New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was limited in Friday’s practice, but will play against the Dallas Cowboys, according to multiple reports.
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was limited in practice on Friday, making his status for Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys questionable.
But, and perhaps as expected, multiple reports have surfaced saying Brady will play on Sunday. It appears the injury is not serious.
No surprise, but always good to confirm: Tom Brady’s right elbow injury (which landed him on the injury report today) won’t keep him out of Sunday’s game, per a source.
Brady was one of 12 Patriots to be listed as questionable including teammates Julian Edelman (shoulder), Mohomed Sanu (ankle), Matthew Slater (hamstring), John Simon (elbow), Jason McCourty (groin), Marcus Cannon (illness), Ja’Whaun Bentley (knee), Patrick Chung (heel/chest), Phillip Dorsett (concussion), Nate Eber (ankle/back) and Damien Harris (hamstring).
The 9-1 Patriots will host the NFC East-leading Dallas Cowboys at Gillette Stadium at 4:25 p.m.
Previewing and predicting the Week 12 outcome between the Seattle Seahawks and the Eagles in Philadelphia.
It is officially the home stretch for the Seattle Seahawks. With only six games remaining in the regular season, and the most difficult schedule in terms of strength of opponents, the Seahawks are going to be pushed to their limits. First up on the docket is a road trip to the City of Brotherly Love to face off against the Philadelphia Eagles.
This will be Seattle’s first trip to Philadelphia since 2014 when the Seahawks suffocated the Eagles in a 24-14 victory that was never nearly as competitive as the final score might indicate. In fact, the Seahawks have not lost to the Eagles since a 26-7 defeat at home in November of 2008.
Philadelphia was a trendy pick to win the NFC by many during this offseason. After last season’s injury-riddled 9-7 campaign following their Super Bowl run in 2017, the Eagles looked to bounce back and return to championship-caliber form.
So far, this has not happened. Despite Philly’s talented roster, the Eagles have stumbled to a disappointing 5-5 record, going 2-2 in the last month. While they have earned impressive road wins over Green Bay and Buffalo, they’ve also been dominated by Dallas, Minnesota, and were completely stymied by New England.
The injury bug has bitten once more, specifically in the secondary and wide receiving corps, which roughly translates to the Eagles receivers struggling to get open, while opposing receivers do not find such difficulty against Philadelphia.
Furthermore, the Eagles could very well be without running back Jordan Howard and right tackle Lane Johnson. Although Philadelphia has a solid backup in former Washington State standout Andre Dillard, this could present an opportunity for a surging Seahawks pass rush, should defensive end Jadeveon Clowney play on Sunday.
There’s no love lost between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles. 1989’s Bounty Bowl didn’t start the feud, but it sure deepened it.
November 23, 1989. “Blame It on the Rain” by Milli Vanilli was the No. 1 song in the country. Harlem Nights starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor had just unseated Look Who’s Talking from a month-long run atop the box office. The Berlin Wall had come tumbling down two weeks prior. A gallon of milk cost $2.34. A gallon of gas was just over a buck. And, at least on the visitors’ sideline of Texas Stadium that Thanksgiving Day, the price for laying out Cowboys kicker Luis Zendejas was $200.
Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the “Bounty Bowl,” one of the ugliest incidents in team history, an unfortunate stain on the league’s rich Thanksgiving Day tradition, and one of the most notorious chapters in one of the nastiest rivalries in the National Football League.
“Why would I place a bounty on a kicker who can’t kick worth a damn?”
The Cowboys were a dismal 1-10 entering the Week 12 game of the 1989 season; Jerry Jones had just purchased the team in February. Jimmy Johnson had replaced the legendary Tom Landry as coach. The team’s best player, Herschel Walker, had been traded away a few weeks earlier, and Troy Aikman was nearing the three-quarter mark of his rookie campaign as starting quarterback of the league’s worst squad. Hosting its annual Thanksgiving Day contest was one of the lone chances that season for the struggling Cowboys to shine before a nationwide audience. The opponent that day? The 7-4 Philadelphia Eagles, helmed by coach Buddy Ryan.
Down by a 10-0 score coming out of halftime, Dallas kicked off to open the third quarter. Moments after sending the ball deep on his first kick of the game, Zendejas was leveled by Eagles linebacker and special teams player Jessie Small. Replays seem to show that Small bypassed several members of the Cowboys coverage team to get to Zendejas. Once there, he delivered a massive blow that sent the 175-pound kicker flying and left him wobbling as he tried to stand.
In today’s game, the hit would have drawn an immediate flag, resulting in not only a penalty for the Eagles, but a stiff fine for Small from the league. But on that day in Irving in 1989, it was- incredibly enough- Zendejas who was flagged, for a low block. (In retrospect, Zendejas was clearly crouching in anticipation because he knew a big hit was coming; more on that later.) And for his bone-crunching blow, Small actually made money- directly from Coach Ryan, no less- according to blockbuster accusations leveled after the 27-0 loss by Johnson and the Cowboys.
The first-year coach claimed that Ryan had placed a bounty on Zendejas, promising a $200 cash payment to the Eagles player who flattened the kicker. Zendejas, coincidentally (or not, depending on your interpretation), had been cut by the Eagles less than a month earlier and then signed by Dallas.
Ryan laughed off the accusation as absurd.
“Why would I place a bounty on a kicker who can’t kick worth a damn?” he asked, according to Mark Eckel of NJ.com. “The guy was in a six-week slump. I wanted him in the game.”
Zendejas had, in fact, missed two field goals in Dallas’s previous game versus Miami. He did not seem to be, at least on the surface, a dangerous playmaking threat truly worthy of the personal ire of the Eagles coach.
The Dallas kicker, though, felt he had proof of the bounty. Eagles punter John Teltschik had warned him before the game that he was a target for a big hit. But there was more.
“Watch out for yourself…”
“In the days leading up to the game,” wrote Ray Didinger in a 2014 piece on the Eagles team website, “a story circulated in Dallas that Zendejas had received an ominous phone call from Eagles special teams coach Al Roberts. According to Zendejas, Roberts told him that Ryan had instructed his players to go after their former teammate.”
Zendejas claimed that upon his release in Philadelphia, he had been notified by Roberts, not Ryan directly. At the time, the kicker took to the media to voice his disappointment, calling his coach’s move “classless.”
”Buddy didn’t have the decency to tell me to my face; he had an assistant coach do it,” Zendejas said of his termination. ”When I phoned to ask him about it, he hung up on me.”
Roberts’s warning for Zendejas to “watch out for yourself” on Thanksgiving 1989 in the game that was quickly dubbed the “Bounty Bowl” was just the latest evidence of bad blood between Ryan and the Cowboys. Ryan, in fact, harbored a hatred for the rivals from Dallas ever since taking over in Philadelphia in 1986. That hatred that grew exponentially the following season.
During the 1987 NFL players’ strike, Dallas saw several high-profile members of their roster cross the picket line to continue playing. Ryan accused then-coach Landry of running up the score on his replacement players in a 41-22 win. After the strike had ended and full-time players returned, Ryan got his revenge on Dallas. He instructed his starting offense to run a fake kneeldown play – after two actual kneel-downs – in the final seconds of a game the Eagles were already leading 30-20. The ensuing rub-it-in touchdown beat the Cowboys by 17 points. In 1989, Ryan saw a chance to kick the rebuilding team when they were down, in their own stadium and on national television.
But the notion of Ryan placing a price tag on the heads of opposing players wasn’t even a new one.
“Ron Wolfley, a Pro Bowl special teams tackler for the [then-]Phoenix Cardinals, disclosed [in 1988] that he had heard that the Eagles had a bounty on him during the 1987 season,” as per a 1989 New York Times piece by Dave Anderson. He goes on to write that, in an Eagles-Bears game that same 1989 season, “similar bounties were whispered to be on Mike Tomczak, the quarterback, and Dennis McKinnon, a wide receiver,” and adding, “Ryan, who has feuded openly with Mike Ditka, also supposedly had offered a bounty if any of the Eagle players flattened the Bears’ coach on the sideline.”
To be sure, the Cowboys were well aware of the bounty rumors when they took the field that Thanksgiving Day. And Zendejas wasn’t the only Dallas player with a supposed price on his head.
“He never used the word ‘bounty.'”
In the first half of the game, Aikman was slammed to the ground by Eagles linebacker Britt Hager well after an aborted-play whistle. The hit, despite broadcasters Pat Summerall and John Madden clearly being entertained by the “fracas” that followed, necessitated X-rays for Aikman. Johnson claimed the Eagles had also put a $500 contract on his rookie quarterback.
“As far as I know, he never pointed out a guy,” Hager answered. “I never heard, ‘Go take the kicker out.’ Who would say, ‘Go take the kicker out?’ That’s why we all kind of laughed about it.”
He admitted, though, that Ryan wasn’t above at least insinuating that opposing quarterbacks were fair game for his players.
Eckel explains, “Ryan would say to me after the fact that he would tell his players at times before games, ‘I want to find out who their backup quarterback is today.” But he never used the word ‘bounty’.”
Anderson adds that Zendejas himself “spoke of having seen ”Buddy call guys out and give them $100” for what the kicker called a weekly Big Hit award but what Ryan called a Big Play award.
“Ryan acknowledged those $100 bonuses to his Eagle players, but insisted they were for an interception or a jarring tackle that caused a fumble in the context of the game, not for leveling a certain opponent.”
But, Sabin writes: “At the time, Hager and the Eagles special teams and defensive players would collect a pool of money and redistribute it for big hits, ‘decleaters,’ sacks, and turnovers. It wasn’t an uncommon practice in the NFL during a bygone era when the league’s image was less sanitized and the game wasn’t as scrutinized. In fact, the Cowboys had a similar system, according to [Dallas fullback Daryl] Johnston.
“‘There was no intent of malice,’ Johnston explained.”
But to anyone watching the 1989 Thanksgiving Day contest, there was clearly intent of malice in the Eagles hit that left a diminutive kicker staggering off the field.
Didinger, the famed Philadelphia sportswriter, had a private film session with Jimmy Johnson at Valley Ranch several days after the Bounty Bowl.
“On the film, you could see Small take a straight-line course to Zendejas. He actually ran right past Bill Bates, the Cowboys’ best special teams player, to get to the kicker who never made a tackle in his entire career.
“‘Why would he do that,’ Johnson said referring to Small, ‘unless somebody told him to do it?’
“I had to admit Johnson had a point.”
“You all know what you were doing!”
The New York Times quoted Zendejas as saying of Ryan after the Thanksgiving Day game, ”If I could’ve stood on my two legs, I would’ve gone over and decked him… We’ll play again in two weeks. If I see him then, I’ll deck him then. Honestly, I will.”
Zendejas did share words with several of his ex-Eagles teammates when the Thanksgiving game ended. Small, in fact, was overheard by Didinger telling Zendejas, ”I was just doing my job.” The Cowboys’ kicker reportedly replied, ”You know what you were doing! You all know what you were doing!” An Eagles’ trainer offered his hand; Zendejas slapped it away.
Johnson himself intended to confront Ryan right there on the field after the final gun. But the Eagles coach hurried off the Texas Stadium field, skipping the traditional coaches’ face-to-face meeting.
According to Didinger: “It was true Ryan left the field as soon as the game ended, but he did that every week. He didn’t believe in postgame handshakes. Professional courtesy wasn’t his thing.”
Johnson famously said of the moment, “Oh, I would have said something to Buddy, but he wouldn’t stand on the field long enough. He put his big fat rear end into the dressing room.”
In his response, Ryan, as he did with most things, deflected the criticism with a joke.
“I resent that,” Ryan said. “I’ve been on a diet, I lost a couple of pounds. I thought I was looking good, and he goes and calls me fat. I kind of resent that.”
The teams played again two weeks later. It was not nearly enough time, though, for tempers to have cooled. “Bounty Bowl II” had become a promoted event, and it carried the animosity into the Veterans Stadium stands, with Philadelphia fans pelting Cowboys players, NFL officials, CBS broadcasters, and even their own players with ice-packed snowballs in one of the most chaotic game environments ever seen at an NFL venue.
On the field, Zendejas was left alone, and he never went after Ryan. But Aikman took several hits during the game along with Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham; nine total sacks were recorded in a notably physical 20-10 Eagles win. Cowboys punter Mike Saxon was also roughed up during play, drawing an unnecessary roughness flag.
“He never truly admitted it.”
As for the initial Bounty Bowl accusations, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue- on the job just one month when it happened- followed up by interviewing a handful of players. There was even talk of a recording Zendejas had supposedly made of the phone conversation where the Eagles assistant had warned him of the bounty, but the kicker never turned over any such tape.
In the end, according to the Dallas Morning News, “the league dropped the inquiry, saying it found no ‘convincing evidence of an intent to injure any Cowboys player or to make contact with any player outside the rules of the game.'”
The 1989 season ended with the Cowboys finishing 1-15, the second NFL team to ever do so. Their league-worst record would have given them the top pick in the 1990 draft, but the team had given up that pick by taking quarterback Steve Walsh in the first round of the previous year’s supplemental draft. The Cowboys eventually traded picks with the Steelers to re-enter the first round; they selected running back Emmitt Smith 17th overall.
The Eagles came in second in the NFC East in 1989 and lost to the Rams in the wild card round of the playoffs.
Ryan never admitted to a bounty system in the years that followed, maintaining that position until his passing in 2016.
Johnson, now a FOX studio analyst, recalled Ryan’s denials in a 2014 interview.
“He sloughed it off. He never truly admitted it,” Johnson said. “I think Buddy was trying to play games. I kid him, ‘You had one of the great all-time defenses, but you never won a playoff game.’ I had the last laugh.”
Johnson’s championships may have afforded him the luxury to find humor in it long after the fact, but the Bounty Bowl saga remains a seminal part of the lore of the Cowboys-Eagles rivalry any time the franchises meet. Thirty years of hindsight has perhaps turned the original controversy into just a colorful chapter from a distant era; nothing, though, has diminished the intense dislike the two teams have for one another to this day.
For anyone who’s ever dealt with the flu, they know the bug is the most convincing user of the unspoken “Sitcho butt down somewhere” glare every kid ever has received from a parent. When it takes hold on the unfortunate soul, there’s really no other …
For anyone who’s ever dealt with the flu, they know the bug is the most convincing user of the unspoken “Sitcho butt down somewhere” glare every kid ever has received from a parent. When it takes hold on the unfortunate soul, there’s really no other option than to let it run its course as you desperately try to augment your body’s defense systems.
Normally, efforts to speed up the process are to little effect or no avail at all. Hopefully for the Dallas Cowboys, being at the pinnacle of physical conditioning will help them ward off the worst, as the flu bug has assaulted the team ahead of their crucial road trip to New England to take on the 9-1 Patriots.
Flu is going around at the Cowboys facility. QB Dak Prescott to took some preventative meds Friday. LB Joe Thomas, S Donovan Wilson have missed all week with. LB coach Ben Bloom has it. LB Justin March had in infection. CB Jordan Lewis and S Xavier Woods are recovering from it.
Linebacker Joe Thomas missed multiple practices this week, but worked his way out to limited action on Friday. Defensive backs Jourdan Lewis and Xavier Woods are starters, while Donovan Wilson could be looked at as a key reserve at safety with the horrible fill-in job Darian Thompson did for Jeff Heath last week against Detroit.
Rightfully so, the Cowboys have done their best to try and keep the bug from passing over to the offensive side of the ball, primarily quarterback Dak Prescott.
With the weather expected to be absolutely miserable on Sunday, with temperatures in the low 40s and a constant rain from morning through the end of the game, feeling under the weather is the last thing Dallas needs to have happen when they try and take out the world champions.
“He’s definitely at the top — one of the best receivers in the league.”
[jwplayer CyWAa1YN-ThvAeFxT]
Stephon Gilmore’s matchup draws intrigue every week. The New England Patriots cornerback is one of the best players at his position, if not the best. It would be hard to miss his assignments against stars like JuJu Smith-Schuster, Odell Beckham Jr. and Zach Ertz — except that Gilmore typically shuts down his opponent, which means the tandem creates little action during the game.
But perhaps Gilmore will get tested on Sunday in Week 12 against the Dallas Cowboys at Gillette Stadium. Quarterback Dak Prescott and receiver Amari Cooper are putting together excellent seasons, and Cooper seems likely to draw coverage from Gilmore.
“He’s a great receiver,” Gilmore said. “He can run every route. He’s strong after the catch. He makes big catches. He’s definitely at the top — one of the best receivers in the league.”
In particular, Prescott and Cooper are excelling at attacking the outside of the field. Prescott has a 116.1 passer rating when attacking the boundary (just a few yards from the sideline), the best sum in the league. That has led to Cooper being the best boundary receiver in the league. Meanwhile, the Patriots allow a league-best 41.8 completion % on passes to the boundary. It’s a lot of superlatives. But you get it: the matchup should be a superb challenge for both teams.
“He makes big catches, tough catches, even when a guy’s covering him,” Gilmore said of Cooper. “He’s fast, quick. When you’re one of the best receivers in the league, you can run every route and make everything (look) the same. … He makes everything look like a go ball, then chops his route off. He makes everything look the same, and he has a good quarterback (Dak Prescott) who’s throwing him the ball that makes him better. I’m looking forward to it.”
Bill Belichick seems to have circled the matchup between Cooper and the cornerback in coverage (presumably Gilmore). The Patriots coach clearly respects how dangerous Cooper can be to an opposing defense, especially considering the boost Cooper brought to the Cowboys offense since joining Dallas in a trade midseason last year.
“Statistically, what they’ve done in the passing game since they’ve gotten him — I’m not saying that’s the only thing, but he’s certainly a big part of it. You can start with him,” Belichick said. “He’s got great speed, he’s a big-time vertical threat, run-after-the-catch is very good. He’s a sharp route-runner, he can get in and out of cuts. He’s a tough guy to cover, got a great quarterback, good offensive system. He can kill you on short catch-and-run plays. He can run all the intermediate routes, which are hard to cover, and he can certainly kill you down the field in single coverage on the outside or on inside routes if you don’t have a middle-of-the-field defender. And he’s got a quarterback who can get him the ball in all of those situations very accurately.”
Previewing Sunday’s showdown between Dak Prescott and Tom Brady, outsmarting Bill Belichick, and cashing in on Dak’s pregame dance moves.
So much to discuss as Sunday’s showdown draws ever nearer. The Cowboys look like they’ll be dealing with a surprise scratch in the middle of the defense, while there’s plenty of talk about the two quarterbacks this game will feature. Everyone is trying to predict what Patriots coach Bill Belichick will or won’t do, and what the Cowboys should or shouldn’t do in this one… all while one of the player units in Dallas suggests it’s all just business as usual.
All of that, plus an early look ahead at running back contracts and unrestricted free agents for 2020, breakdowns of both the Dallas offense and defense, and the perfect holiday gift for the Cowboys fan who’s still trying to learn “How to Dak.” That’s ahead in this edition of News and Notes.
Updating Thursday night’s big news, linebacker Leighton Vander Esch is expected to miss Sunday’s matchup with New England.
“Vander Esch’s injury flared up in practice, which led to an MRI. He will have another MRI in three weeks, according to a source,” reports ESPN’s Todd Archer. Also citing sources, Archer says the second-year star is now considered “week-to-week.”
Longtime veteran Sean Lee will take over for Vander Esch as the team’s weakside linebacker. Joe Thomas is slated to move into Lee’s spot on the strong side, but he has missed two practices this week with an illness.
Metrics nerds, get your popcorn ready. Travis Somers presents all kinds of graph goodness in this look at the two quarterbacks who will lead their teams against one another at Foxboro Stadium on Sunday.
Come for the visual eye candy of data plotted out on an X/Y grid and all the pretty colors; stay for the eye-opening conclusion about how the Cowboys’ young star actually compares to the most decorated passer in league history.
–TB
Belichick: Prescott is ‘Super Impressive’
Not much else to say here but watch the reverence (second vid) the Patriots head coach has for the Cowboys QB ahead of Sunday’s matchup.
SUPER IMPRESSIVE: #Patriots coach Bill Belichick asked about Cowboys QB Dak Prescott.
As a San Francisco kid who grew up during the 49ers’ dynasty of the 1980s and saw Dwight Clark make “The Catch” in person as a four-year-old, Tom Brady was perhaps genetically hardwired to hate America’s Team.
“I’ve really not liked the Cowboys since coming out of the womb,” the Patriots quarterback said this week.
“They’ve actually had a great, winning organization, and have got a lot of great players in their history,” Brady said. “Guys that I, just as a Niner fan, you know — you play the Cowboys and every time they’d hand it to Emmitt Smith, it’d be a 5-yard gain. And you’d pull your hair out.”
Brady is 4-0 in his playing career against Dallas.
For all the hype and hoopla surrounding Sunday’s showdown with the New England Patriots, the guys in the trenches say they’re approaching this week’s game like any other.
Loved Travis Frederick's answer this week on Cowboys Hour about changing their mentality for the Patriots compared to any other team they face…..
On the Miller Lite Cowboys Hour, offensive linemates Zack Martin and Travis Frederick dispelled any notion that they’re changing their mentality for Week 12 simply because they’ll be squaring off against the defending Super Bowl champions.
“Take away what they do best,” they say. Well, no one’s better at it than New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who has been making winning look easy for going on two decades. The Cowboys offense will present a unique challenge in Foxborough, but here’s a look at what has made things in New England so different for so long.
The Patriots do just about everything well, but if there’s a weakness to be found, it may in Tom Brady’s performance when under duress.
Connor Livesay writes: “Heading into last week’s matchup against the Eagles, Tom Brady ranked 28th in yards per attempt (4.0), 27th in passer rating (47.9), a 4:3 TD:INT ratio, and is only completing 34% of his passes when under pressure.”
Harassing Brady will be of critical importance, but only if the Cowboys can do it without sending too many blitzers. That’s because one of Brady’s strengths is utilizing screen passes to backs James White, Rex Burkhead, and Sony Michel… and unfortunately, stopping the screen attack hasn’t been something the Dallas defense has excelled at in 2019.
A comparison between two of the best runs in NFL history, the Dallas team that garnered the “America’s Team” moniker and the Bill Belichick version of the New England Patriots. There’s a trip down memory lane, an NFL record that’s on the brink, and a look at the animosity that the two teams’ success has wrought over the years.
Given the Patriots knack for shutting down the thing that’s working best for their opponent, it’s fair to say that keeping wideout Amari Cooper in check will be a priority for the New England secondary. That unit “has been outstanding, ” team staff writer David Helman notes, “anchored by strong play from Stephon Gilmore and Jason McCourty, and nabbing 19 interceptions on the year.”
Cooper himself, though, thinks that strategy is a double-edged sword. “We have a lot of guys that can make plays, so if they try to take me away and just focus on me, I don’t think that’d be the wisest approach,” he said. “You saw what Gallup and Cobb did last week, going for over 100 yards. If they do try to take me away, we have other guys that can make plays.”
Amari Cooper was asked if it helps him to have as capable a No. 2 WR as Michael Gallup to help him get favorable coverage.
Joey Ickes breaks down a favorite New England technique for negating an opponent’s primary receiver and offers a pair of strategies that Kellen Moore could use in response.
The entire article is worth the read, but one of those tactics has been screamed at the TV by every Cowboys fan out there at some point this season: let Dak Prescott use his running ability.
The second ploy involves a few names that the casual fan- and hopefully the Patriots- might not expect. And a former New England assistant confirms that this particular plan of attack hits one of Belichick’s personal bugaboos.
Ezekiel Elliott’s is among the running backs’ deals examined in this piece by ESPN’s Bill Barnwell, and the results aren’t pretty. Elliott is very good, but he hasn’t recaptured that dynamic play that he flashed throughout his rookie season when he took the league by storm. This year, the new rookie in town, Tony Pollard, has made the Cowboys more efficient when he spells Elliott. Caveat: sample size.
Elliott isn’t holding the Cowboys back by any means, but they have actually been slightly more efficient on offense with backup Tony Pollard on the field than him. Elliott has been on the field far more frequently, but the offense has generated 0.21 points of additional expected points per play with Pollard on the field and 0.17 points with Elliott in the lineup.
A team’s record has the capacity to make the general NFL fan either overestimate or underestimate a team on that fact alone. This is certainly the case with the Dallas Cowboys, whose offense is as good as any in the league. Offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and quarterback Dak Prescott have their half of the team rolling in terms of explosive plays and third down conversion. That and more in Bob Sturm’s weekly breakdown of the offense.
It takes two to tango, and in Week 11 the defense failed to hold up their end of the bargain. As explosive as the offense has been, the defense let a backup quarterback match them in that regard. That kind of performance is the exact opposite of the “bend but don’t break” approach that’ s been preached for years in Dallas.
The Cowboys dominate this list of upcoming free agents with five players listed on it. Two of them, Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper, are guaranteed to continue their careers in Dallas, but the others on the list have futures that are up in the air, including one of the newest members of the team.
Nobody knows how to push their brand quite like Jerry Jones. First, it was the “Zeke Who?” shirts that poked fun at the owner’s perceived slight of Ezekiel Elliott during the star running back’s holdout. Then it was the fun the team had with the black cat who appeared during the Week 9 win over the Giants, even putting him on the stadium’s video screen during player intros the following week.
Now it’s Cowboys Nation’s ongoing love affair with quarterback Dak Prescott’s pregame warmup routine.
The 100% cotton tee is available in all sizes for both men and women, and features the above graphic on the back. On the front, the Cowboys star and Prescott’s jersey number appear above the left breast. The shirt sells for $24.99.
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Tom Brady and the New England Patriots are 9-1, which is tied for the best record in football and good for the top spot in the AFC.
They’re coming off a big road win over a tough NFC team that beat them in the Super Bowl a few years ago.
And they’re hearing lots people on the outside voice concerns/doubts about an offense that has been struggling a bit as of late.
All of which means one thing – Brady and the Patriots are going to explode at home on Sunday and blow out a Dallas Cowboys team that is good, but far from great.
It’s just what they do, haven’t we all learned that by now?
The Patriots enter Sunday’s game 6.5 favorites, which makes sense when you see that Bill Belichick coaches the Patriots and Jason Garrett coaches the Cowboys. But the Cowboys are becoming the sexy pick by many to at least cover that spread.
Which has to be music to Brady’s ears.
Last year the GOAT used a somewhat fictional narrative that nobody believed in the Patriots to lead his team to a sixth Super Bowl title. Right now you have to believe he’s sitting at home with in his UGGs, carefully working on implanting a new chip on his shoulder.
It’s what he does and it’s worked every day since the Patriots used a sixth round pick on him way back in the 2000 NFL Draft.
Has the 42-year-old QB slowed down a little bit this year? Maybe, but he’s also working with a lot of moving pieces and new faces. He and Josh McDaniels have likely been spending many extra hours this week looking for ways to put up huge numbers on Sunday and shut everybody up yet again.
Making things easier for them, as has been the case all year, is that this team’s defense is absolutely stacked. And they also get to play their first game at Gillette Stadium since late October.
All I will say is this – if you’re gambling on Sunday, you might want to think twice about going against Brady and Belichick. This feels like another time that they remind everybody that this dynasty is far from dead.
And when they do, you shouldn’t be surprised.
We’ve seen this story a million times over the years.
This very time right here is what Brady lives for.
Thursday’s biggest winner: Russell Wilson.
Our Steven Ruiz broke out his updated NFL QB rankings and they’re a lot different from the preseason, as there are many new faces starting under center this late in the season. But there is a familiar face at the top of these very rankings – Russell. Wilson. See where your team’s QB ranks.
Quick hits: NHL stars try to name princesses… Let Giannis shoot the 3… Lizzo’s weird Vikings reference… And more!
Crosby
– Spend some of your Friday watching this fun video of NHL stars trying to name Disney princesses. Sidney Crosby steals the show.
The middle linebacker has an injury that will likely keep him out of Sunday’s action.
The Dallas Cowboys might have received their first bit of bad injury news this week. After what appears like a miraculous recovery for left guard Connor Williams, and a relatively-speaking clean bill of health for wideout Amari Cooper and safety Jeff Heath, the defense might be losing their man in the middle.
Middle linebacker Leighton Vander Esch, who has struggled with injuries over the last few weeks, will be out of the Week 12 contest against the New England Patriots with a back issue, and possibly longer after getting an MRI done Thursday.
Leighton Vander Esch will not play Sunday at New England because of a neck injury that has flared up and required an MRI, according to sources. Vander Esch will be examined in a few weeks to see if the inflammarion has calmed down. Sean Lee will move to… https://t.co/1p4YtZt9Z1
Vander Esch has already missed one game this season, Week 9 following the Cowboys’ bye week. That came after exiting Week 7’s tilt against the Philadelphia Eagles playing just 22 snaps.
Vander Esch briefly left the Week 10 tilt against the Vikings, but still played 74 of 76 defensive snaps. He played 63 of 65 snaps in the win over the Detroit Lions this past Sunday, but the injury flared up Thursday.
Concerns have surfaced about Cowboys LB Leighton Vander Esch, who's already missed one game in 2019 to a neck injury. He underwent an MRI today for further evaluation following a flare-up. He is not expected to play Sunday vs. Patriots, sources said.
He wasn’t even listed on Thursday’s injury report.
If Vander Esch misses the game, it will have a cascading impact on the Dallas linebacker rotation. Jaylon Smith would slide into the middle to replace him, and Sean Lee would take over as the primary Will backer.
Joe Thomas would come off the bench to play Sam, but he’s missed both practices this week with an illness and his status is unknown. Lee and Smith would be the nickel backers with Thomas spelling both at each position. Without Vander Esch and Thomas, that would likely lead to Justin March or Luke Gifford getting some snaps.
This isn’t the most ideal situation, as Vander Esch’s cover ability against crossing receivers and halfbacks is his strong suit, and perhaps Lee’s weakest during this point of his career.
The Patriots’ offense has struggled this year, but a loss like Vander Esch is at some levels a bit of a neutralizer.
The Cowboys have a tough task ahead of them in solving an all-time great defense. Here are a couple of tips they should act on.
The Dallas Cowboys’ offense, led by Dak Prescott, leading the league in total DVOA and top-3 in both passing and rushing DVOA, are quite simply, the most efficient and potent offense in the NFL. Their opponent on Sunday afternoon, the New England Patriots’ defense, lead the NFL in defensive DVOA, and have posted historically great performances all season. On Sunday in Foxboro, that unstoppable force, meets that immovable object, and the resulting collision is sure to be epic.
By now everyone knows Patriots head coach Bill Belichick will be looking for any and every possible edge he can create to give his team an advantage and an opportunity to win, and that one of his key tactics in doing so is to focus his entire scheme on taking away his opponent’s ability to use their primary play-maker on offense.
The Patriots primary coverage is Cover-1, which is man coverage on each eligible receiver, with a single safety in the deep middle of the field. Assuming a four-man rush, with five defenders covering eligible receivers, and a middle of the field player, that leaves one “extra” defender.
Belichick will deploy this defender in a number of ways to create confusion for his opponent and to give his defense flexibility.
One of his favorite ways to deploy this extra defender, to take away an opponent’s primary receiver, is what he calls “One-double”.
In this case, the extra defender is used to double cover the single wide receiver on the backside of the offenses 3×1 formation.
This shot shows the potential flexibility of “One double” where the call adjusts to double the No. 2 receiver on the trips side, by having the extra defender roll to the middle of the field so that the near side safety can bracket the ID’d receiver.
Any sane observer would expect Belichick to use this call to double cover Cowboys wide receiver Amari Cooper. But Belichick has another weapon at his disposal to try to slow down Cooper, and that is corner back Stephon Gilmore, who in his time with the Patriots has been perhaps the best man coverage corner in the NFL.
So while there are likely to be snaps where Cooper is double covered, there will be other snaps where Belichick plays Cover-1 and deploys that extra defender in other ways. He could be deployed as a “Rat” in the underneath areas, with orders to cut off any short crossing routes.
Or he could roll to the middle of the field and allow the near side safety to cover one of the trips side receivers while another defensive back blitzes into the back field.
Or he could come down and take responsibility for the running back out of the backfield, allowing the linebacker to attack the pocket.
When you combine the flexibility of their Cover-1 package, with the dominance they exhibit in Cover-0 the Patriots’ man coverage schemes are enough to stifle almost any offense.
So what can Kellen Moore, Dak Prescott and the Cowboys offense do to counter the schemes they’ll see from New England on Sunday?
The first key is the same as it should be against any man-coverage heavy team, use Prescott’s legs.
Prescott is extremely effective as a runner, and the Cowboys offense, and chances of winning improve when he uses his legs. Belichick coached teams have often struggled with quarterbacks who can run, likely as a result of the amount of man coverage they play, and their only loss of the season was to the most mobile quarterback in the league, Lamar Jackson, who ran 16 times for 61 yards and 2 touchdowns in the Ravens 37-20 win over the Patriots in Week 9.
Prescott is not likely to run 16 times, but if he is able to use his legs to convert a few key third downs, or is able to escape from pressure and turn a few negative plays into a positive ones, it could make the difference in a win or a loss for the Cowboys.
The second key, and one that will make the most difference for the offense, will be the play of the Cowboys secondary weapons. You can count on Belichick to have a plan for guys like Cooper, and Ezekiel Elliott, and even Michael Gallup, Randall Cobb and Jason Witten.
So for the Cowboys to win, they will need significant contributions from secondary weapons like Blake Jarwin and most importantly Tony Pollard.
“Bill never likes two running backs. He never liked playing against two skillful running backs. It’s a problem because he can’t really cover them with his different combination of coverages with the secondary. The linebackers have to get them. And you need good linebackers.”
The Patriots linebacking core, featuring Jamie Collins, Dont’a Hightower, and Kyle Van Noy are an elite and versatile group, but using two running backs, especially those with skill sets like Elliott and Pollard, provides the opportunity to create easy completions in the passing game.
In the Cowboys bye week, this space talked about Kellen Moore’s use of multiple running backs to attack defenses and how it would be a key in the second half. This game is the reason why.
If Moore can use Pollard and Elliott in a variety of ways to create issues for the Patriots coverage rules in their man coverage package, the two runners should be able to prosper on Sunday, and give the Cowboys a chance to come out of Foxboro with a W.
A look at the injuries along each level of the Dallas defense in 2019.
Time flies when you’re having fun, or when you’re making your way through an NFL season. It’s hard to believe it’s already Week 12 of the 2019 campaign when it seems like only yesterday the curtain was going up on the first act, but Week 1 is now a distant memory.
For the Dallas Cowboys, they are one of a handful of teams in the league this year yet to stake a claim to their true identity. We know the club is a powerful offensive juggernaut, but special teams seems to just be hoping they won’t get too embarrassed on any particular play and the defense hasn’t declared themselves a force.
They will need to find their identity to go on the necessary run to lead to a second-straight playoff appearance.
The unit has undergone a few changes from how things looked to start the year, and it’s interesting to see the differences in personnel.
Hybrid defensive lineman Tyrone Crawford started the year at right defensive end. Robert Quinn was suspended the first two games of the season due to a PED suspension the player believably claims was a pharmacy error. It was supposed to be his starting spot, but Crawford was going to be a major part of the DL rotation anyway.
However his hip continued to bother him after offseason surgery, and he was placed on injured reserve following Week 6 after missing two early games.
As Quinn obviously locked down the RE spot, the team was still hurting for contributions for Crawford’s other role, as a part-time three-technique. That led to a midseason trade for Michael Bennett. Bennett, despite committing five penalties in his first three games, has been a key contributor since coming over from the Patriots.
Antwaun Woods missed some time early with a knee injury, and that brought free agent Christian Covington further into the equation.
While the Dallas linebackers have pretty much enjoyed the rotation planned for them, with Sean Lee and Joe Thomas spelling their two premiere players Jaylon Smith and Leighton Vander Esch, performances overall have been a bit hampered.
Smith clearly looked hobbled through several early games where his pursuit and effort looked more reminiscent to 2017 than his breakout 2018. Vander Esch has dealt with neck and back injuries in recent weeks, hampering his play.
Lee is getting the lion’s share of the sub snaps, outsnapping Thomas 319 to 144, but an argument could be made their usage should flip.
The secondary has gone through some changes just like the DL.
Slot corner Anthony Brown had struggled with both injury and his performance this season. After a year-plus of calls from the Cowboys Wire peanut gallery and other parts of Cowboys Nation, Jourdan Lewis finally started getting regular playtime over the last couple of weeks.
Like Crawford, Brown is now done for the year with a triceps injury, meaning Dallas is down two starters from their opening week depth chart.
In addition, safety Jeff Heath has been hampered the last few games, leading to Darian Thompson to fill in. Heath wasn’t good, but the difference between he and Thompson has been severe.
Fortunately for Dallas, Heath has returned to full participation in practice this week, in preparation for the Patriots. Will it be enough?
The Cowboys currently rank 20th in defensive DVOA, a Football Outsiders’ metric that measures quality on a per-play basis with considerations for opponent quality and game situation. They finished 9th in 2018.
They’ll need to move back towards that level if they want to make noise down the stretch.
