Dallas Cowboys: Monday Night Football Preview, Week Nine

The Dallas Cowboys will square off against the Tennessee Titans on Monday Night Football. How do the Cowboys win? Let’s take a look.

The Dallas Cowboys are coming off of a bye week so they should be fairly well rested heading into this matchup. The Tennessee Titans have struggled mightily all season and are looking to turn things around in the second half.

It will be an interesting matchup between two similar offenses however they both differ wildly in execution. How these two teams approach this contest will likely dictate how they will approach for the rest of the season.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important factors in this Monday Night Football showdown.

A bad offense versus a very good defensive unit:

The Tennessee Titans are terrible on offense, literally bottom of the league. The Dallas Cowboys have not been a whole lot better, but they have at the very least seen some success. The Titans running game is atrocious and will struggle to get going against the Cowboys top-tier run-stopping defensive unit.

The Dallas Cowboys receiving corps was worse until a week ago when the team pulled the trigger on the big Amari Cooper trade deal that gave Dallas their first true number one wide receiver in years.

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He should do plenty to get this offense going and the coaching staff has had a full week to actually get him up to speed. The Dallas Cowboys defense should easily handle the Titans inconsistent offense even without David Irving.

No one puts Amari in a corner:
Amari Cooper has a solid chance to be a legend in Dallas. 800 yards and eight touchdowns would instantly anoint him the second coming of Michael Irving. But realistically just having Amari out there should open up everything for the Cowboys offense. He is a playmaker and becomes the defacto deep threat in this offense.

I am also excited to see how Amari’s involvement in the offense helps out Ezekiel Elliott and Michael Gallup. I know he is not going to be a cure-all, but he should do enough to help this team record a couple of extra points a week. While Zeke will look to restart his engine and get going once again on the ground, his counterpart in Tennessee will continue to struggle.

Henry has been a massive disappointment since he was drafted and has finally gotten to the point of fantasy irrelevance. He still is a big bruising back, but that is about it, Dion Lewis seems like the bigger threat out of the two. Lewis is the Titans receiving back so I would expect him to handle a lot of check downs on Monday.

Can this offensive line get going:
Injuries have pretty much derailed the first half of the season for the Dallas Cowboys “elite” offensive line. The loss of Travis Frederick cannot be understated however there are still some Pro Bowl players not living up to the hype.

Tyron Smith has been pretty awful during the last three games. Whether or not it is injury is unknown but something is holding him back. Recently Dallas thought it was their new offensive line coach, Paul Alexander, so they sent him his walking papers and promoted Marc Colombo to offensive line coach.

It is unknown how this will affect the production in this offense but hopefully, it is a step in the right direction. The Dallas Cowboys may not be able to fix all of their offensive line woes this season however they could certainly play efficiently and productively which should be enough to bring them into the top 10.

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If the offensive line struggles it affects the entire ball club, however, the Cowboys had the bye week to make some trades and work out their issues. I would expect a much more balanced attack from this football team going forward.

Score: Dallas 31, Tennessee 13

Published on 11/05/2018 at 13:00 PM
Last updated at 11/05/2018 at 10:23 AM

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