down to your fifth wide receiver, meaning like Ceedee Lamb happens, I mean yeah, and then Ceedee Lamb suffers the concussion at the end of the first half, and now it's Cedric Wilson and Noah Brown and then Malik Turner and Michael Gallup is the guy that well, if you're the Chiefs, who you worried about Michael Gallup right, and he was, you know, doing as much as he could do this,

but then the drops started. You know, Noah had one, Cedric had one or two, and it just compounded. You got to have your guys out there and I know, oh, everybody wants to you know the next guy up. Okay, fine, that hurt also, So you had the combination of your offensive line struggling, meaning your quarterback was struggling, and now you've dipped into the depth at your wide receiver position. Yes,

so uh look I've got I went through this. The opportunities they had, even though they struggled offensively, right, whether they end up with like two hundred and sixty total yards, it was just something ridiculous. First play of the game, they got a touchdown. If you were going there, first play, what is happening? Seven? Nothing? Michael Gallop smokes, showed various ward and Dak overthrows a man. How do you overthrow Michael Gallop and badly? O? Yes? Right, yes, Now, I

don't know if the win was playing. All I know on the kickoffs when they were kicking off that direction, so it would have been we were in the press box to our left, they were going in the end zone. When they were kicking off to the right, they were hanging up right. So I don't know, but that would have meant the wind was coming out of the east. I think that didn't make sense. What what did Dad say about it? He didn't I'm sure he wasn't confronted.

He wasn't gonna use an excuse. Well, I just want to know what he said end or no, No, he on the plate. Oh I missed him. Yeah, I gotta hit that. I gotta hit that. So then the third Cowboys possession, they're now down nine nothing, first and ten at the Kansas City fifteen fifteen. They end up with a field goal. Yeah, can't have that happened? What happens

right close? You are delusion. Then at the end of the second quarter, they get the sack fumble from Parsons, they recover, they get the ball at the Kansas City did not tell you you did? Yes, and they drive to a first and ten at the Kansas City twenty eight. Now there's only twenty one seconds, but Dak went for it all And that was the intercepted deception that you were talking about. You just can't happen. We move along

to the third quarter. Cowboys first possession. Um, you know they're still down now sixteen to three, first and ten at the Kansas City seventeen seventeen, and it's a field goal. Yeah,

so red zone problems up again. Yes, And then the beginning of the fourth quarter, and you're still sitting there going okay, if they just score a touchdown, right and they just kept teasing you, right, So the end of the third quarter, first possession or in it went into the fourth quarter, and uh, they're down now nineteen to six, and you're going, okay, you score a touchdown, it's nineteen thirteen. Okay,

we're back to the defense is playing well? Right, Yeah, first and they moved to first and ten at the Kansas City twenty one and this one, I'm gonna call bs on first play, be honest with a false start. Now, I didn't see him like act like he was gonna snap it. I saw him pop his head up and then they threw the flag. Can I say how ridiculous

the coverage was on these penalties. It seemed as if the production booth, Troy and the guys, they were so busy being distracted by these other things when you got key things happening on the field and no one was set up to review it. And they came back to one play two plays later. So five yards Now you're first in the last thing you want to be against this team is first in fifteen, Right, they tried to

run the ball, get something. Zeke got four. And then on second and eleven at the twenty two, they tried Cedric Wilson on an end around in front of Dak and he's gonna flip him the ball, and they fumbled it. And afterwards Cedric said he thought it was supposed to be a handoff, not like a flip. Yeah, maybe he did so. Fortunately, yeah, oh no, that wasn't the play because they ended up minus two on that. The other one ended up being an incomplete pass. I just know that.

After the play, Cedric was like, hey, you know right, yeah and here, Yeah, that wasn't this play. This one was a short pastor Wilson. They tried to smoke screen and remember whoever it was on the outside was a Schultz. They missed the block that happened. That was when Gallup got dumped. Correct, No, that was another one, you're right, that was independent of this, But this one same thing. They didn't get the block. One time Zeke was out there, you could tell it was gonna be a bubble screen.

They drew attention to themselves because I don't think Zeke or I don't think they knew which one is catching and which one was blocking. If you would call right and he and Dak, I don't think he did. He throw it out there. I don't think he threw it out there. Both of them seemed to block. You didn't see that. I know I didn't see that wrong. So Zeke is out there with I think he was with Schultz and they both blocked. I don't even think he

threw the ball out. There was probably another sack or another complete or some crap, but it just showed more an aptitude. And then so that series first and ten at the twenty one ends with a field goal. So now it's nineteen to nine and you're sitting there going, okay, if they just score a touchdown, you know you would at least have an on side kick comes to tease and then let's see and they go down to first

and ten at the Kansas City twenty. Now there was only one oh seven left and Dak tries to hit and the leak Turner I assumed it was Malik Turner on that slant. Yeah it was, and the safety was sitting right there. Well they got tipped, and did they got tip? Yeah, they took all that was jobs, that's right, they got they got tea. It wasn't like he just threw it in there that got tipped. And u Legarius need intercept. That guy had a really had a good kid.

He was a painting the Cowboys about Matthews and he was the one that was the man. And so there was another one. So all these opportunities they had they could not cash in, and that's why you end up with three. There was a play they went back. I just can't believe they did this. They missed a call and they went back and and enforced it. It's not even reviewable. Did you even get You didn't see that,

did you? It wasn't the There was a there was a hands to the face that didn't get called, and it ended up a holding penalty on the Cowboys on the offensive line. They went back and called it. Yeah, they went back and called it. They missed it, and they went back. The play was over. They went to the chord and the guys went to the guy. He said, new York didn't call that. That doesn't come from New York. That was the eye in the sky. You can't do that,

I know. And he said even the referee on site said you if New York doesn't bring it in, then it's not reviewable. And they went back and they paid up for the call that they missed. Now come on, man, what is this? I mean to be allowed to do that? And McCarthy was of course going crazy over there. Oh there was a couple that he was going crazy. Well, the personal file, well, the guy was pushed while the play was still going on, right, we pushed in the

fifty nine, pushed him, pushed the running back. Play was still going on, and they called the personal file or the face mask where they missed the first face. Both guys should have been penalized for face masking, but the Cowboys got the penalty on the face mask. Yeah, um yeah, watch stuff man. And this is they are not extremely inconsistent, right, I mean they don't have their eyes in the right spot. And it keeps coming up, keeps coming up, keeps coming up.

Um and and and so when you're not playing well, you know, usually you say, well, okay, that shouldn't decide. When you're not playing, the well just piles on top that. The pile just gets bigger and bigger. It's tough. You can't overcome your mistakes and or the penalties or a bad call. I'd like to put a third. You had old line, you had wide receivers, and I gotta go with the o C. Okay, I mean, I'm giving him

credit whenever he shows out. As my kids say, he comes out of his bad right, you know what I mean, comes out of it as bad. You got so much going on, and it's amazing how he distributes everybody and everything, no, no matter how tough it is. From the beginning, my concern with with Kellen Moore's play calling has always been this. We rarely run the ball to consecutive place. There are times, and this is we're getting into that time of year. We need to show ourselves and even anyone else that

we can run this ball. Yes, you're gonna stop us once. I remember Tom Land used to say, Yeah, they're gonna stop you. They're gonna stop you, but you have to be ready for the one that breaks. Okay, you know they're gonna stop you. And that's what I like about it. I keep bringing up Pittsburgh, keeping bringing up the Ravens. They're going to force their game plan on you. They're going to force their physicality on you. They're not gonna

let up with certain cute plays and all that. Now, those cute players, they work and I love them, and that's they're so amazing when they work right, But when you gotta smash mouth somebody, we have not shown that we would like to consistently do that. I don't mean that when we get on the goal line, Okay, we're gonna okay, this time, we're gonna give give Zeke the ball. Yeah, we's goal line. But when you're out in the field, you're on the twenty yard line, we're on your own

ten yard line. You gotta show that you're willing to put that ball in Zeke's hands or on Paulo's hands. And we're gonna let Zach, We're gonna let Beard this, We're gonna let tyr and do what they do. We have not shown that this year, not against teams, and especially when we're down. And here's and here's another huge difference in the game. And you're talking about staying with the run. So they track at the end of the game.

You get a list of how many plays you had for twenty yards or more or no, I take it back. They track your longest ten longest plays. Cowboys had one play more than twenty yards. It was the thirty one yard run by Polo. Yeah, but that was it. Kansas City, on the other hand, on their top ten plays longest play. Six of them were twenty one yards or more. And that was one of the things that Cowboy Defense struggled with, somewhat back to their problem and giving up those big plays.

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Will look at there, and he got the dot coms all all slashed and calmed and doted. Baby Everson Walls, Mickey Spagnola. Bill Jones reminded us that he reminded us last Friday that he wouldn't be here. I wasn't listening to him because I don't even remember he had a previous work commitment to take care of. Sorry, William, and let me read the rest of Andy Reid's quote that I read off the top. It's what the league strive for, parody, and I think they've done a great job with that.

Every city has an opportunity to win football games, even Detroit when they tied. Right, that's a great thing, and we're no different. We've got to just keep our nose to it and bear down as we go, take each game as it comes. We haven't proven anything yet. You can talk about it all after the season, go find an island and go lay around and tell everyone about it. But right now, not so much. Nope, And he's got a lot to deal with in the in the AFC West, right,

I mean, Dick Cowboys the least of his problems. Right now, he's just glad to get that in the in the review review mirror, and he's moving on. They got Chargers, you know they have what Raiders still they have to deal with Seahawks. I think so. Then acst is tell So the Chiefs have now won four straight, they've won four of the last five and scoring no more no. In four of the last five games, they've scored no more than twenty points, and they're four and one four

and one. So that defense has stepped up. I believe in that stretch. I think they're like the number four defense. In the last six games they've given up in five of them, they've given up no more than seventeen points. So Tennessee is the outlier. I think they ended up twenty seven. Another team that lost yesterday. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, all right. So we were talking about next man up on the offense, but here kind of might take on the defense. You don't have DeMarcus Lawrence yet. Randy Gregory

has to miss at least another game. Although Lawrence. By the way, they brought Lawrence, Neville Gallimore and Brent Urban to the game so they can do their rehab prior to the warm ups. That close to close. When I saw them, I said, oh, he must be getting close because you would him, right, you wouldn't bring him. But that last rehab was like, okay, let's get that rehab in u since the other guys are there. But so your top two pass rushers are out, okay, and you'll

sit there and go okay. But that's fine. Because Michael Parsons could play defensive end. They needed him at linebacker too. He can't bewhere. I know he can't bewhere. And I mentioned his line, you know. And it was another phenomenal performance by a guy that's not ann So Parsons finishes with four tackles, two sacks, two tackles for losses. Three quarterback hits and a force fumble. All right, but four tackles?

What does he normally get, seemingly of late, it's nine to twelve tackles again, true, they needed him at linebacker along with vander esh because of the speed that Kansas City was playing with. They picked him underneath, picked him apart underneath with all that crossing stuff, and I'm thinking he could run some of that stuff down. And I'm thinking he has a better chance to run down Mahomes when he doesn't have a three hundred and twenty pound

defensive end in front of him. Two of them at one point seven times, you can see two guys block and they ended up taking the rookie out and brought in another guy and he blew past him too. And that's great, right, but in the overall game, you get limited when you're at defensive end. Now you probably think, Okay, he's crazy. He got two sacks. He just tied to Marcus Wears a rookie record for most sacks in a single season since they started counting sacks after and during

the nineteen eighty two season. So I think Harvey Martin probably had nine his rookie year. Somebody else had nine also, but that's when the sacks became an official NFL. So again, the injuries impact you in some way or fashion. It limits you because hey, if he got two sacks out there, if DeMarcus Lawrence is healthy, he can get two. Randy Gregory could right now. Now you got him in the

middle doing all the other stuff. What it does is, obviously, if you take away a resource, it's hard to replace it without diminishing your backup, without diminishing your strength, without diminishing your options, you know. Uh, And that's what they did. We didn't have the variety. We needed more variety, We needed more players that could do what we needed to be done. I was kind of disappointed my boy, Kean O'Neil. I think that was a game for him step up.

I don't think he played that well at all. I didn't see him make an impact, whether it was on the run or back at the past. And he had tackles, he had seven, but again it wasn't anything you know that lit up. It was a low tackles for losses and things of that nature. That's kind of what you were looking for consistently anyway. And and let me show this also, other than Parsons. The top tacklers in the game for the Cowboys Neil Hooker, Curse Parsons, Brown Digs,

Donovan Wilson, and Jordan Lewis. What is the common thing there, all dbs. That's ten guys. The only guy up front that had tackles more than four or at least four tackles was Parsons. Oh, Carlos Watkins tied at ten with four. Nice all right, But after that the other guy is on the defensive front didn't do anything. So that means and they were given the ball to Hilaire by the way, yeah right, and that was his first game, and you know, and and while he didn't pile up big numbers, he

kept he kept the yardage moving the chains. Yeah, that's what they were doing that he was getting And they were giving up big plays as much as they just you don't want a team like Casey to control the clock as much as they did, especially when defensively. Offensively we're playing the way we were. But you know what the weird thing was, it looked like they had the ball forever. They had it for thirty minutes and forty

seven seconds. The Cowboys had it for twenty nine minutes in thirteen seconds, so they had it ninety four seconds more. That's it. But it seemed like they possessed the ball forever. And that's because Hilaire was averaging five five point three yards par for the course, right part for the course. That's how that's the that's what we have never been able to remedy on this defense yet. And I get now here's the thing. They can do all of that they want if you can let them have those numbers.

But as a defense, you create more turnofs, then of course that's going to offset their their effectiveness. We didn't play the past wells as well as we should have. H I wish we were closer in some of those key moments. Uh, they gain playing my board digs on a couple of plays to where I get it. That's the same thing they tried to do with me. They want you to jump up so they can catch you in the back, either it's by a double move by

the man that you're guarding, or they scheme it. They know you in the zone, they make you bite on the man in the flat. Then they send someone to the to the flag or to the outside deep where you probably are supposed to be along with the safety. You see Diggs is up here. The safety is alway flanked by the guy in the third receiver inside. All he does is want to flag about. Diggs has a choice to make you either stay back or you come up. He chose to go up. Folks. Well, I'll tell you

what though. One of the things that they were doing is they were playing their corners at most of the time five to seven yards off the line of scrimmage. You can't see that on TV, but when you're there, they're leaving all this space. Right. We saw it, and there was one they lined up and I just kind of said out loud to myself, I said, well, they're gonna throw a slant to Hill. Well, sure enough, they threw a slant because everybody was backed off. We could

see it. My son. My son fussed about it the entire game. Why are they lined up so deep because all they're gonna do is just give them space? And what you don't want and I've always said this, Okay, he might have gotten this for me. You don't want a free release, right, you get these fast guys are free release. Then the timing is there there for Mahomes. He has nothing. You're not inhibiting them from doing anything. You're not stopping them from from running slants, you're not

stopping their timing. You want to throw the timing off every time we got up and jammed them. Anytime you play two deep safeties and you jammed the wide receivers, which is what most people have been doing and what keeps them effective, it makes my homes hold on to it a little bit long because the guy's gotta break over. The guys gotta break open, and when you're jacking them up at the line of scrimmage, then it's not really clear which what the timing is. And that's what you

want to do. I mean, we did it with the Giants all the time. We didn't play off. We played on because the pressure you put on those wide receivers that puts pressure on the quarterback. I don't know if it was they were so worried they were going to run past them if they didn't hold them up at the line. The cover too, like everybody else, when you give them that much space, I bet the yards after catch were enormous. Play the cover too, man, like everybody else.

That's what's been holding them down. That's why they don't score as much. Now you got two deep safes, nothing wrong with that. I would rather I'll do like like Super Bowl twenty five. I'd rather you beat me with the run than beat me with the pass. Well, I just noticed. And and even sometimes on third down you were thinking we'll get up on the line of scrimmage,

they only got to pick up six or seven. Right. Well, when you're backed off that far um, passons ain't gonna take long when you when you're jamming this guy, and if he was in the middle at linebacker, some of that stuff they might have gotten just inside covered. Yeah, at least been deterred or at least somebody can run them down. There you go. But they didn't run down much of anything. And we just ran down. We ran down to time all the way to the end of

this thing. All right, We will be back tomorrow. Bill Jones should be back with us Foreverson Walls of Mickey Spagnola, Chris, thanks for getting us up and running, and we'll be back with mick shots tomorrow. Here on Dallas Cowboys dot Com, Go Cowboys. This has been a production of Dallas Cowboys dot Com and the Dallas Cowboys Football Club.