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Did we show the Cowboys too much?

b0ng

b0ng

Bad Hombre
That was definitely dominating but you could tell those were a lot of base defensive sets for the Cowboys. Did the Texans screw themselves a few weeks form now to look good in the preseason?
 
No, I don't think so. The Cowboys were out 5 starters, I'm more worried that we're going to come in to the regular season game saying they were pushovers in the preseason.
 
b0ng said:
That was definitely dominating but you could tell those were a lot of base defensive sets for the Cowboys.
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Remember when we kept telling ourselves, "We're just showing our base defense sets I bet!" when we were doing bad?
 
I remember on one of the Romosacks that Mario stunted A gap and Quinn was already coming in on a blitz. That's certainly fairly exotic for our blitzes.
 
b0ng said:
I remember on one of the Romosacks that Mario stunted A gap and Quinn was already coming in on a blitz. That's certainly fairly exotic for our blitzes.
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That was the first time I ever saw a stunt, that didn't look Keystone cops.


I don't think we showed them too much. Like Kubiak said, that's four weeks away.

Offensively, we add stuff every week.
 
b0ng said:
I remember on one of the Romosacks that Mario stunted A gap and Quinn was already coming in on a blitz. That's certainly fairly exotic for our blitzes.
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I like the exotic blitz packages. I hope we start bringing those during the regular season. I think that's what makes a defense feared in this league.
 
Also, we didn't really see too much from either side of Dallas (Cowboys suck lololol). I'm not down on anything from this game. I'm only wondering aloud if the coaches were throwing everything we had at em.
 
hradhak said:
No, I don't think so. The Cowboys were out 5 starters, I'm more worried that we're going to come in to the regular season game saying they were pushovers in the preseason.
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This is a concern I have. The Texans can't stroll into work in week three expecting a pushover opponent because of this game and until they prove they've matured enough not to do that I'm afraid it might happen.

I really feel like the Cowboys were just miserable tonight and a lot of that was on them. They couldn't get out of their own way and kept making boneheaded mistakes that a focused, in sync team simply won't make. As a result we don't really know how we compare to them.

We did the same thing last week against New Orleans. We kept screwing the pooch and killing our own drives with boneheaded mistakes. We probably aren't that much better than the Cowboys or worse than the Saints. I don't want to sound negative after a win or anything. I'm not. I just think that a better game from our opponent would have told us more about our progress and helped us more in the long run.
 
Hervoyel said:
We did the same thing last week against New Orleans. We kept screwing the pooch and killing our own drives with boneheaded mistakes. We probably aren't that much better than the Cowboys or worse than the Saints. I don't want to sound negative after a win or anything. I'm not. I just think that a better game from our opponent would have told us more about our progress and helped us more in the long run.
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I couldn't agree more. Beating on a broken team doesn't help us out as much as playing a well-oiled machine. Next week's game probably won't see our starters, and then we start with Indy who's going to hit us with everything they have.
 
Hervoyel said:
This is a concern I have. The Texans can't stroll into work in week three expecting a pushover opponent because of this game and until they prove they've matured enough not to do that I'm afraid it might happen.

I really feel like the Cowboys were just miserable tonight and a lot of that was on them. They couldn't get out of their own way and kept making boneheaded mistakes that a focused, in sync team simply won't make. As a result we don't really know how we compare to them.

We did the same thing last week against New Orleans. We kept screwing the pooch and killing our own drives with boneheaded mistakes. We probably aren't that much better than the Cowboys or worse than the Saints. I don't want to sound negative after a win or anything. I'm not. I just think that a better game from our opponent would have told us more about our progress and helped us more in the long run.
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I agree. The whole, "we're tired and would like to see our families" schtick we heard from the Cowboys via the announcers was all too familiar from last week.

The Cowboys are better than they were tonight. The Texans are better than they were last week.

There's not much too be gleamed from this.
 
Hervoyel said:
This is a concern I have. The Texans can't stroll into work in week three expecting a pushover opponent because of this game and until they prove they've matured enough not to do that I'm afraid it might happen.

I really feel like the Cowboys were just miserable tonight and a lot of that was on them. They couldn't get out of their own way and kept making boneheaded mistakes that a focused, in sync team simply won't make. As a result we don't really know how we compare to them.

We did the same thing last week against New Orleans. We kept screwing the pooch and killing our own drives with boneheaded mistakes. We probably aren't that much better than the Cowboys or worse than the Saints. I don't want to sound negative after a win or anything. I'm not. I just think that a better game from our opponent would have told us more about our progress and helped us more in the long run.
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not a bad post at all. very realistic & down to earth.

Just a couple of my opinions.

1) I don't think you can ever get a good gauge of where your team is at in the preseason. Coaches look at things differently than we do. Winning the game is not the most important thing, and that changes when the season starts.

2) It's better that we didn't play down to the level of our competition. We got to see what it looks like when we do what we are supposed to do. The coaches can bring this film up next week, and say, "See, this is what you're supposed to do. That is what it's supposed to look like."

3) The only thing I think we can, and should get out of preseason games, is how individuals play. I like how all our receivers are using their hands to pluck the ball out of the air. whoever our WR coach is, Kudos.
 
And Slaton is still playing with blinders. A staple of our offense, is that a receiver in motion (usually Walter) or a H-Back/Tight-end works across the LOS and cuts the backside end. We only did that once in this game, and Steve didn't see the huge backside cut that was there.
 
b0ng said:
That was definitely dominating but you could tell those were a lot of base defensive sets for the Cowboys. Did the Texans screw themselves a few weeks form now to look good in the preseason?
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The Texans' playbook has hundreds of plays that can be called from a dozen different formations/looks. The Cowgirls saw maybe a few dozen out of thousands of possible plays.

Kubiak could order plays off the Denny's menu for a few weeks into the season and never call the same play twice, so I don't think there's anything to worry about on offense. On defense they were pretty vanilla last season anyway, so there's not a lot to show them in that regard.
 
Weirdest quotes from Wade Phillips:

Defensively, it looked like they knew we weren't going to come after them at all on any of their three wide stuff, which we didn't, and they took advantage of that and then they had four wides and empty sets that we hadn't worked on and that’s my fault. We weren't really prepared for that and they did a good job of executing. We had base stuff and it’s hard to cover all that. Preparation wise, I didn't really do a good job there.

(on anticipating three and four wides) “No, I anticipated three wides. I didn't anticipate four wides and they had run it before, but we didn't go over it well with our guys and we had real matchup problem. We just played and the next time we'll have something else for them.”
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Texans run three and four wide sets all the time. It's not terribly novel for them.

I'm guessing that the Texans see more pressure on those plays next time around, though generally, Schaub has had some success against teams that try to blitz him.

There is no excuse for the Cowboy running game to look like such garbage all preseason.

The sum up from Phillips for the next game:

I thought (QB) Tony (Romo) started throwing the ball well. I think he hit thirteen out of eighteen. Of course one of them bounced off our guy and goes to theirs for an interception. We moved the ball and had the ball down there in scoring position and turned the ball over in the pitch and turned the ball over when a ball bounced off one guy to another. We can execute better, but I did see a glimpse of hope there. They've got a good football team. They're ready to play. All our players can see that after this ball game. We go on the road and we're going to have to be prepared to be able to run the ball better and stop the run better.
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Pollard was a big part of that ball "bouncing off" of their guy. Made that catch a very difficult one to make.

I have to admit to taking great joy when the Cowboys couldn't score at the end of the half because they ran out of time. I had some awful Cowboy fans behind me and it sure did take the wind of their sails.
 
Yeah, we had some obnoxious Cowboy fans in our section making lots of noise before kick-off. They got more and more quiet as the game went on until finally they just shut-up.
 
I think all this really does is erase the embarrassing Saints game. So, we have one good performance against an ailing Cardinals team in the preseason....and that's about it. You can't prove anything in the preseason anyway. Nice to see foster gaining confidence, though. If he and the O-line can actually carry that kind of performance into the real season, our offense will make the Colts fans jealous.
 
We showed more than the Cowboys did.

In years past the Cowboys would come in and push us around just because they were bigger faster and stronger, times have changed.
 
I dont think the Texans tipped their hand too much. We will play a couple of real games before the rendezvous with the Cowboys, they will get their needed information from those games.
 
I'm pleased we played like we did last night (instead of the way we played last week in NOLA), but would remind everyone it's just a preseason game.
It's good to have our starters play the way they did, but winning or losing these preseason games, any preseaon games, is meaningless.
The only game vs the Cowboys that has any meaning or counts this year is the one we play next month.
 
No, I don't think we showed them too much - that is what you say when you are looking for excuses for playing lousy. What better time to practice some of your stunts than pre-season?

Good teams beat you even when you know what they are going to do LOL. So I see this as a positive sign. :)
 
How are you gonna face the top passing offense in the NFL and not prepare for 4 wide/empty backfield formations? Texans do that ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Nice job Wade. "It's on you."
 
I just want to re-iterate that in no way was I upset about really anything that happened last night. And honestly, I don't think we showed much on offense besides an actual running game.

On the defense I did notice some blitzing that I haven't really seen before (A CB blitz/stunt, and I thought Pollard blitzed a few times too). Did anybody else notice this? Also, the Cowboy O-line looks really bad without Columbo and Kozier.

I'd also love to read HFrog, and Starstruck's opinions on the Cowboys schemes and packages (heh heh heh).
 
We've got 2 real games before we play the Cowboys. Scheme-wise they'll watch those games. However, they will remember how the Texans pushed them around on both sides of the ball and manhandled them the entire game last night.
 
I watched the Cowboys 1st team play like cr%p against the Chargers 1st team a week ago and only bone headed turnovers by the Bolts kept them in it. Wade Phillips cannot chew gum and coach at the same time, the Romo era peaked last year when they beat Philly back to back games.If the Cowbosy really did "throw" the game then it was really stupid to leave Romo out there as long as they did.

As for us, I think we may have had something to prove and been more aggressive but I dont think that will determine the outcome of the game in week 3:

1. No Brian Cushing for that game
2. We moved the ball great but I thought we settled for too many fg's vs just going for it, after all its pre-season where is the risk? There is no "preseason Super Bowl".

Otherwise if we can play like that for 16 games we may finally unseat the fillies up north.
 
Hervoyel said:
This is a concern I have. The Texans can't stroll into work in week three expecting a pushover opponent because of this game and until they prove they've matured enough not to do that I'm afraid it might happen.

I really feel like the Cowboys were just miserable tonight and a lot of that was on them. They couldn't get out of their own way and kept making boneheaded mistakes that a focused, in sync team simply won't make. As a result we don't really know how we compare to them.

We did the same thing last week against New Orleans. We kept screwing the pooch and killing our own drives with boneheaded mistakes. We probably aren't that much better than the Cowboys or worse than the Saints. I don't want to sound negative after a win or anything. I'm not. I just think that a better game from our opponent would have told us more about our progress and helped us more in the long run.
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QFT

The game can serve us well by showing us that WE as a team CAN create our own destiny by executing well, notwithstanding the level of successful effort or level of skill of the opponent.

However, it CAN serve as a springboard for overconfidence that this team's execution will extrapolate to an opponent which starts shooting back instead of always aiming at their own feet.
 
I do not believe so.

I do like to think that the Cowboys showed us everything, by showing us nothing, specifically an ounce of heart. I really hope that the Skins beat them in the opening week, because I think the Skins would have a let down the next week, which would benefit us immensely IMO. The Skins game is the only one I have us losing prior to the bye week.
 
I have already heard "this was the Texans Super bowl" so .....blaaa

Cowboys have not looked good this preseason esp with all the talk of them wanting home field advantage when it comes to Super Bowl talk
 
Wolf said:
I have already heard "this was the Texans Super bowl" so .....blaaa

Cowboys have not looked good this preseason esp with all the talk of them wanting home field advantage when it comes to Super Bowl talk
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Last time we dominated the Cowboys at Reliant in the preseason, they went 13-3, we went 8-8.

I do not think this means what you think it means.
 
DBCooper said:
We showed more than the Cowboys did.

In years past the Cowboys would come in and push us around just because they were bigger faster and stronger, times have changed.
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That was in my pre-game thoughts. I was watching to see the if texans get manhandled or not... more so than to see a win. But, then again.. pre-season or not, I don't want to lose to the Cowboys.

Either way, they looked like they were getting closer to ready for week 1 then they did after the saints, which helps qualm some anxiety I may feel over the next two weeks.
 
we will just come up with new stuff we do have a new OC iam sure hes going to put some wrinkles and add some new pages to that dennys menu LOL
 
b0ng said:
I'd also love to read HFrog, and Starstruck's opinions on the Cowboys schemes and packages (heh heh heh).
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First off I was probably about as uninspired as the Cowboys were.

1. I arrived early and saw the Cowboys doing their stretch drills. Eye Candy.
2. My cousin purchased a seat online that was somewhere in the 600 Section. Given that she isn't a regular, I thought it would be better to not cast her off to a possibly hostile territory, and I gave her my seat. I decided to be a rail bird and check out the game from the concourse.
3. There were several great Texans fans in the same area, and of course my arrival prompted some good natured (I guess) taunting. There was some bait thrown out, but I'm a pretty difficult fish to catch. (smiles)
4. Another Texan fan approached me asked me to name some of the current Cowboys players, their positions, and who I believed to bring the most to the team this year. Ah, a quiz at the football game. Ok, I'll take it. Then he went into history mode. As I rolled back to the days of Bob Hayes, he offered to buy me a Coke. Observer said, what? you're buying a Cowboys fan a drink? I smiled, winked, and responded, don't you think I'm charming enough to receive a drink. Good laughs! I got my coke in a souvenir cup, no less.
5. There were temporary seats brought in for I assume an anticipated overflow. I can believe it since 70K plus tickets were sold. Very few claimed them, no ushers to say no, so I went over and took a seat. Oh, nice thick cushions, a row to myself, now I can relax, sip my Coke, enjoy my $2 peanuts (thanks for the coupon), and continue watching the field of play.
6. Positives for the Cowboys, the potential is there for our receivers to catch some nice passes, AOA was impressive on special teams. Looks as though someone has lit a fire under Roy Williams, and Kitna remains a good backup, Ware (Oh yeah), Butler was impressive. Negatives - Still not too comfortable with the o-line Davis and Gurode too old to play as they did, but hopefully they will work out the kinks by opening day. Miscommunication QB to RB, run defense miserable. O-Line has to do more to protect the QB from sacks. The interception was just an outstanding play on the part of the Texans defense (Pollard/Jackson), offense as a whole still needs improvement. Improvement need to avoid execution penalties. I didn't give close enough attention to our rookies, and will watch the recording to see what stood out with any of them. If I were to give a grade, there would be a lot of red ink.
7. Texans did their part on the dress rehearsal. Johnson is absolutely awesome, Foster seems heading for RB of the season, Ryans, Pollard, Jackson good, Schaub was good overall, however, I would like to see improvement in the redzone. Field goals are ok, but could pose a problem against a team scoring more TDs. Didn't see a kick long enough to determine who would be the better kicker. Watch the significant penalty yards. As with the Cowboys, I need to review the rookies contributions.
8. Hopefully the traffic flow from the Yellow lot improves by the beginning of the season. I left the stadium was about 90 percent had cleared out, yet the back up in the lot and on Main Street left a lot to be desired.

I look forward to seeing more of the rookies on Thursday, although, I will be working late and won't arrive until second quarter at least. Hopefully by then traffic won't be an issue.
 
a blog


Jerry Jones: Fatigue not a factor

HOUSTON -- The Cowboys' training camp/marketing tour has concluded after six stops and more than five weeks.

It didn't end well. The Cowboys' starters were thoroughly dominated in the last two preseason games.

Owner/general manager/ringmaster Jerry Jones doesn't see a correlation between travel or the length of camp and the Cowboys' preseason duds.

"The most bouncing around, the most miles we’ve ever traveled, we won three championships," Jerry said, referring to preseason games played out of the country before the Cowboys' three Super Bowl seasons under his watch. "Last week, we had a very light week and we had it in great weather. We had the coldest weather probably in the United States and we had a very light week.

"Apart from the fact that you’re at the end of a four- or five-week run, you might point to it, but I wouldn’t think [fatigue would be a factor] after the week that we had."

Wade Phillips pointed to fatigue last week, offering it as an excuse for the starters' sorry effort in San Diego. He responded by basically making the final week of camp an all-expenses paid resort vacation. The Cowboys hardly wore shoulder pads the last week in Oxnard, and contact was limited even when they did.

There was no reason for the Cowboys to have tired legs in Houston. Maybe they were a mentally fatigued team, but that's sort of a synonym for soft.
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http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/cowboys
 
The Cowboys didn't look surprised at all. I can't even say how freaking stupid it was we played them in preseason. What a dumb idea. How about next year we schedule 4 teams who aren't on the regular season schedule? Is that too difficult?
 
m5kwatts said:
The Cowboys didn't look surprised at all. I can't even say how freaking stupid it was we played them in preseason. What a dumb idea. How about next year we schedule 4 teams who aren't on the regular season schedule? Is that too difficult?
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I think that is a ridiculous assertion.
 
JB said:
I think that is a ridiculous assertion.
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We overcompensated with a ridiculous amount of shotgun on purpose to be different from preseason. They had our big passing plays sniffed out. Its ridiculous to assert that this entire past week our staff or the Cowboys' staff never brought up plays they ran in the preseason game. You can bet every play ran was reviewed on some level.
 
m5kwatts said:
We overcompensated with a ridiculous amount of shotgun on purpose to be different from preseason. They had our big passing plays sniffed out. Its ridiculous to assert that this entire past week our staff or the Cowboys' staff never brought up plays they ran in the preseason game. You can bet every play ran was reviewed on some level.
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Absolutely they reviewed every possible play. But to assert that the Texans lost this game because the played the 'gurls in the preseason is ridiculous.
 
JB said:
Absolutely they reviewed every possible play. But to assert that the Texans lost this game because the played the 'gurls in the preseason is ridiculous.
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All I'm asserting is that the surprise factor of our offense's more basic stuff was taken away when we ran it all in preseason. We had to delve deeper into the playbook into all this shotgun stuff. We had to throw out a chunk of the playbook out because of the preseason game. You don't think the results today would've been different if this was their first look at us in 3 years?
 
m5kwatts said:
All I'm asserting is that the surprise factor of our offense's more basic stuff was taken away when we ran it all in preseason. We had to delve deeper into the playbook into all this shotgun stuff. We had to throw out a chunk of the playbook out because of the preseason game. You don't think the results today would've been different if this was their first look at us in 3 years?
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No. No I don't. I think playing them in the preseason had no bearing on the game today.
 
no..they just finally put it together for a full game & it showed is all. I mean frankly i don't see how they couldn't have put it together with all that talent they have over there. They didn't really stop us, we just stopped ourselves most of the time. remember the game was only 7-3 at half time & we were still in the game well into the 4th quarter.
 
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I chalk this up to two things:

Situation 1:

We had spent the past two weeks playing our guts out, giving it our all, and we even had to battle it out in OT with the Skins...AFTER having made a huge comeback on them to even get to OT.

Situation 2:

The Cowboys pulled a Texans routine and started off the season like a deer in the headlights. Now they finally began playing well.

This was the perfect storm of events. One team coming off a grueling OT win, which had followed a pounding of the Colts in week 1 (which was extremely euphoric), and the other team fighting for their lives because they dropped the first two games.

I won't sit here and poo-poo this, and say the Cowboys didn't earn the win. Threy earned it. They played better, by a mile. So nobody needs to say it was the refs fault, or it was the media hype's fault, or is one play or another play, etc. We're now at the point where our games are decided upon solely by the content of our team and NOT the outside influences.

I have a feeling that things (even on defense) sharpen up and the game vs. the Raiders will be won by us. Then we get Cushing back and are sitting at 3-1. I can handle 3-1. It's better than 2-2. Better than 1-2, and better than 0-4.

We didn't have Amobi, either. Two guys (Amobi and Cushing) who are excellent run stoppers.
 
Yes and No (in the preseason):

Yes. We showed them Brian Cushing.

Yes. We showed them Duane Brown.

Yes. Our secondary sucks and with even a little time Romo could pick them apart.

Yes. With our "D" linemen pinning thier ears back, the Cowboys figured out how to burn us with the sprint draw.


No. Arian Foster was still able to gain the century mark.

No. One of the bombs that turned into an interception was only because AJ stumbled..
 
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