Thoughts on the game

[Undertaker #59*]

Been waiting for your thread Hawg, but I just posted on the Cowboys board and I thought I would double some of it here.


*Quincy can certainly move in the pocket. I bet Willie McGinist is still breathing oxygen from chasing him around all night.

*As they said last night, you live and die by the blitz. Those 2 long passes were probably the biggest difference in the game - especially the second one that set up the touchdown.

*The 3 turnovers just made it impossible for the Cowboys to come back.

*What happened to Roy Williams? I heard all this talk all week about him and didn't see much in the game. Woodson looked like the better safety out there.

*The Cowboys running backs - I don't know what the final numbers were, but it seemed to me that there were times that they were making some good gains consistently. I think Parcells may have given up on the run too soon in the 2nd half.

*I think the cowboys really missed Galloway.

*About as much as I think the Patriots missed Patten and Brown.

*Seymour makes a huge difference for us.

*It must be an exciting time to be a Cowboys fan though. Even with this loss. 3 5-11 seasons, they get the most well known head coach out there, and they are #1 in the division with a very young team. Their immediate future is bright.

*We'll see whether Parcells mortgages the future to get to the big dance.

*Why can't Graham catch the ball consistently?

*The Patriots rookies are still playing well. I am so impressed with that offensive line and the work of Koppen and Ashworth against the blitz last night.

*VERY nice the see the TED TRIANGLE™ out there again!

*8-2 - WOW!

 

[PatsWin2002]

If you want to read what the sports writers are saying, this is a good place to start:

http://www.prosportsdaily.com/nfl/patriots/

The page has FORTY different stories dated 11/117/2003.
Some sites require free registration.

 

[Hawg73]

On pimps, jersies, KidRock and the aircam - random observations

You beat me to the punch U59, so I merged my new thread with yours. We noticed a lot of the same things.


* I can't handle bye weeks, it's just too much build up for a single game. I knew this would be a close-to-the-vest affair and that's exactly how you have to approach it. One man's boring game is another man's textbook defensive field-position game. Whatever way you view it, you have to at least admit that the games are always close. Parcells tried to play it safe, but you could see in his face that he knows he doesn't quite have the horses yet.

* Did you see Michael Irvin in the American Pimp outfit? I thought he was going to try and turn Suzy Kolber out right on camera.

* If anybody was worried about Seymour's leg you can relax now. He was collapsing the interior of Dallas' line all night. A monster game for the Sey-monsta. Total dominance. Ted Washington and Bobby Hamilton also played very well.

* Last night was only the second time the Cowboys have played on natural grass this season and have lost both. It really can make quite a difference if a team isn't used to it. Almost unbelievable in this day of retro grass fields.

* It was a great day in the AFC East with the Bills and Jets losting outright, our win and a Fin's win tempered by the fact that the handed the Ravens another loss helping our draft pick next year. Is there anybody who is still seriously worried about Miami?

* Deion Branch needs to learn to keep his friggin yap shut. That taunting penalty was richly deserved and he has done that - along with the excessive celebrating and 1st-down pointing ever since the beginning of his career. I wouldnt be surprised if they sit his ass down next week if we get Troy back in the lineup.

* That Aircam or whatever they call it is superb when used properly. The entire telecast was excellent and the broadcast team was only mildly obnoxious last night to me, a major improvement over their usual fawning blather. Still, something has to be done about that Paul MacGuire.

* I like Kid Rock and all, but he needs to plug a beer with a little more balls than Coors light. I see him as more of a Colt45 guy.

* We saw two strong candidates for most improved player out there last night. Our own David Givens giving the Sammy Davis Jr. tap dance to Terrence Newman (great camera work) and also Quincy Carter coming off the scrap heap to have a decent season. We were bringing serious heat on him all night long and Carter did a great job of escaping the pressure and trying to make a play. I'm sure Willie McGinest slept in this morning after chasing QC around all night with his tongue hanging out.

* It's nice to see that in an ever changing world, you can still count on Barry and Eliott to be sporting ponytails.

* Roy who?

* Seriously, Dallas is about two defensive lineman away from a devastating defense. Their DB's are overall the equal to our own and thats the first time this year I have felt that way other than possibly the Fins.

* Those silver jersies are the biggest bust since Cold Pizza. I think you might need HDTV just to discern the difference from the white jersies. They don't even match the helmets for crying out loud. Seriously, I'm sure that forcing Dallas to wear blue was the difference in the game. Right.

* I finally spotted Tully Banta-Cain playing LB last night and was impressed with his explosion on the pass rush. The guy is lightning quick and wouldn't be surprised to see him sitting on a QB's chest pretty soon.

* The head official, who looked like a cross between Alfred Hitchcock and Fred Mertz had to reach deep into his bag-o'-bullshit to explain the bogus call on Eugene Wilson late in the game. You have to let the football players play football and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that hit.

 

[pookie]

The penalty on Wilson was ludacrisp! A perfectly timed hit with the shoulder on a pass that may have otherwise been complete. What a joke that was.

The personal foul call on Andruzzi also had me laughing aloud. Apparently there can be no jogging near the pile or looking at teammates on the ground.

Miller Lite has one of the best commercials in history with the human domino bit. That is awesome.

Also, did anybody see the new Subway "it's ok to be bad" commercial with the guy crushing the old man in the back yard football game? Another beauty by Subway.

Brady threw a handful of balls into the dirt, but he also made some clutch throws for 1st downs on 3rd and mid range yardage.

Daniel Graham seems to take every other game off. He missed a couple of key passes and we're lucky they didn't cost us.

 

[bideau]

Re: On pimps, jersies, KidRock and the aircam - random observations

* I can't handle bye weeks, it's just too much build up for a single game.

It's a good thing the Pats won't be in the Super Bowl this year (I just finished reading the Karma thread ) because the NFL is going back to the 2 week pre-game build up.

* If anybody was worried about Seymour's leg you can relax now. He was collapsing the interior of Dallas' line all night. A monster game for the Sey-monsta. Total dominance. Ted Washington and Bobby Hamilton also played very well.

According to Felger, Seymour limped off the field near the end of the game. Hopefully, there hasn't been a set back.

* Those silver jersies are the biggest bust since Cold Pizza. I think you might need HDTV just to discern the difference from the white jersies. They don't even match the helmets for crying out loud. Seriously, I'm sure that forcing Dallas to wear blue was the difference in the game. Right.

From the stands, it looked liked they were wearing white. I was wondering if they looked different on TV. They'll be wearing them again during the Miami game.

 

[ramblings]

I'm really not sure whether the Pat's Offensive Line is playoff caliber. I think they can be, but they often don't seem to apply maximum effort. When they did they over-powered the Dallas front 4. Also there were again too many penalties out of the Pat's Offensive Line.

Brady seemed off, as if possibly his arm was bothering him. Brady also didn't seem fully prepared for when Dallas brought more rushers than the Pat's had blockers. It was nice to see Bethel come up with a completion - Belichick mentioned Bethel as one of the most improved players this year, but with still a long way to go. I liked that trick play where Faulk I believe passed back to Brady, who completed a pass for some decent yardage. Overall, except for the OL, a good job by the Offense.

The Pat's Defense front 4 were generally doing a great job pressuring and sometimes over-powering the Cowboy's OL. The Pat's defense played very well except perhaps they weren't prepared for Quincy Carter scampering all over the back field. Ty Law's first pick was tremendous and stopped the Cowboys only threat of a score. It will be very hard for Belichick to cut Ty when he keeps coming up with those big picks.

I very much appreciated that Sky Cam so we could watch the defensive backfield on pass plays. Unfortunately the regular broadcast focuses in on the quarterback when it's a pass play instead of backing off to show more of the field. I'm going to e-mail CBS Sports and tell them they need a Sky Cam as well.

That penalty on Wilson was almost unavoidable because the receiver was so high in the air.

 

[bideau]

Another thought that came to mind this afternoon was how the Cowboys, and Parcells specifically, handled the last 3+ minutes of the game. Why did Parcells leave 2 timeouts on the board? It almost seemed to me that Parcells was conceding the game after the offsides penalty that allowed the Pats to run more time off the clock.

At the time, there was still 3:45 on the clock. The FG was a gimme at that point. But Dallas didn't call any of their remaining TO's, which would have allowed them to get the ball back with about 3:00 on the clock after the FG. Even within two minutes, after the long pass to the Pats 20, there was still no TO called.

I know scoring 2 TD's within 3 minutes is unlikely, but I've seen strange things happen. I don't know if anyone questioned Parcells on his clock management, but I thought it was odd.

 

[Prometheus 441]

My uninformed opinion leads me to make two observations on our team.The first is the elimination of stupid penalties. I dont think I saw anything that was classified as a sloppy penalty against us.You can argue on the point if the unsportsman like and the launching call were just,but either way it did'nt hurt us much.Lets face it,in a big game ( and this was a "BIG" game) players are pumped and will make some agressive mistakes.I have no problem with that and in fact it shows that we are still hungry.

TOM BRADY . I have been critical of him and I still think he needs to be polished a bit,but I am hugely impressed with the distance that this boy has come.He is hands down 100 % better than he was in the Superbowl season.His performance last night was'nt spectacular but he has show improved ball control and is kicking it up with the valocity.Will he ever be hall of fame material ?. I dunno,but I am more likely to think he could be one day than I was over the past two years.So, I had said in several
posts on the subject that I did not think Tommy boy could improve to the level he has ,and I also said that "I could be wrong about this,but I dont think so ". I was wrong and Tom has done a great job and showed alot of commitment to hard work,so I give him his credit and hope he gets even better.

Dion Branch - I continue to just love this guy.He has speed and great hands and plays smart. I think he may become one of our brightest jewels on the crown.

Being 8-2 : Great spot to be and now I think it will add a measure of intensity to our play that will carry us to the play offs and beyond.The boys will be hungry for the superbowl title again and its very much in thier reach.

Bill Belichick- Is it me or has he been attending warm and fuzzy classes.He has been showing more emotion after the games for a few weeks and the groping of the Tuna was almost a hallmark moment.

 

[Hawg73]

Bill Belichick- Is it me or has he been attending warm and fuzzy classes.He has been showing more emotion after the games for a few weeks and the groping of the Tuna was almost a hallmark moment.

All I can say is..... :Eason:

 

[JDSmith]

As a Cowboys fan I have to say you guys have a really good team. I didn't like our chances going into the game because of the obvious factors - home field, bye week, cold night in NE, your experience in tough games. But I thought we might lose by a field goal. Being shut out was a disappointment. Even though we got shut out I thought that overall the game was a pretty even battle that came down to big plays. You made them and we didn't. I thought the back breaker was the Int off of Witten. Heads up play by your DB to snag that pass.

It's funny hearing you guys talk about Quincy, on one of the Cowboys boards I frequent there is a very loud contingent who thinks he lost the game for the 'Boys and who want him benched for Hutchinson.

Roy was quiet, he only had one decent hit all night. To the poster who said that Woodson appearede to be the better safety - that may be true based solely on last night's performance, but it's not true overall. Darren isn't in the same league as Roy, as much as I love DW.

The thing that hurt the team most, other than the plays made by the Pats (sometimes the other team just makes plays that you can't do anything about), were the drops by Antonio Bryant. I was sorely disappointed in him, I expected a statement game by AB because he was finally getting a start. He got separation, but he let too many balls bounce off his hands.

Edit: One more thought, I think Ty Law is a jerkoff. There was no reason to run that last interception out of the endzone and lateral it. The game was over, he needs to look up the word class because it's obviously something he's not remotely familiar with.

 

[Undertaker #59*]

Roy was quiet, he only had one decent hit all night. To the poster who said that Woodson appearede to be the better safety - that may be true based solely on last night's performance, but it's not true overall. Darren isn't in the same league as Roy, as much as I love DW.

I was hoping to see some of this. Must have just been an off night. But yeah, I meant on the field last night, Woodson seemed the better of the two.

Edit: One more thought, I think Ty Law is a jerkoff. There was no reason to run that last interception out of the endzone and lateral it. The game was over, he needs to look up the word class because it's obviously something he's not remotely familiar with.

I don't understand that myself. I thought maybe it was just to use up the remaining time in the game, but what was he thinking with a lateral? I dunno. He may be just doing everything he can to increase his market value in case he is cut in the offseason.

 

[JDSmith]

I was hoping to see some of this. Must have just been an off night. But yeah, I meant on the field last night, Woodson seemed the better of the two.



I don't understand that myself. I thought maybe it was just to use up the remaining time in the game, but what was he thinking with a lateral? I dunno. He may be just doing everything he can to increase his market value in case he is cut in the offseason.

There is no shame in being less of a player than Woodson, I've thought he was the most underrated safety in the league for years. But when Roy is on he actually makes Woodson look ordinary. Last night he wasn't on, the same thing happened against Tampa.

About Ty Law, I was thinking that the whole 'run back and lateral' thing was a sure way to get Bellichick really pissed at him. He couldn't like seeing Law do that, or at least I wouldn't expect him to like it.

 

[Undertaker #59*]

About Ty Law, I was thinking that the whole 'run back and lateral' thing was a sure way to get Bellichick really pissed at him. He couldn't like seeing Law do that, or at least I wouldn't expect him to like it.

Yeah, it seemed a very undisciplined thing to do. And talk about it has kind of been buried in discussion of the rest of the game. BB is due to be on Boston radio next hour. I hope they ask him about it.

 

[Guest]

All good points don't know that there is much to add but here are my observations.

-- Charlie Weis: Might have been his best effort in terms of a game plan and avoiding that one big head-scratcher that always seems to show up each game. The only criticism was how aggressive throwing down field with nine (roughly) minutes on the clock-- which could have been a Brady adjustment. It left them with a tough conversion and cost them control of the clock. I had that same criticism of a play two weeks ago vs. Denver. Overall solid game, and he was creative at all the right moments.

-- Brady: Looking stronger with every game. He is going up against the best secondaries in the game and still finding a way to get it done. The criticisms or Brady don't take into account the fact that the Pats still have (other than Brown who is having an off year) a receiving corp that is very inexperienced, and they were not all polished "go to" receivers to begin with.

-- David Givens. Really impressing me with his athleticism and now that he has hands they need to get him in the game more often.

-- Branch. Agree with Hawg. His play isn't the problem, he is in need of more maturity.

-- Graham: Needs to adopt a David Givens workout regimen in the offseason. I think he is thinking too much, needs to work on his concentration. The catch needs to be automatic. Another year under his belt and he will be a force, but he will continue to be inconsistent until he can focus on one thing at a time and block out the background noise.

-- Pats Secondary is a sight to behold.

-- Where was Asante Samual? Did I miss something?

--Tyrone Poole is exceeding my expectations -- and I liked him when they signed him. I knew him from Denver as a good tackler and a guy who was always around the ball in run support. He is showing me that he also has coverage skills, hands and speed.

-- Antowain Smith. Shades of '01. Needs to run between the tackles.

-- Offensive line. Some rookie mistakes but overall amazing job against one of the quicker pass rushes in football.

-- D-line. Continue to be very disruptive. Seymour is the key to their success. Missed Colvin with Carter's speed. The "old guys" like Hamilton and McGinest showed up.

-- Biggest criticism: Penalties from mental lapses. The holding calls might be the price you pay for a rookie center and throwing Ashworth to the wolves -- and an acceptable price. The stupid calls need to go so that the BAD calls don't matter. You can't control the bad ones.

-- Greatest praise: They are 8-2, and they can still play better!

 

[Hawg73]

Heads up play by your DB to snag that pass.

Yeah, that would be our resident jerk-off snagging a pass with one hand. I think he did it only because it was Parcells on the sideline. They were always pretty close and Ty was one of his favorite sons. That's my guess. Either that or he was frustrated with the lack of scoring. He had to know it could not make a difference in the outcome and I think our Bill was pissed because he might have gotten himself hurt.

It's funny hearing you guys talk about Quincy, on one of the Cowboys boards I frequent there is a very loud contingent who thinks he lost the game for the 'Boys and who want him benched for Hutchinson.

I have seen more of Hutch than I have QC and with the heat we were bringing it was amazing that your offense wasn't in more 3rd and longs. QC has outstanding escapablity and avoided at least 3 more sacks, but I think his top potential is to be middle of the pack, but sometimes that's good enough in this league. That was the best rush we have had all year and I think we only sacked him once. Hutch would have been on his ass all night had he been in there I believe.

The real problem is that your line is immobile and were diving and grabbing to save Q's life. It's sad to see how far Larry Allen has fallen. The guy can barely move anymore and "no-name" Seymour beat him like a drum all night.

Good luck JD.

 

[ramblings]

Parcells evaluation:
"they (the Pats) struggled a little bit ... on offense". "They did a good job defensively. Very good."

Editted slightly:

"I think they're strong. They've got a pretty good size defensive line, when you've got Washington and Seymour in there, and Ted Johnson. I don't know how much he played tonight. They've got a pretty good size in there. I think they are a good, solid club.

I think there is obviously, without some of the receivers ... they're not quite as explosive as they could be - when they had [David] Patten and some of those guys and Troy [Brown] as well.

But I think they're a good team, I really do. I think they've got a good shot."

 

[Guest]

One more thought, I think Ty Law is a jerkoff. There was no reason to run that last interception out of the endzone and lateral it. The game was over, he needs to look up the word class because it's obviously something he's not remotely familiar with.

Not a smart play by Law at all and I don't know if anyone caught sight of Belichick's expression as that play ended, but it was as angry a look -- for him - as I have ever seen. Granted Belichick anger isn't Bill Cowher anger; there was little or no mucous involved and his faced didn't look like a caricature of himself -- but he was definitely angry. I suspect Ty will hear it for that play.

 

[pookie]

Not a smart play by Law at all and I don't know if anyone caught sight of Belichick's expression as that play ended, but it was as angry a look -- for him - as I have ever seen. Granted Belichick anger isn't Bill Cowher anger; there was little or no mucous involved and his faced didn't look like a caricature of himself -- but he was definitely angry. I suspect Ty will hear it for that play.

I got the feeling that Law and Co were p.o.'d about the bogus personal foul on Wilson for "illegal clean hitting". But still, that was foolish. There could've been an injury on that play and he's got to think like a pro in those circumstances. I'm surprised one of our guys didn't tackle him.

 

[bighit36]

Must be he's watched too many Sox games, and is trying to act like MANRAM

 

[JDSmith]

Not a smart play by Law at all and I don't know if anyone caught sight of Belichick's expression as that play ended, but it was as angry a look -- for him - as I have ever seen. Granted Belichick anger isn't Bill Cowher anger; there was little or no mucous involved and his faced didn't look like a caricature of himself -- but he was definitely angry. I suspect Ty will hear it for that play.

That's the way the NFL works now, I think it's a shame. Darren Woodson got fined 75K last year for a clean hit where he made contact with his shoulder. He was flagged for 'unecessary roughness' and fined during the following week. I guess they might as well phase safeties out of the game because they aren't supposed to separate the ball from the receiver in today's NFL. DW also got fined 7,500 this preseason for something very similar. When asked about it he said 'they should fine the QB for throwing the ball out there and leaving his guy in the position for me to hit him like that' (that's a paraphrase).