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I was thinking the other day about what player in the division has the most pressure on him. You immediate think of Donovan and Eli Manning for the Eagles and Giants. I honestly couldn't think of a Redskin with a ton of pressure on him. The obvious guess is Jason Campbell, but because the team tried to replace him this year it is almost as if he can fail and not get blamed (by other teams). They'd see that the Skins weren't committed to him.
The Cowboys are the team with a ton of pressure on them. Conventional wisdom is that Tony Romo is the key guy. I'm wondering if WR Roy Williams isn't even in a worse situation. Romo has carried that team on his back at times. He's won games with late games heroics. He's a career overachiever that other teams would kill to get their hands on.
Roy is basically the opposite. He was a Top 15 pick by the Lions and has been a career underachiever, save for the 2006 season. The Cowboys then traded 1st and 3rd round picks for him. They booted Terrell Owens and gave his job to Williams. The Cowboys are expecting Roy to go from underachiever to key player on a winning team. Heck, a team that has Super Bowl aspirations.
Romo still has Jason Witten to throw the ball to. He has young TE Martellus Bennett to throw to. Patrick Crayton should be even better. There are 3 good RBs. I fully expect Romo to post good numbers. Williams is the guy who will be judged against TO's numbers.
Check out Roy's 2 best seasons:
2006 - 82 - 1310 - 7
2007 - 64 - 838 - 5
TO's worst 2 seasons as a full time player:
1997 - 60 - 936 - 8
1998 - 67 - 1097 - 14
Here are his 3 years in Dallas:
2006 - 85 - 1180 - 13
2007 - 81 - 1355 - 15
2008 - 69 - 1052 - 10
Do you see the picture that is being painted? TO at his worst is about the same as Roy at his best. The easy thing to say is that TO has played with better QBs and on better teams in his career. That is partially true. However, doesn't TO get credit for helping a no-name guy like Jeff Garcia blossom into a star QB? Owens made his QBs better. He had a definite impact on McNabb. Roy hasn't made his QBs better. If anything, he may have made them worse.
And how is Roy going to respond to the pressure of being a Dallas Cowboy? He never had pressure in Detroit. All he had to do was catch his 60 passes and make vaction plans for January. The first key drop in Dallas will cause a major firestorm.
As always, things in Big D ought to be interesting this Fall. I'm hoping for the best...and by that I mean worst, of course.
RE: Alex Lewis
The Lions cut him because they are trying to rebuild that organization. He was going to make more money than they wanted to play a role player. They've got a nice collection of LBs right now, mostly young.
RE: Avant
I probably need to write a long post on him at some point. He really is perfect for the slot. His 3rd down catches in the playoffs had a huge impact in our 2 wins.
RE: Reggie
I'm not sure what to think of Reggie Brown and us. I think his primary value for us is as an insurance policy. He would go from Inactive to Starter. Weird, huh? I'm projecting DeSean and KC as the starters. Avant is the slot. Hank and Maclin are role players that get mixed in on the outside. That is 5 WRs. Would we keep 6 active on gameday? Not likely. That's the problem for Reggie.
Also, remember that the offense got in a nice rhythm when we dialed back some of the WR packages and focused more on the starters, with role players mixed in.
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
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5 comments:
Would you compare Detroit cutting Alex Lewis to the Eagles cutting Takeo Spikes? I think it might be a comparable analogy for those trying to understand why a player of Lewis's capability was cut by a terrible team like the Lions.
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You question whether there's room on the roster for 6 receivers in order to keep Reggie Brown. I wonder what becomes of Brandon Gibson. Reggie obviously has the edge over Gibson now, but what happens if Gibson is a pre-season star? The only thing ever said about him is that he's "ideal" for the West Coast Offense.
While it may still be true we don't have a "#1 WR" (whatever that means, anyway), it's strange to think we have a logjam at the WR position for a change.
Frankly Reggie Brown has a habit of coming up small when we need him to come up big. His inconsistency bugs the heck out of me as well. We already have an inconsistent quarterback, we don't really need an inconsistent WR to go along with him.
Avant has made some tremendous plays for us and he's a 3rd down machine. I got nothin but love for the guy, and I think a little piece of my soul dies every time some tater hates on him. Actually I think a little piece of my soul dies every time a tater says anything at all.
We have an inconsistent QB?
Donovan will go through periods in games and periods in seasons where instead of looking like the all-pro guy he looks like a wet behind the ears recruit out of syracuse. He goes into a "funk" so to speak, kind of like the Bengals/Ravens period of this past season, though that was the most extreme one I think I've ever seen. There will be games where he'll have periods of successive incomplete passes, some of which aren't even close.
If Donovan could eliminate those times when he just looks out of sorts he would truly be a top 3 kind of guy in this league.
Hell sometimes from throw to throw you get a different Donovan, he'll make a beautiful touch pass 20 yards downfield, and then follow it up with a wormburner to westbrook standing 10 yards away. I'm not suggesting that every quarterback is on the money all the time, I'm simply saying that I've never seen another seasoned vet like Donnie make so many ugly throws at times, like not even remotely close throws.
romo blows carried that team on his back? are you kidding me?
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