Talkin' Cowboys: Too Many Miscues

the Dallas Cowboys, I know one thing is certain. There's never a dull day as a part of this franchise in covering this team, because they can't just get blown out. They can't just win and take care of the right things on a daily basis. They can't just do things to where it's easy for Cowboys fans. They've got to make it tough. They've got to make it controversial. And it's for the third straight week to start the twenty twenty season, a one score game and a one score result.

We're gonna break it down, We're gonna talk about it here.

I'm Talking Cowboys. Glad you're with us. I'm Kyle Yeoman's alongside Isaiah Standback our residence, super Bowl champion, in former Dallas Cowboy, Rob Phillips, our Cowboys insider, and the great heck Ma Harrison joining you as always, and guys, there are so many things we can impact right here once again, a laundry list of worth of issues, worth of problems, however you want to say it, even positive some that emerged out of that Alden Smith that we could talk about.

But other than that, where do we start Whenever it comes to the Dallas Cowboys loss last night against the Seattle Seahawks on the road, Rob, really, what did you see in terms of your general thoughts and how do we start breaking this thing down? Man? It's one of the weirder two weeks stretch as I've seen with the Cowboys, with two of those games that were just strange, and the way I look at the game yesterday, it kind of evens out. This league always kind of evens out.

They won a game a week ago they should not have run. They spotted too many points to Atlanta, found a way to win that game and lost this one for a lot of the same reasons that they fell behind a week earlier. Way too many mistakes and while you can say it evens out, it's still alarming because they're not doing the winning things you need to do

to take care of business. And it's it's really at all three levels of the of the team, offense, defense, special teams, and you know they've got to get it fixed. This is you know, they're they're entering a stretch here where you might think it's an easy stretch, it's not. If they if they don't take care of business and and eliminate some of the sloppy things that we're gonna get into a lot of that, they're gonna have trouble against Cleveland on Sunday at home. That's that's that's just

a fact. They did too many things to beat themselves in this game. Yeah, definitely, the the self inflicted wounds. It's troubling to see when we do, you know, do something good, get a sack and it's negated by pass interference or some type of penalty, and special teams, man, special teams. The just point after attempts are it's becoming an event and I don't think anyone is comfortable with that. And it's so crazy how one week can change things.

Where we were just talking about how great our special teams is until this week, man, I think we really got we still have question marks there, but defensively the secondary, how do we get that fixed? Because we're, like you said, Rob, we're getting to a point of the season where every week we're gonna start to see some pretty pretty good receivers.

So mans, so many things that we have to go over today, But the past interferences and special teams, man, big big question mark for me, you know, to kind of double back on what you just said, heck, you know. And Dallas Cowboys are the second week in a row have plexico bearers themselves. Okay, they have shot themselves in the laya. These I mean, every every facet of the of the game. Special teams, offense, defense, all played a part in this lost yesterday, and we send it in

the beginning the week. You cannot make mistakes against this team. The Seattle Seahawks are too good of a team entirely on all in all three facets really to make those mistakes and expect to really come out of the victor. So we got some work to do today, fellows. Let just go ahead and break it all down. Yeah, forty five minutes is not enough in terms of the time

for us to really get through this all. Luckily, we do have shows every day this week throughout leading you into the Browns week, which, like Rob said, it's not going to be any easy feat by any stretch of the imagination. But guys, whenever you talk about the mistakes that were made, I know early in the game we saw Dak Prescott throw his first interception in two hundred and sixty two or two hundred and ninety two rather

passing attempts. That's a Cowboys franchise record. So he's taken care of the football for an extended period of time. Now he's moved into the fact of he threw a pick at the end of the second quarter. It allowed Seattle to go down and score with seven seconds remaining

and take the lead heading into halftime. Then you come out, have a chance to really set the tone in the second half and really put on a very good show, put on a very good drive at the end or at the start of the third quarter, and set the tone. You fumble it a little strip zack fumble that ends up in another Seattle touchdown. It was a fifteen point swing, fourteen point swing that turned you around and all of a sudden put you down thirty to fifteen, and that's

where the Cowboys had to come back. How do you take care of the football better in key situations? That's what I think I'm most frustrated about guys. I mean, I mean, he's got a professionals, right, I mean, these guys are pros. I mean, I've been there before. You know, mistakes happen, but they can't continue to happen, right, They

cannot continue to have been special teams. Dropping the ball on a kickoff return on a perfectly kick kickoff return, that's just not an option, you know, taking care of the ball on offense. You know, we talked about this statistics going into this where Dak had two in the previous three I think appearances against Seattle, He's had two touchdowns versus five interceptions. And you know, on the opposing side,

Russell Wilson had five touchdowns and zero interceptions. That continued on right, um, you know, you know he had another three turnovers, another two interceptions in the fumble. So I mean, these are things that you can't do and expect to win the games. And obviously on the defensive side of the ball, they had guys running around booty butt naked, you know, and just like you just can't. You can't

do that and expect to win games. So these guys have to take it upon themselves for it to be important enough for them to actually, you know, cancel out these mental errors, canceled out these these mistakes that they're making and go out there and make the corrections needed

to win games. Hey, Isaiah, quick question, man on that route from a Mark Cooper, the turnover and the interception by Dak on that route and he's thrown in between the hash and the numbers to a Mark Cooper, was it more of the route that caused the interception of was it just a throw that was behind that that Dak through? You know what, I have to understand a little bit more about the techniques that are being taught on their on their on that side of the ball

for them. But you know, from my stance, it looked like he was just a bad ball by Dak. It was just actually, I wouldn't want to say it was a bad ball. It was just a heck of a play by play by Griffin that's called how it is. I mean, yeah, this is a great play by Griffin. I don't think Dak nor Cooper were in the wrong again without knowing what's being how they're being taught to

run that route specifically. But I do know that watching that play, Griffin made a heck of a break on the ball and he snacked that thing out the air. He's definitely been on the judge machine. Yeah, he shot

underneath it and he read it perfectly. But I thought that a Mark Cooper could have given Dak a little bit more of a target on that the way that he ran the route, I mean just from the beginning to the end, so either way, I mean the turnovers or what you have to look at that had the pendulum swing, especially in the second quarter where it looked

like we got the stops that we needed. Right defensively, I know we're gonna kill these guys as far as some of the you know, sacks, turnovers, things that we're looking for, but defensively that from the first quarter up until that point, you know, look, aside from the sixty two yard bomb to Metcalf that wasn't right. There were just a lot of things defensively that I felt good about. As far as getting Russell Wilson off of his square and getting him out to make those throws. But look,

you said it best man. The momentum swing at the end of the second quarter, in the beginning of the third quarter, I think was just we put so much against ourselves that it almost looked as though it was gonna be insurmountable. But still we gave ourselves an opportunity to win the game. The game had so many ebbs and flows because after those two turnovers, Mike McCarthy says, all right, I'm changing out my offensive line, Like I don't I don't want to typically change out more than

one spot. Well I'm gonna go ahead and change three spots out and I put Zack Martin at tackle and it actually it actually worked. I thought they settled down and protected better until that last drive. Yeah, you know, Dak he said he threw a bad ball there. He threw it behind Himari and he kind of got away with one I think on the first drive where he threw into coverage and it could have been picked. But I you know, I have a hard time. I just have a hard time putting too much of this loss

on him, I know, beyond beyond just the stats. I mean, I think I think once again, you know, we see what this offense is capable of in the passing game, and Troikman kept talking about on the broadcast over and over, you give it time they can get back in this game. Because the Seahawks so depleted in the secondary, the matchups were there, and you know, I think for part of that reason, we didn't see a lot of Zeke just because that wasn't where the the advantage was, and they

were able to get some things going there. Like Heckma said, though defensively, while they settled down in the second half, I think they get up one hundred and forty four yards. There's just too many miscommunications back there. And I'm not sure if it's if it's there's too much on everybody's plate, like we talked about it at the end of the week, I don't I don't know if it's that um, but

there's got to be something to it. Because whenever there's miscommunications like Lockett running free, uh, like like the other touchdown where he goes across the field and Digs just kind of lets him go. Uh, they've got to get that cleaned up. And they did a better job of it because you saw some coverage pressure against Wilson in the second half, but it wasn't consistent enough. And that's

kind of been the story of the season. They haven't been consistent enough in any area where you feel good about, Okay, they've got this short up. Yeah, Rob, you've been so gracious man, And I appreciate that. Rob us in the secondary, like like I said, I said, these guys are running butt naked free and whose man? Whose man is that right?

How do ye man is that man? Going off of what Rob said and the way that he was talking about really how the turnovers affected the game and the defense just had those miscommunications and it really seemed like it got better as the game went along, but especially in that first quarter, second quarter, you could tell Seattle like Atlanta did, saw something on film and it turned in from it turned from week two, the word of the day was resiliency. Now it's consistency. You can't keep

that consensus. The consistency from the Cowboys perspective has to start in the first quarter. You can't wait till the third quarter to get started again. It's the third straight slow start you've had. You had it against La you had it against Atlanta, you had it now against the Seattle. You can't wait until halftime to finally figure out your offense and figure out your defense to the point where

you're able to put points on your opponent. And hecklo, I don't know where to start whenever it comes to getting off to a better start. But really they haven't been able to do it yet. But it's got to go back to the secondary though. For me, that's that's that's where they had the biggest problems. If you know, if DK Metcalf doesn't pull a Don Beebe in the super Bowl, it's six touchdown passes for Russell Wilson. I mean, it's it's you know, I agree, I agree with you,

and I disagree with you. The secondary definitely has some issues. However, Schottenheimer must have been on the payroll for the Cowboys yesterday because he abandoned the run early on and Seattle was almost averaging five yards of pop with Carson and High and for some reason he got away from NAT to start throwing the ball around almost every dayn seemingly so that it definitely exposed the receiver, exposed the secondary because they Seattle was throwing so often, but they never

stopped the run there was There was never a portion of the game where you feel like Seattle couldn't run the ball. And that's something that obviously, going into this next week they have to address. It's gonna be something

that's really big for the Cowboys moving forward. But something else that I kind of wanted to point out if we wanted to look at a positive side of things, And Rob alluded to this a little bit earlier, but the way that the offensive line was able to kind of shift around and find a rhythm in terms of really taking care of the football or I guess blocking well, with the injuries that they have on that offensive front, they were able to do that later in the game

whenever they moved Zack Martin out to tackle, then you had Joe Looney go to the right guard spot. Tyler Beotest came in and actually called the protections for the offensive line, and I thought did a pretty solid job overall. What did you guys think of the shift on the offensive line and how that could potentially play a role for this offense moving forward. Guys, well, I got it was Rob's tweet who and Rob tweeted that Zach Martin

was at tackle and I looked at this. I've noticed it on the screen and I'm like, oh my god, what happened? Why is Zack Martin at tackle? But it worked? It worked in miss what cools to beati. I'm need to say that the Beotish era has started here in Dallas because he's second half wise, he did a really good job. Dave Hellman can vouch for me. I tweeted or texted him the other week. This is that's the offensive line they need to have in the game, you know.

And because and it's and you're switching out too many positions, then you probably want to. But if you're trying to get your best five healthy guys on the field, that's it. You know, Brandon Knight's probably your best backup tackle option, like pure tackle, even though maybe he can play guard two and Martin can play anywhere. I know we've been talking about it for six years. Maybe he could do this,

maybe he could do that. But when you're in a situation where you know Terrence Steele has battled, but there's some tough matchups for him. Uh, you can move Joe Looney to tackle he's or to guard. Excuse me, he's done that before. And they like Beotist. I mean, they think he's he's got potential and that just seemed like the best way to try to settle things down a

little bit. And it's it seemed to work. But all that said, it's still a problem because you're still you know, you've still got young players up front, and you know, the communications probably got to get cleaned up too, because you know, guys are playing out of position, bottom line, playing out of positions for this past week. Obviously, I think go for it, Isaiah Great. Okay, Now, I was just gonna say that, you know, you know, kudos to

coach Philbin and coach McCarthy for making that call. Um. It was it was a very ballsy move and they paid off for them. I think obviously it did. It didn't happen early enough, but those guys did the heck of a job going out there and playing the positions that they were asked to play, and they and they started protecting Dak for the most part. Um, I think that the office of line rolls kind of start going away after this week, right. Obviously, hopefully we get tyres

Smith back, you get you get Collins back. Um, the question remains, now, does Looney move over to guard or does he just not play because you got Connor Williams over there and then a bride beyond is do you let be honest, go ahead and take the center or do you put Looney in? So that's gonna be a question to this next week that I'm very curious to see what happens going off of that, though, Isaiah, and

you're talking about this offensive line. We're going into week four, which means Lyle Collins should be available at some point this week. Hopefully Tyrant Smith who was out on the field, who was getting in reps trying to see if he was good to go. They were just making it a game time decision where he was not able to go. But if for some reason both of those guys are back, is there a chance that Connor Williams, who has been struggling, who has seen really I'm actually not even going to

sugarcoat this. Whenever you get bullied by Puna Ford and LJ. Collier, I'm going to be disappointed in Connor Williams. And he was for the first couple drives of the game, especially he was getting bullied by Ford and Collier and exactly and throughout the rest of the game as well. He struggled. He has continued to struggle. Is there a chance that Joe Looney fills that spot, comes in at left guard? Whenever you get everybody back and healthy, Kyle, I think

you have to go to that. I think you have to because you have enough tape out there to show you that Connor Williams is struggling, even when they had just three guys coming. That created the strack, the sack strip, and that was from Connor's side, So we have to address it. And I was thinking that going into this game that we definitely were going to get a heavy dose of Zeke simply because we had to undrafted free

agents at the at the tackle position. How what a better way to get these guys in rhythm and to have them fired off the ball. But we you know, they were basically in pass protection literally the whole game. If if Dak is throwing the ball for fifty seven fifty seven attempts, I didn't know we had an air raid offense, but that's what we look like yesterday. Mike Hey, I think if my math is right, is that one hundred and ten passes over the last two weeks. That's

a lot. That's a that is a lot, I mean, maybe too much for Dak Again, kudos, he had full fifty last week, four seventy two this week. If you're just into the statistics of football and not winning, then he's balling. Yeah, he is balling. But once again, statistics don't matter. They really don't, and we saw that yesterday.

Alden Smith was visibly disappointed after the game. He had three sacks, four pressures, four hits, He was all over the place, and he was visibly frustrated with the fact that there wasn't a W in the win column yesterday. So I think really overall, stats of course don't matter. They're great because you can evaluate guys that way, but you need to win, and yesterday was one of those games where you just didn't make the right plays in key moments in Seattle did That's the difference in the game.

And that's the difference between a great football team and an average football team. And right now, that's what the Cowboys look like. When we come back here on Talking Cowboys, We've got some business to take care of in terms of a bet that I made with Isaiah on Friday. Now, we also are going to look at the secondary and break down what exactly happened between the safeties and the

corners on that miscommunication. We've got a couple of things to take care of when we come back on talking Cowboys. Since eighteen sixty five, Stetson Hats are American maid with pride right here in Texas, and Stetson is proud to be on the field with America's team. Want to show your Texas and Team pride two You can by purchasing your own Stetson. You can look just like how the flag guys do on field at every home game. Stetson Hats the official crown of all self respecting Cowboys and

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Is he a Newcombone's music to my ears? Okay, doctor Time, Music to my ears and mouth New Doctor Pepper and Cream Soda. I delas just do bad to talk in Cowboys. The Dallas Cowboys take on the Cleveland Browns this week. Get your tickets now to see the Cowboys try and get back to five hundred when they returned to AT and T Stadium on Sunday, October fourth. A limited number of tickets are on sale now get yours today at

Dallas Cowboys dot Com slash tickets. It was a fun atmosphere the last time the Cowboys had a wild come back against the Atlanta Falcons, and they needed to come back yesterday. Didn't get it. Thirty eight thirty one the final score up at Central Linkfield. Glad you're with us here on Talking Cowboys as when we break things down.

But before we get into this secondary, like I said, I have some I have some business to attend to, and I feel, you know, I'm actually excited for those who are listening to this podcast instead of watching it because this legitimately makes me makes my blood boil having to do this. But I made a bet with Isaiah last week that Ezekiel what was that this is easier

than running to the Star and back is back. I would rather run to the Star and back, which is wow way the other the other bet that I've made, I need to stop opening my mouth on bets on air or on Twitter because I keep losing them. Now. The last time I ended up getting ceedee Lamb for the Cowboys. I won't say it's me, but it helped, I guess uh, and a lot of people enjoyed things.

But I made a bet that Ezekiel Elliott would have a hundred rushing yards or one hundred and fifty all purpose yards in this game, and obviously he did not thirty four yards on the ground twenty four yards through the air. And if I were to win that bet, Isaiah would have to wear a shirt of my choice, which I revealed to him yesterday as a Washington State Cougar's T shirt because he went to the University of Washington.

Oh no, that's a low blow. It was a low blow, but it ended up working out for him because if I lost the bet, which is what happens, I would have to wear this jersey, which is an Isaiah standback, not replica. This is a game warned jersey from his time with the Seattle Seahawks. Uh. And I will wear this for the remainder of the segment because Ezekiel Elliott

did let me down. But while we're on that topic, in terms of Ezekiel Elliott letting us down, I kind of want to go into the fact of what happened to him in the passing game, Isaiah, because really we talked about it a minute ago. He wasn't able to get going on the ground, but whenever he was through the air and they tried to get him involved through the air, he had six receptions on twelve targets and a couple drops in there as well. Yeah, and I

appreciate you being a man at your word. After today, I'll swap you out for this one stand back. That one's a lot prettier. I'll wear that one all day. Yeah, I got you covered. Don't worry about it. Um No, but no, I mean they first of all, Zeke should not be getting twelve attempts, but the twelve passes should not becoming Zeke's way. Let's just start with that, right, Um.

I think the only reason why you ended up in that situation because Tony Pollard you lost trust in him, right coming from last week and then coming into this week where he dropped the kickoff return. That's your third down back. That's the guy that you want receiving the ball and catching these screens and things of that nature, these swing routes and one on ones with linebackers. Um.

So he got. Zeke ended up being in that situation that he didn't want to be in, and we saw that obviously he just didn't He didn't do enough this offseason. Um does offense was not set up properly against this particular defense to be successful with with that, with that type of approach. Um, you saw towards the end of the game, you saw the other Griffin brother running around. He covered the sideline and sideline. He was running around like a like a man with his hair on fire.

Um you had kJ Wright running all over the place. And it's just it just wasn't a good week to try to try to throw the ball to Zeke. T I can barely breathe him. This thing, I say, you can't say nothing with your chance in that This thing is, this thing is like suffocating. Oh my god, you uh. I feel I feel like I need to like work out a little bit more in that thing. This thing is tights in Franz in the house on the back too.

M about the name on the back of the jersey way more than Isaiah to to to just go into what you said about Zeke, It's been it's always been my opinion of Zeke that he is great at at catching you know, out of the backfield. He's done a really good job over it over his four year career. Uh to this point, it was just yesterday he looked out of sorts for some reason. I hadn't seen him look that bad. And and a lot of times with the twelve targets, Uh, there were balls that may have

been thrown behind him. He still has to make that catch and get up the field. But if you go back and look at it, Isaiah, there were points, there were times that he had some daylight. It may have been a bad pass or he just didn't get you know, didn't track it well enough. But I don't think that to go forward, we are going to start looking at Zeke's weakness is being catching passes out of the backfield when that's been one of his strong suits out over the years. And I don't I agree with you. I

don't think that that's a weakness of his. But it's not what you want him doing right there. Should know, there should be no game in Cowboys history or Cowboy's future where he almost has as many passes to pass recession attempts as he does rushing attempts. That's just that should not even be in the same conversation, right, he had twelve twelve and tip passes versus fourteen rushes like correct,

So that's that's something that should not happen. But in there when Zeke is successful catching the bass because he has been successful running the ball, so they never got that going. So you can't just all of a sudden abandon the run and go straight to passing him. Yeah. I wonder if it's some of that where he wasn't in a rhythm period in the game, and that because he had what two or three drops, and I mentioned the screens, and the screens just weren't I don't think

they were dialed up at the right time anyway. But all we heard this offseason was I mean, I felt like he was gonna have a hundred catches instead of one hundred, you know, three hundred carries in this in this season because all we heard is he's running receiver routes in the off season. I agree with you, guys, I think he's still a threat there. Um. I just think they went where they thought the matchups were. You know, they thought they could win on the outside, and that's

they just kept doing it. And as you guys said, by the time they got to the second half, those two turnovers. Now you're behind. Now you have to throw and that's how you get that's how you get sixty

pass attempts. And it's it's way too much. I mean, you know, if you feel like you can win and you want to go pass heavy, okay, if it's in the forties, fine against a depleted Seattle secondary, But fifty seven that that's a bad recipe because you're also putting your you're putting so much train on your offensive line to in pass pro over and over and over again, and it ultimately it didn't work out. At the end, you give up a sack and then you got to

to the end zone. And another part to that that most people probably aren't thinking about is the time management side of the game. I think it was poorly managed by both of as the coordinators. Shottenheiderd He did a terrible job really contain again and really making sure that they ran the ball and control the clock so that Dallas didn't have those opportunities. And then on the flip side, Dallas through the ball so much that as they started creeping back up in the game right towards the end.

You talk about that last series, Why are we Why are we throwing the ball towards the sideline. Why are these guys getting swing rids? Why are they getting flats towards the side on where they have to run out of bounds. You want to give that situation. You're either going to be up by one or up by five. Either way, either way, you don't you want to give Russell Wilson the least amount of time as possible. So mix in some dog on runs, dude, keep it in the middle of the field. Those guys are gonna be

protecting that. So I mean, I just, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot there, a lot of meat on the bone where we have to get better. You have to get better and really have to get better in the secondary as well on the other side of the football. And we'll take a break here in just a minute. But and that's when we'll address it. I know it t at the last segment. We're gonna save it for the last one, just to make sure we

get every piece of that as well. But whenever you're looking at the offensive play calling, and I know I mentioned this yesterday on the postgame show, but it's really a simple, it's an easy, a lazy excuse to blame the play calling. What did you guys think about what Kellen Moore had to do? Don't don't go to the

one shot on this thing. Don't you go to that one shot, Chris, I don't want to need to be taking up the full screen whenever it talking about the Kellen Moore play calling and the offensive play calling, trying to get Zeke involved, but ultimately it was the fifty seven pass attempts. Where did things go wrong on Kellen Moore's side and what he could improve going into the Browns.

Weeke look, I mean when you throw the ball fifty seven times anyone that you don't even have to be a football person to say that's that's way too many throws and just looking at the numbers, and you didn't

win the game just to getting that balance. And I know there's going to be a lot of people call for Mike McCarthy to take over play calling, and that's that's been the going theme now for a couple of weeks, just trying to figure out what this offensive identity is going to be because obviously we're not a run first team and We are obviously a pass first team, and for a good reason, because we have three guys out

there that we believe in can stretch the field. But at some point, because of the guy that we have running the rock, we're going to have to get him involved in this game. Whether it was adjustments at halftime or something that Kellen Moore saw prior to this game. As far as throwing the ball to Zeke twelve times, I don't know. But at the same time, as far as the play calling is concerned, we have just we just have to put Dak in a position to where

he can lead this team to these first downs. We didn't have enough of those possession receptions to you know, change the field position, give ourselves an opportunity to be a part ahead of the pitch count. It just got away from us too soon where it seemed like every down was a second and a third and third and long. We just didn't have any advantages as it related to

down and distance. And we talked about that in the beginning of the week, right, Hey, and we talked about the fact that you know that Moore was gonna have to try to stay away from the candy, right you guys, mayber Ill talking about the dangling candy right in the lineups, right, how you had these guys that are gonna be one on one matchups that then they should have a field day against in Seattle Secondary. And they did, right, they did. They ate up Trade Flowers, that ate up Griffin. They

did a heck of a job. You had Wilson show up, Noah Brown showed up once again. So you had five dudes out there with the ever ball in instead of just the three, and even shots got off a little bit our kJ right too, right, So you you had to you had that at your at your at your at your at your pleasure. However, you still had to try to get the running game going and you had to give it enough chance, right, enough opportunities to establish

that because that helps your quarterback. Yes, you're having a bunch of receivers out there, Yes you have great matchups, but you have to find a balance. Even if it was seventy thirty balance, right, even it doesn't have to be fifty fifty. If seventy thirties your balance, fine, that's your balance. But it's fifty seven throws to fourteen rushes for for for zeke, Come on, man, I'm as big a fan as Zeke as anybody just what he brings to the entire offense in a lot of different ways.

But I need to watch the game back. I didn't have a huge problem with what they did. I'm with you. I think they need more balance. You've got to be better than fifty seven pass attempts. But you know, five hundred twenty two yards thirty one points, it ought to be enough to win the game. And that's with turnovers. That's with probably you're basically losing the turnover battle for one if you count the safety there too that they gave up, and yet you still put up thirty one.

That's got to be enough, you know, And maybe that leads into the next segment because defensively, you know, it's just not consistent enough throughout the game to get you in position where your offense is doing enough to win the football game. Yeah, I think that's a great way to transition into it, because also the offense really put the defense in a couple of tough situations, especially early in the game and throughout the second quarter, third quarter.

I hate how you keep going to this one shot at me, but we're gonna take a break when we come back. The secondary is where we're going. It's so tight, especially like right down here. I need to work out more. I need to run the start back. When we come back, let's talk about the secondary. What happened on misscommunications between Xavier Woods and Dary and Thompson and how could that get better before they take on the Browns and Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Junior. When we come back here,

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screen at the moment as what I'm showing off. Once again, for those of you who may just be joining us, I'm wearing this jersey because I lost a bet to mister Isaiah Standback who's in the box below me. And of course I did. I know. I came at him and I was wrong, and it's paying off for him.

It's somebody said I have a Somebody said I have a retired punter's body, uh in the comment section, And I take that as a compliment because I mean, Pat McAfee looks pretty good right now and he's making some money, so I'll take that. If if that's what it takes, I'm cool with it. I said, I looked like I was gonna say, McBriar man, Oh, no, one of one of my favorite guys all time. Oh, I love that. I love Matt. Would he would agree with that, he

would have. That's probably true. I was a quaid to like a like a tight end, and I'm talking tight end because this jersey is so tight, like it's cutting off my circulation. Jankowski. Yeah, there you go. Janikowski's a bad oh man. But hopefully we can give you guys a couple of couple laughs on a day where it is frustrating to be a Cowboys fan as they fall to the Seahawks yesterday thirty eight thirty one. I don't know. You guys might have to get pliers and scissors to

get this thing off of me. We'll see. But whenever we looked at yesterday's game, the first thing that stuck out with was the secondary. And Isaiah broke it down yesterday really well on the postgame show. But I wanted you to do it again here, Isaiah, what exactly happened on that first Tyler Lockett touchdown where he was wide open? What was the term you guys used earlier? What was that? There? You go? He was that in the end zone because

of a missmimmunication. But what exactly happened on that play, and it really happened throughout the game. Yeah, So in that particular play, actually, even prior to that, right, even last game against against the Falcons, Dallas exposed themselves that they are susceptible. They're susceptible to over routes, deep over routes, deep post routes, any routes that are crossing the safety's face. They are struggling with that. So what happened on that play is you had a Cover two right, So Cover two,

you had two safeties that are sitting back there. You had Woods and you have Thompson Right. Both of those guys who are sitting back there, and when you're playing Cover two, they each have a half, Right, they're responsible for a half of the field. Anything that comes in in that deep secondary they're responsible for as long as it's on their half of the field. So what you had was you had DK Metcalf who was on who's

on wood side? He was on he was on woodside, and he faith as he ran a post route and he acted as if he was going to run a post. All the way across wood space all the way over into Thompson's area, but he didn't run on all the way over there. He broke off the post route. He put his foot in the ground, and he broke it back towards the sideline. Meanwhile, Woods had locked in all the way on DK Metcalf. He wasn't worried about anything else.

And while he was so locked in, he had gradually started working his way down from his secondary position, which should have been about twenty yards deep. And then on the other end you had Lockett, who was who was running a true over route and ended up crossing Thompson's face and getting behind Woods as he came into woods half of the field in which he should have been passed off. When guys are crossing the crowl they're supposed to pass it off. Hey, heck, this guy's coming into

year zone. Hey, Rob, he's coming into year zone. And they did not make that communication. Woods got his eyes caught on DK Metcalf and Lockett crept behind him, and Thompson was expecting Woods to pick up that crosser. Yeah, they've been on a lot of routes yesterday and the ball was just thrown right over their head and so you saw that it was it was easy work for Russell on that pass because as soon as he saw

twenty five bite up. I mean it was it was a race to the pilm and I raced to the polum to the goal post for Lockett and he made didn't look easy. And there were a lot of throws like that that looked easy. You talk about communication and passing off. Just on that last the last touchdown for DK where Thompson had him and he knew he had deep responsibility and he comes right across his face to

that corner route and burns him for a touchdown. It's just little things like that that we're doing in the secondary that I don't know if going into the season we thought that these guys were going to make those plays, and godly guys like Jordan Lewis that had a really rough day yesterday. It's just I mean, if you want to pass the blame hat around, there's a lot of people that you could put that hat on. But those

are just communication errors. Those are just when you especially when you see guys running booty buck naked and heck. And to add on to that, right, the thing that's more worrisome to me than just the communication areas, because you can fix communication, right, you can fix communication, you can watch film, you're gonna do walk throughs, you can do all those things, and coaches will make those corrections.

The thing that's worrisome to me is the route that dk Metcalf ran in order to grab Cheetah's attention, not Cheatah, but but Wood's attention. Was the fact that was not in the route treat That's something that you draw up specifically because it's something that you saw on film and you know he has a tendency to keep the tip bite on things. They drew that play up just for that,

so it worked perfectly. And if they find any other witnesses want us to this next week, they better if they better share those things up, because that means that these guys can target them and get exactly what they want based upon the coverage. You know, even in the even in the Metcalf what should have been a touchdown and Diggs punched it out. That was some kind of miscommunication too, because I don't think Diggs he wasn't playing like he was in man coverage and it looked like

Xavier should have been deeper or helping or something. And I don't Isaiah, is that like it's not a product of the defense being not simplified enough, right, That's just that's just that's that's the coverage, that's that's just being a discipline. They found. Seattle saw that that Woods likes to have his eyes in the backfield. That's it's just pure facts. And you could do enough to kind of

draw him down in there. That's why they ran stutter a little stutter go on the outside and got they ran right by Digs obviously right in Woods was nowhere near to help because his eyes were in the backfield. I mean, they were in the right defense on that play. And actually it happened into the third quarter same they were in the same go route basically, and and they and the cowboy the communication was cleaned up and they stopped it. But it only takes a couple of plays

like that to lose a football game. I mean, it just you know, and and it happened, you know, the crossing route you guys talked about also the two point conversion. Guys guys just running free and it's just it's it's just a communication issue on top of you know, Lockett did the same. It was the same route to lock it as well. I mean Hollister, the tight end. Hollister he burnt us twice on play action. So I don't know,

it's it's in the red zone. They make it look so simple and you know, a crossing route right even to lock it in the in the red zone. So man, they were just having it that way yesterday. It's it's tendencies, guys, right, So like we all have tendencies, even speaking on you know, speaking on here, there's things that we do naturally that we have to identify and we have to try hard to work ourselves out of whether it's saying whether it's

saying um or whatever it may be. Right, there's things that we have to acknowledge, and in football is no different. You might have a tendency to creep up right out of your depth, right, you might have a tendency to go back on the kickoff return. There's things that your body naturally does, but you have to be able to identify them and make the corrections. Because the other teams are professionals and they are paid to watch enough film to find your tendencies, and when they find them, they

are going to test you and expose them. My tendency is to make stupid bets and get those things on there. That Yeah, and I'm being exposed for it pretty much. I mean, expose it a little bit more. But I mean, whenever you look at some of the tendencies and some of the miscommunications, this final question before we get out

of here. I know we're already running long, Chris, but really, whenever it comes to Mike Nolan's defense, a lot of the blame can go his direction on the fact there is that miscommunication, Rob, I think even you mentioned it in the first segment. Is it because there's too much on these guys plates? Is it because there's too much to learn in such a short offseason. The fact that he didn't have those OTAs, he didn't have the full training camp, you didn't have the full preseason. Is that

catching up to the Cowboys now? And the fact that there's just confusion in the backfield. I don't. I don't know if it's a product of a scheme that's just way too complicated, though I don't. I don't see that when I watch it. And I mean a lot of what what you're talking about with disguising things pre snap is with your front seven. Yeah, and you know, I thought the front seven was pretty solid overall in this game.

I mean, there's some things you definitely can nitpick. But Russell Wilson looked out of sorts at times, yeah, and and was missing open perceivers. And I think it was it was a product of not only not being comfortable where, you know, in the pocket, but also they weren't a lot of times, they weren't given him way to scramble. They were being disciplined in their rushes. That part of it, Yeah, I mean I think that part of it you you

definitely can build on. I don't really I know that's a talking point, but I don't I don't see a scheme that's just overly complicated right now. I don't know about you guys. Know, these guys are facing some dudes at receiver, and they're facing some really good offensive coordinators that are exposing their weaknesses. That's simply put. There's there's no excuses that are made the schemes that these guys are running. You guys, asked Kyle, I sat there and

watch it. I'll call out coverages before the balls he gonna stamp. These are basic, basic coverages that these guys are, that guys are running in high school. The thing. The only problem is these guys are not used to playing with each other and they're not communicating well, and they're using that as a scapeboat to say, oh no, we have to pull back on stuff. The heck with that. Figure it out that this week we have a guy by the name of Odell Beckham coming to town and

we can't lose track of him. Dry, Let's just let's just start with that. And a pretty good running game too, Yeah, pretty good. I mean you talking about Nick Chubb and Kareem hunting yesterday. Yeah, really a good running game and somehow Baker Mayfield starting to figure it out. The Browns are above five hundred for the first time since twenty fourteen, and that's who the Cowboys got this week. It'll be a ton of fun. We're gonna break down that game

starting on Wednesday. Still a lot to get too when it comes to this thirty one or thirty eight, thirty one loss for the Cowboys on Sunday against Seattle. Bring your questions tomorrow, Fans on the fifty, don't hold back. Bring them on Twitter, bring them on periscope. I don't care to send me a carrier pigeon with your question.

I don't care. I just need the fan questions. That way, we can break it down, answer those for you and figure out what exactly the Cowboys need to do to get back to five hundred this week against Cleveland and then start making a run for the playoffs. But if there is any silver lining, they're still tied for first place in the NFC East. Thank you Washington, thank you Philadelphia, thank you New York, because right now the NFC East is just looking pretty least at the moment, and thank

goodness for that. But there's a chance, there is definitely a chance. You're's definitely a chance get in the tournament. Anything can happen, anything can happen. But that's gonna do it. Here for talking Cowboys, here on this Monday, for Hecka Harrison, for Rob Phillips, for Isaiah stand Back. I'm Kyle Yeoman saying so long from the Star in Frisco. We'll see you tomorrow. This has been a production of Dallas Cowboys dot Com and the Dallas Cowboys Football Club.