Dallas Cowboys Film Review: Chido, Heath, and the D-line

The Dallas Cowboys had a few positive standouts from their losing effort on Sunday, so today we dive into it and put a bow on this terrible game

Before we can move on to the Buffalo Bills and the looming Thanksgiving Day match-up, let’s make sure we take one more look at the Coaches Film from Sunday’s 13-9 loss to the New England Patriots. There are some good Dallas Cowboys and some bad Dallas Cowboys that must be addresses.

First, it’s clear the weather played a significant part of what transpired on Sunday. Dak Prescott was uncharacteristically inaccurate with otherwise routine passes and players who normally have reliable mitts struggled to catch and/or hang onto the ball.

Jason Witten had a couple ugly drops furthering the discussion that he needs to concede a larger number of snaps to Blake Jarwin. But Jarwin had his own struggles holding onto the ball, fumbling a catch and run, but managing to fortuitously fall on it. After watching the total body of work, I choose to ignore the issues with the slippery ball and just focus on blocking and route-running, to which Jarwin, once again, get’s the nod. That kid needs TE1 snaps.

Since everyone is well aware special teams was a disaster by now, I’ll just mention the two drops on returns. Dalton Schultz and Tony Pollard each dropped kick returns that they recovered but clearly lost yards. Everyone should be practicing for bad weather conditions because the team was ill-prepared.

People point to the number of pressures and sacks as an indicator of defensive line success but there’s so many other gradeable qualities that go into building a strong unit. The Dallas Cowboys have one of the best pass-rushing D-lines in the NFL when you look at pressure rate, yet they’re far from an elite unit with all things considered. .

That’s because aside from DeMarcus Lawrence, they aren’t particularly good at stopping the run. In fact, two of them, Maliek Collins and Robert Quinn, are downright terrible. Now, if you have to pick a attribute, pass-rush ability is going to beat out run-stopping ability every single time, but lining up two, and sometime three D-linemen who are well below average in stopping the run is a major vulnerability. That’s why even tough Collins is a top-5 interior pass-rusher (shocking to many), he’s likely to be replaced this offseason with a more well-balanced DT (this assumes Dallas tried to retain Robert Quinn and accepts he’s a liability against the run and fortifies around him).