Lots of people are suffering acute jaw-drop as the Cowboys, leading 26-3 at halftime, managed to lose to the Green Bay Packers. You know, the team with a returning wandering backup as their current quarterback.
I watched the entire game. I am going to preface my comments by the usual caveat that I have never played football or coached football. It is therefore possible that I am talking out of my posterior.
I have seen numerous NFL games where teams that lead by a country mile at half time come out and attempt to "squat" on the lead. They play to protect the lead, not to increase the margin of victory. The problem with that approach is what happens when the opposition starts scoring points.
This is exactly the issue that the Cowboys encountered. From being unable to even get first downs, the Packers began to not only assemble drives, but every time they started a drive, they ended it with a touchdown. In no time at all, the Cowboys lead had all but disappeared.
The Cowboys, for reasons that I have not heard explained, came out for the second half of the game looking like they had thrown their entire game playbook in the trash bin on the way to the locker room. At one point in the first half, DeMarco Murray was averaging over 10 yards a carry. The Packers defense looked totally unable to stop the run. Yet, within a few plays, it became clear that the Cowboys second half tactics revolved almost exclusively around throwing the ball.
One characteristic of running the ball is that unless the ball carrier fumbles, every play uses up clock time. When a team is mostly throwing the ball, incompletions, penalties etc. stop the clock. The cowboys began to misfire on drives, getting bogged down and being forced to punt. All of the time, they were not using up enough clock. They were giving the Packers more than enough time to catch up. The Packers got into a groove, gained confidence, and began to score points like clockwork. Suddenly it looked like Aaron Rodgers was under center. Remember that the Cowboys defense is one of the worst in the league right now. It was noticeable that DeMarcus Ware, one of the great pass rushers of the last decade in the NFL, essentially disappeared in the second half. There was a guy wearing #94 on the field, but he was invisible once the ball was snapped.
We then moved deep into the fourth quarter. At this point, the Cowboys suffered another one of their Game IQ failures. They continued to throw the ball, although by now the Packers, realizing that the Cowboys' running game had been taken off the table, were now organizing their defense around a combination of rushing Tony Romo and defending against the pass.
Then it got way way worse. The Cowboys had kept all of their timeouts deep into the fourth quarter, a smart move. Their lead had diminished, but they still had a lead. Surely the Boys would start to grind out running plays, which would force the Packers to use their timeouts, and then they would be able to force the Packers into desperation plays.
Instead, the Cowboys continued to throw the ball, but really badly. Worse still, plays began to break down. On one play Clay Matthews lined up totally unmatched by any Cowboys defender. For some reason that I cannot fathom, not only did nobody on the Cowboys offense notice, including Tony Romo, who should have seen Matthews salivating as he measured off the distance to the helmet of #9, but even the Cowboys sideline did not see the mismatch, because if they had, they would surely have called a timeout. Romo's pass on the play, heaved quickly to avoid the Matthews steamroller, was seemingly intercepted, only to be overruled and declared an incompletion. One would think that this close call would serve as a warning, but Nope, the Cowboys still continued to throw the ball. The inevitable happened, Romo threw an interception as a ball intended for Miles Austin was thrown behind him and picked off.
The Packers drove down the field, mostly running the ball in the red zone (ahem!) and finally took the lead, but failed with a 2 point conversion, which would have left the Cowboys needing a field goal to send the game to overtime. Now the Cowboys were facing the task of driving down to score a field goal to win the game. They had 1.31 left, and one timeout, with a field goal kicker who was 5 for 5 on the day and good from over 50 yards. This looked feasible. They should not have been in this hole, but this was a doable way to win the game.
The drive began with an "out route" throw to Cole Beasley that gained good yards. Then, Tony Romo apparently checked out of a play intended for Dez Bryant and tried a short slant to Cole Beasley (again). This was not a good throw, it was intercepted by Green Bay. Game Over.
The execution was flawed at the end, no question. What was more inexcusable was the lack of football IQ that saw the Cowboys abandon everything that worked for them in the first half for a game plan that saw them throwing the ball most of the time. Their failure to continue to score points in the second half left Green Bay able to begin to dominate the time of possession, gain confidence and score on every drive.
I do not think that Jason Garrett intended to throw Tony Romo under the bus in the press conference. I believe that he was simply explaining how that final play unfolded. However, given the way the game ended, he should have realized that this would be interpreted as him hanging Tony Romo out to dry. In reality, while Romo threw the interception that ended the game, the Packers should not even have been within shouting distance of the Cowboys at that point. The real failure revolved around the decision to move to a passing attack, which I cannot understand. If the Packers come out in the second half having adjusted to stop the run, you will soon find out, then you can make your own adjustments. Instead, it looks like the Cowboys assumed that the Packers would adjust to stop the run, so they pre-empted them by switching to a passing attack. However, it might have been an idea to see whether the run game would still work...
Football IQ failures are killing the Cowboys in late-season games. I do not know where the fault lies, but it may be the case that the entire coaching staff is deficient in game IQ. If that is the case, Jerry Jones's vote of confidence is probably not worth the paper it's not written on.