Sorry for the lack of posting, life has been extremely busy recently. Hopefully sometime tonight I can get the film reviews up.

Here’s some stuff to read.

With Miles Austin injured, there’s a ton of talk about the other WR’s and who will step up. DallasCowboys.com takes a look at the full-picture, the DMN focuses more on Sam Hurd, and the Star-T examines just how important a third option in the receiving game is for a team. 

Timmy Mac gives some love to Tashard Choice, representing the ATL and GT!

John Beck?

Hat tip Deke.

The question of the day coming from Wade Phillips press conference: Should we use Felix Jones as our main guy on kick returns? Phillips gave no clear indication if that will happen this year and made note that kickoff return is a high-injury phase of the game and that El Gato is becoming integral to this offense.

So what say you BTB?

Hey,

Just letting you guys know I'll be on ESPN Austin 1530 AM for The Drive with Geoff Ketchum & Chad Hastings. I should go on around 6 PM EST, listen online if you can.

That is all, carry on.

Here are my highlights from the Wade Phillips press conference.

Injury Situation:

Miles Austin - sprained knee 4-6 weeks
Kevin Burnett - surgery went fine, expect him for opening game
Terence Newman - may practice this week, maybe play last preseason game
Anthony Spencer - should be back this week
Justin Rogers - Grade I shoulder sprain which is minor OK for this game
Ronnie Cruz - similar injury to Rogers
Chris Canty - right hip contusion, no problem
Marcus Dixon - back problems, don’t know if he’ll practice
Quincy Butler - maybe this week or next.

Mental mistakes like missed assignments and some of the penalties were the big problem in the Denver game. A little unsure about some of the calls and wants to talk to the NFL about the tripping call and how late is a late hit to get clarification. We don’t tackle in practice and you can only see that in game and we need work on that so we’re playing the starters a lot more this week, also want to get the timing in passing game.

Special teams played well because they hardly made any mental mistakes. Felix Jones may play some kickoff return in the next games but there are several guys who can do it, Isaiah Stanback continues look good, Orlando Scandrick looked good, Pacman wants to do everything, as does Felix. Felix is becoming integral to the offense, too. Makes us a little reluctant to play Felix on that team because there are more injuries on kickoffs than other phases of the game.

We have enough WR’s without Miles to be a strong group.

It’s possible the starters will play three quarters Friday.

Miles Austin has come a long way, we saw the potential, he’s reaching it now, played well the last two games. His routes are better, his confidence up, he made two contested balls look like easy catches in the game, he’s learning how to do that.

We didn’t double #15 (Brandon Marshall), we would have, they threw it to him in practice all week, but we played our base stuff and got that down. We also played a lot of people, we’ll hone it down this week to guys we’re counting on.

The blocked punt was a great play by Tashard Choice, he was the hold-up guy and could press the punt if he thinks he can block it, that shows he has moxie, we had two spies who didn’t wait to see the ball punted, they left early. That won’t happen again. Choice keeps improving on special teams. He contributed more on ko coverage, ko return and punt return. He’s a young player who wants to do it.

Isaiah Stanback will get a lot of work, he’s doing better and better, he’ll get his opportunity. He ran good routes in the game, he’s a strong runner after the catch. It’s about confidence with him, we’re looking at him as one of our WR’s and he’ll get more playing time.

Adam Jones played a bit on Saturday, he’s started to get his timing back. Adam almost had a pick six, he’ll get one this year and had a great punt return. He asked me to do punt or kickoff return last week, I said no wait until we get home, he came back to me and said “coach just give me a kickoff or punt return.” I said OK if they were backed up and we could return it. He might not have known about the spiking rule, but he does now, it won’t happen again.

Bradie James played alright in the nickel role of Burnett, he’s been playing consistently in preseason, he’s in a groove, he had 5 tackles and a knock down on a third down pass. We’ll do more things on defense than what we did, we we’re vanilla on third downs, ran the same coverages. With Burnett out, Bradie will play in that role but Bobby can play it and Zach can play it, too.

Roy Williams has had a good camp, he hasn’t played a whole lot yet, he needs more playing time like a lot of the starters. His coverage has been good

All the press reports on Miles Austin say 4-6 weeks on his sprained MCL. That’s a drag, but I’m holding out hope for more like 2-3 weeks.  False hope maybe, but until I hear it from Wade Phillips or Miles Austin, I’ll hold out hope. Meantime, the door is open for Isaiah Stanback, Danny Amendola or one of the other receivers to make their move. Bobby Carpenter didn't grab his opportunity against the Broncos with Kevin Burnett out, he turned in a very mediocre performance. He needs to be better than he was on Saturday if he wants to convince the Cowboys coaches that he deserves to play. Don’t waste your good preseason now, Captain Caveman.

Everything you ever wanted to know about El Gato, and more. 

The Cowboys are tired after training camp and glad to be going home. 

"I feel like I’ve been on tour with a rock band. I feel like I’ve been on tour with a famous singer," Cowboys defensive tackle Tank Johnson said. "I’m ready to get home, get back to my bed and kinda get into a routine of the season. This hasn’t been easy. Playing, traveling, unnecessary traveling, but this is how it goes."

Could that be part of the reason for poor play on Saturday? Probably not, but the Cowboys recognize they can’t play as sloppy as they’ve been doing in the regular season.

"Mistakes and penalties," Cowboys defensive lineman Jay Ratliff said after the Cowboys’ 23-13 loss in Denver. "We are beating ourselves. The main thing is to not hurt yourself. I don’t think it’s a lack of concentration, but we need to be aware of what we’re doing. We need to eliminate mental errors and stupid penalties."

Leave it to Crayton to say the true, but inappropriate thing.

"I think [lead official] Mr. [Ed] Hochuli likes to get himself on TV a little bit. I know he likes to work out, but c’mon, Mr. Hochuli," Crayton said. "We don’t gotta see that much of you."

No need to rile up the refs this early, Crayton.

Coverage of the game from a Denver perspective. That Eddie Royal was something. 

The NFL Network is replaying the Cowboys @ Broncos game at 4 PM EST.

This is an open thread for chat while watching the game.

The BTB fantasy football league shook out like this:

Grizz, TH, Brandon, Terry, scottmaui and philosopher were already in the league. The six spots from the random drawing went to tasan, BigRigga31, The Jeezus, bryangene, grapejoos and jascksastud.

More guys were interested in playing so if anybody wants to create a couple of other leagues on FleaFlicker, I’ll cover them on the blog too, but we’ll need someone to step up as commissioners and create the leagues. If someone wants to do that and if enough guys are interested, respond in this open thread. Also, I think we had at least one other BTB fantasy league brewing, if whoever is running that let’s me know about it, I’ll cover it, too. And I guess that goes for any BTB-member league going.

We have this little software program that calculates stats on open threads. So I used it on the three Broncos game open threads below.

Here are the top-5 BTB’ers in number of comments on the open threads:
Bigrigga31 – 114 comments
Brandon W - 101
scottmaui - 86
Wmillion - 76
Dave Halprin (Grizz) - 57

We had 33 people participate, which is actually kind of low. Hope to see more next game.  

Click below to see everybody’s stats.

Continue reading this post »

Time to crank up the quote machine for a segment of “What They’re Saying.”

Miles Austin was having a beautiful preseason, until he covered a kickoff last night right after scoring a TD. Austin suffered a sprained right MCL on the play and will miss at least the rest of the preseason and is very questionable to play in the regular season opener. Mickey Spags says this in his morning article: 

And while the news on wide receiver Miles Austin isn't likely to be year-ending, chances are Sunday's MRI is going to reveal a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee, which likely will keep the greatly-improving third-year player out four to six weeks.

Uggh. He didn’t need this, right as he was putting it all together and on the verge of getting serious playing time. Austin says:

"I had expectations for myself. It's early and any injury I'm going to be upset or down. I'm just going to get back in rehab and see what the problem is and try to fix it."

Let’s hope for a speedy return from our speedy receiver. Other injuries included Chris Canty’s hip that appears to be nothing, Deon Anderson returned to the game after getting his bell rung, Ronnie Cruz dislocated his shoulder and Justin Rogers also sprained his shoulder.

Brad Johnson had a better game. And Mickey Spags goes to great lengths to let you know that. His love-letter includes Brad saying:

"I've fought (the perceptions) from middle school to high school and for 17 years in the NFL," Johnson said. "I'm used to it. Nothing I do is ever good enough, but I sleep well at night because I know how hard I work, and that's good enough for me."

Johnson doesn’t even pretend he’s not a bus driver.

"What you hope for," Johnson said of when the backup comes in, "is you hope to stay away from penalties, manage the huddle, manage the game and make the plays you're supposed to make."

I feel better about Johnson after that performance but I’m still not settled.

The Dallas Cowboys be lovin’ them some penalties in the preseason. Romo explains how bad they can be for a team.

"It's like a turnover," quarterback Tony Romo said. "When we get a penalty on third-and-long after we've stopped them, it's like we forced a punt and just threw a pick. It's the same thing. We have to stop that. Eventually, penalties catch up with you."

Preach on, brother.

Romo also puts forth the Vanilla Theory as a good reason not to worry. 

"It comes down to executing. If they man up or play zone, we still have to make plays," Romo said. "We still have a vanilla offense and don't want to show our hand this time of year."

But man, if Romo could had just hit Sam Hurd on that bomb.

Last year we blitzed the bejeezus out of Denver and that led to some vocal complaints by them after the preseason game. Apparently this year, we decided to play vanilla on defense, too.

"I talked to [Brian Stewart] and last year we got after those guys and blitzed them a lot," linebacker Bradie James said. "He said that he got some E-mail from some offensive coordinators saying this must be you're first time being an defensive coordinator because you broke the etiquette of just playing vanilla. We did a lot of base stuff. I would have loved to really get after them. But we played what was called."

Martellus Bennett made a nice catch and run and a special teams tackle. He’s happy.

"How do you like me now?" Bennett joked in the locker room afterward. "I told people I was going to beast out."

Hard Knocks, here we come.

So while the game wasn’t all bad, it was definitely a poor showing overall. There is a lot of room for improvement and the Miles Austin injury is a real drag. But, the show goes on and Romo is ready to work.

"We definitely have things to work on," quarterback Tony Romo said, "but there is still some time for that."

Denver 23 – Dallas 13.

Here’s the good news – it was the starters that stunk it up this week (with a few exceptions like Zach Thomas). Yup, I’m taking that as good news, because I’m pretty sure that they won’t be that bad in the regular season. Give the Broncos credit too, Cutler played well, their receivers were killing our secondary and their line protected the QB. They looked good. But I’m sure our starters will play better by the real season and we got improved play out of the backups this week.

Miles Austin really helped himself again until he sprained his knee. Let’s hope that’s not serious because Austin is starting to show real promise. He made two great catches, one for a TD. Brad Johnson looked a little better behind the Cowboys starting line and the second unit did a better job of protecting him. The two passes to Austin though felt more like Austin did all the work and Brad just threw them up there. Still, he had a few other nice plays and gave me a little more confidence. Richard Bartel also looked better; he might have led us to a game-tying TD if his receiver hadn’t betrayed him. The game seem to slow down a little for Bartel this week, it looked like he was more in command of his offense.

The big surprise was the improved play of the special teams. Tashard Choice blocked a punt, Isaiah Stanback and Orlando Scandrick had a couple of good kick returns. Adam Jones looked good on his punt return. The coverage teams were much better, especially the punt team. Nick Folk and Mat McBriar kicked well. At least we came out of the game feeling a lot better about special teams.

On the other side of the ledger, the penalties are ridiculous. We killed ourselves with penalties again. We are playing undisciplined, sloppy football out there. Wade Phillips needs to get it through their heads that penalties are a sure way to self-destruct. We saw plenty of examples of that on the field tonight.

I couldn’t watch it on the big-screen or with Tivo replays, and the numbers for the players weren’t always clear on my little video, so I can’t go into deep analysis. But I can say we got very little pass rush early and our first team secondary didn’t play that well. In general, the defense of the first quarter was abysmal. Here are some other quick observations

Looking good:
Miles Austin, let’s pray his knee isn’t seriously injured.
Adam Jones, had a good night tackling plus a punt return.
Orlando Scandrick, nice hit and a couple of other good plays.
Rodney Hannah put on a little show for a couple of drives.
Evan Oglesby when playing against the backups. Not so much against the starters, but he’s a backup anyway.

Tough day at the office:
First team defense.
Team discipline.

Quick hits:
Nice run after catch by Felix Jones.
Tashard Choice blocking a punt.
Keon Lattimore with a couple of good runs.
Danny Amendola got his first catch.
Todd Lowber got his first catch for 39 yards.

Box Score.

New open thread for the Cowboys/Broncos game.

New open thread for the Cowboys/Broncos game.

Open Thread

 Dallas Cowboys @ Denver Broncos

Saturday, Aug 16th, 2008

9:00 PM EST, TV: None (NFLN Replay @ 4:00 PM EST Sunday)

Invesco Field at Mile High – Denver, CO

Listen online try The Ticket or WOAI.

This is an open thread for game chat.

 Weather Forecast

T-Storms (70%)

59 degrees

Wind ESE 4 mph