Two teams from Bye Week, and both must win: The Dallas Cowboys (3-4) receive the Tennessee Titans (3-4) for the Week 9 final – can the cowboys report back at home in the playoff race? What influence does newcomer Amari Cooper have? Or is there finally an improved titanium open? There will be discussions at the SPOX Coin Toss, the game can be seen live on DAZN from 2.15 a.m. on Tuesday night!
mySPOX-user Red_7: Dallas comes out of Bye Week quite changed, because the defeat in Washington was followed by several exclamation marks in the free week: First Receiver Amari Cooper was fetched from Oakland for a first-round pick, as an addition last week Offensive Line Coach Paul Alexander was fired. It takes over ex-RT Marc Colombo with the support of Hudson Houck as supervisor.
For me this brings several conclusions: With the Amari-Cooper-Trade you admit to yourself that you overestimated the Wide-Receiver-Corps before the season and retrofit very expensive. Even though the trade looks like a typical Jerry is pulling a trigger, it looks like Stephen Jones negotiated the deal. They wanted Cooper in Bye Week to acclimatize him in Dallas. The hurry and the fact that the Eagles were also in the draw with a second round pick may not have driven down the costs.
Besides, you don’t give up the season yet. You are two defeats behind the Redskins and one defeat behind the Eagles, but no team in the NFC East looks particularly stable. If you get the team on the track, the playoffs aren’t unrealistic; but the little horse shouldn’t shy away (like in Washington). If only there weren’t the “if”…
Another finding: Dak Prescott is still being “evaluated”. His rookie contract runs until the end of the 2019 season and you don’t have a 5th year option (because you didn’t draw on the first lap). I’m not sure yet that Dak has dispelled all doubts in “The Star” regarding his future.
Was it Alexander, Dak’s lack of first leg stations, or the absence of the long-time injured Travis Frederick Center that caused the passport protection to be so dismantled this year? The game will provide a first indicator.
Now, with the Titans, a former rival (until 1996 the Titans were still based in Houston under the name Oilers) comes to Dallas. From my point of view a must-win game before travelling to Philly and Atlanta. It is important that the offense finds its way back into its scheme: Establish a running game, then play the passing game with bootlegs and play action.
It will be exciting to watch how the Titans raise the passport defense. Do you double-cover Cooper, or do you double-cover slot-receiver Cole Beasley as before and take a look at the rest?
At Dallas’ Defense it will be interesting to see how to get Dion Lewis under control and whether you can exert enough pressure (ergo points) early enough to drive the Titans out of the rampant running game. Personally, I have some concerns that the Titans are taking advantage of the missing container in a similar way to the Redskins last week. The defensive ends are often sent to an inside stunt and the gap-responsibility is too often left behind.
Adrian Franke (SPOX): I must admit openly: The Titans-Offense is for me probably the biggest disappointment of this season so far. Tennessee has no explosiveness at all in its own offense, no team can achieve fewer big plays in passing. This is partly due to the fact that Tennessee has no speed in the receiving corps, but also to Marcus Mariota.
Under the new offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur – who learned under Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay and accordingly brings along a play action spread offense that suits Mariota – he should finally take the next step. The reality so far, however, is quite different: Mariota is one of the most efficient play-action quarterbacks of the NFL, but otherwise it doesn’t work out well enough. As a passer he is insanely inconstant and when the line wobbles, it quickly becomes tight.
Hope for Tennessee? Against the Chargers before the Bye-Week positive tendencies were finally recognizable. Mariota had some good runs, including good scrambles. His Intermediate-Passing-Game was almost flawless, in addition Tennessee acted much more flexible in the short pass game, with a powerful dose of Dion Lewis finally also through the air.
That’s what I want to see against Dallas, too. The Cowboys are schematically not a very complex defense, but have the individual potential to cause Tennessee’s Offensive Line all sorts of difficulties. The Titans will not simply beat Dallas, who also has one of the best cornerbacks of the season so far in Byron Jones, with the standard pocket passing game, but the individual matchups are far too bad from Titans point of view. LaFleur needs to be creative.
I’d start with three elements: the Play Action Game, which is the best aspect of Tennessee’s Passing Offense anyway, a much more extensive screen pass plan, and Option Plays for Mariota. He has had far too few Designed Runs in the current season so far, over the last three games there have been a total of two. The rest came through Scrambles. The Titans must use Mariota better as a runner, because he is not good enough as a pure passer.
And then, of course, there’s the other side of the ball, and when we talk about passing offenses that lack explosiveness, then Dallas is not far from the focus of the discussion. Yes, the cowboys now have Amari Cooper, but I remain skeptical – Dallas needed a dominant outside-receiver, with Cooper my first thought is that they simply improved their number-2-receiver spot.
Tennessee in the person of Malcolm Butler has been frighteningly vulnerable so far, but can Dallas take advantage of that at all? Or maybe we see a game in which the Titans front of the Cowboys line can cause problems and Dak Prescott also acts inefficiently in passing and is possibly forced to hold the ball (too) long.
Because, and this much is clear: Even if the Passing Game of the cowboys came along recently slightly improved – Dallas is offensively still strongly dependent on the fact that Ezekiel Elliott and the Run Game work. If Tennessee – which has a top 10, top 12 run defense after all – can seriously stop Dallas here, then we’ll probably see a low scoring game. In which the Titans could finally convince again with some offensive adaptations.