Now that preseason football has ended for the Dallas Cowboys, what should the confidence level be surrounding them as they head into week one against Tampa Bay? Many questions remain for this football team, and they must answer them quickly to be successful at any point.
When the Buccaneers travel to the star for Sunday Night Football on September 11, a few will linger as the two teams battle for a victory.
Let’s first address the offensive line. It was already thin before the Cowboys lost Tyron Smith for the entire year. They started Connor McGovern at Center on Friday in the last preseason game against the Seahawks. I don’t understand that at all. They will need him to be the LG in week one, so why not just continue to let him work in the position that he will be playing? I believe in Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard, but it may be a long four quarters if they can’t figure out a lineup that works.
Cowboys LG Connor McGovern started at center tonight for first time since Penn State. "It was a lot of fun putting the ball back in my hand, getting back to my roots. …This preseason, I played all five [O-line] positions. I played fullback." McGovern takes pride in versatility.
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) August 27, 2022
The WR room LOOKS better. I still question where they are going to get production after CeeDee Lamb. Michael Gallup and James Washington are both hurt, and Jalen Tolbert is a rookie. Tolbert will be a good player in this league but asking a rookie to step up this early and often might be tough even with Lamb in front of him. Noah Brown and Simi Fehoko will need to be a factor somehow.
The two noted above are the most problematic, but one question mark I still have is how the starting DL is going to fair. It’s been said 100 times that Micah Parsons is going to work just about everywhere, and with the help of Anthony Barr, he should be able to spend more rushing the passer. How will some of the others hold up?
DeMarcus Lawrence is back healthy. Dorance Armstrong will be one of the most underrated players on the roster next year and might match the production Dallas received from Randy Gregory last season. The line still has moving parts, and with Dan Quinn running the show, I trust him to improve the defense even more than he did a season ago.
DOES ANYONE proof read a story before its published..there were about 15 times a collection of jumbled letters were in place of the word its? I mean come on..i couldn’t even read this man..
Darren – you should probably check your device for issues. No jumbled text or erroneous characters here.
Forgot about this. Sorry, Darren and pretty much anyone using iOS. There was an issue specific to Safari but on our end (a third-party plugin). I coded a fix for it that has taken care of the issue. HTML entities weren’t being decoded, which is what you were seeing. Had to dig deep to even see the issue, so (despite the rudeness) thanks for letting me know, Darren.
What a puff piece that says absolutely nothing…
Not much detail or insight on the problem. OT is the problem on the line, who cares if they put McGovern at center for this game. And the defensive line is about the deepest position group we have so you should spend more time talking about other positions like QB#2, CB and LB. Barr looked slow to me and I don’t think he has ever been good in coverage so he is not going to be much help when Parsons is rushing the passer. It will be interesting to see how bad the offense looks in the first week without consistent outside blocking and no proven WR2 or WR3.
Nate Newton agrees with this writer that scrambling the offense line assignments even further is senseless. The Boys have talent problems of the individual linemen but a coordinated line can be better than the sum of the parts. By jumbling all the linemen, there iscno coordination and that just makes talent deficits worse.
Agree with title of the article “Questions still linger”, LT being the biggest one. So, if McGovern starts at LG, as Shane says, who starts at LT, Tyler Smith? I guess at this point, that would make the most sense, but obviously starting a rookie at LT is not ideal. It looks like they are not signing a FA there, which to me makes more sense, and keeps Tyler inside. Starting McGovern at Center on Friday puts some doubt on if they know exactly what the final configuration will be. I understand the late injury to TS, but backup plans SHOULD HAVE BEEN in place, as TS has an obviously history there. So, at this point we have Steele, Martin, Biadasz, McGovern, Tyler Smith. Hmm, one experienced standout. The WR room will start in a deficit position early, with just one proven experienced player there, and with difficult games to begin the season. On the plus side, I did like some of what I saw from Sam Williams, and couple others on D.
But to be honest and realistic though, and despite all the stylin n profilin in the end zone and hype camera shots of DP pumping his fists on sideline, IMO, this team doesn’t look all that ready and/or good. Unfortunately for us FANS.
Pretty sure they were giving McGovern reps at C so they can have fewer IOL active on game day and activate two backup OT’s. Having McGovern able to back up all three inside spots and play FB tells me they’re planning on keeping Tyler Smith at LG and Ball at LT if they can’t get a free agent they like to come in for the price they want. That would allow them to have Waletzko active to back up Ball and Aviante Collins to back up Steele on game day.
Not saying I like that plan, but I wouldn’t put it past them to try it. If so, Dak should have found a life insurance sponsor instead of a Bitcoin one. Though, I’m sure he’ll get good use out of the sleep number sponsorship. Could open up a whole new run of commercial topics: “After averaging 4 sacks a game, I can’t wait to crawl into my Sleep Number bed. I even have different number settings for how many sacks I take and how hard I get hit.” 😉
How O-Line plays is how season will go, and right now there is reason for panic. Early in season the defense is going to have to dominate, which will allow entire offense to get healthy, gel and grow together.