Crunching stats: Eight things that show us the Cowboys are on the right

trajectory My Dallas Cowboys Womens Hoodie , things feel so much better after the Dallas Cowboys beat the New York Giants by a 20-13 score that made things look a lot closer than they actually were. It is a lot more fun to dive into the stats from the game to pull out some things that we can learn from. Stat sheet scouting is fraught with peril, but with a little judicious interpretation, we can still gather things to inform us going forward.6 for 6The Cowboys had six sacks of a shell shocked Eli Manning. (Isn’t it amazing how expressive his face is when things go awry?)Anyhow, as great as the game was for the pass rush (now second in the league in sacks), what is even better is how the sacks came about. Six different players got home on Manning, two defensive ends (Taco Charlton, DeMarcus Lawrence), two players from the interior of the line (Antwaun Woods, Tyrone Crawford), a linebacker (Damien Wilson), and a safety (Kavon Frazier). Having the sacks spread around is always good, much like getting the ball to a variety of receivers: The other team can’t focus on stopping your one big threat, because the threat comes from everywhere. And five of those sacks came when Dallas brought a blitz, which seems like a real departure from the way the team went about things before Kris Richard came to town. We may have seen the future, and it looks good.6 to 0In the loss to the Carolina Panthers, Dak Prescott took an Eli-level of abuse. Against the Giants, he was almost untouched unless he was running the ball for good yardage. New York could only get three hits on him the entire game when he was throwing. That was influenced a bit by the fact that the Giants don’t have near the front seven that the Panthers do, but it also shows that the Cowboys offensive line got a lot cleaned up in their week of prep for the second game. That will give Prescott a lot more confidence when he’s passing, and that is extremely helpful.64As in how many yards the deep throw to Tavon Austin covered for the touchdown just three plays into the game. It proved that Prescott could throw the ball deep, which affected the Giants’ defense for the rest of the game and opened up things for the team to amass 138 yards rushing. Once they got that big strike, the Cowboys were pretty much in control of things, even though the offense would regress until the final scoring drive to put things pretty much out of reach.6As in yards per play offensively for Dallas. (You may notice a theme to start things here.) As Bob Sturm noticed in his morning after piece at The Athletic:You may want to argue that the one long score pushed that average up, but that just means that it doesn’t matter how you get the yards. It is the efficiency that matters, and the Cowboys were much more efficient than New York, who only managed 3.8 yards per play, with much of their production coming after the Cowboys went into a prevent approach after building the lead to 20-3.2 for 2 twiceThat is from Brett Maher’s stat line, two field goals on two attempts and the same for extra points. After the miss in the season opener, it is no exaggeration that the fans breathed a collective sigh of relief at some real evidence that things will be OK without Dan Bailey (he is now going to play for the Minnesota Vikings in their indoor stadium, which should be good for him.)The new shape of the linebacking corpsHere are the key stats for the linebackers who saw action with the defense.Jaylon Smith: 10 tackles, one TFL, 84% of the defensive playsLeighton Vander Esch: 7 tackles, 41%Sean Lee: 5 tackles, 60%Damien Wilson: 3 tackles Womens Customized Dallas Cowboys Jerseys , 1 sack, 1 QB hit, 1 pass defended, 1 forced fumble, 25%Joe Thomas: 1 tackle, 21%There’s a lot to unpack here. First, while Lee had a bit of a bounce back after his rather poor showing in the first game, he was not the workhorse we have become used to. Part of that was due to what he describes as a cramp in his hamstring, which may be a conditioning issue after he had so little work in preseason, but it also may be an early signal that Smith is becoming the new standard bearer for the group - and that is still such a remarkable story after so many thought Dallas had wasted that second-round pick on him. Vander Esch is starting to show he was not a wasted pick in the first, either, with good production on fairly limited snaps. It can still be argued that he was still a bit too costly in terms of draft capital, but he now has a definite “future starter” look to him. And Wilson, who also performed poorly in Carolina, had the biggest rebound of all, with a ridiculously productive day while only being on the field a quarter of the time. The defense is looking very solid from front to back.Speaking of the defense’s other unitsThe secondary may be a bit shallow, but they have come through big. After keeping Cam Newton from any long completions, they largely shut down Odell Beckham Jr. and didn’t let Saquon Barkley or Evan Engram do any significant damage either. Chidobe Awuzie and Kavon Frazier were on the field for all the defensive play, Byron Jones and Jeff Heath each only missed one after each was shaken up a bit, and Anthony Brown saw the field for 74% of the plays as the nickle corner. These guys are balling.And the defensive line is, as well. In addition to the three sacks, they amassed 11 tackles, 6 TFLs, 6 QB hits, and Charlton’s fumble recovery. But not all is perfectThere is still room for improvement. Dallas only converted 3 of 10 third downs. They had six penalties for 47 yards, which wiped out a couple of third down conversions. And Barkley evaded the first man to get to him on almost every play, which is partly a testament to his elusiveness with his perfectly timed spin moves, but also something that needs improvement. After the first couple of series, Prescott made very few attempts to go deep with his passes. And Elliott, while effective, only had 78 yards rushing, something the team really needs him to improve.Still, overall www.cowboyscheapauthenticstore.com , the stats bear out that this was a convincing and badly-needed win. And it brings us to the most important stat of all:1-1, and tied for the NFC East lead.Looking at Dak Prescott’s first 37 starts versus Tony Romo’s last 37 is very interesting People are always going to compare Dak Prescott to Tony Romo. It’s the way sports work.The 2016 debate of Dak or Tony will live in infamy as one of the more spirited ones to ever grace the hallowed halls of BTB. Thankfully we’re past that, but with Dak playing poorly to begin the season (and dipping during a chunk of last year) many have been yearning for the days of Niner once more. It’s hard to prove either side when you have a debate like this. Times change, teams change, rules change, but time is so important that it must be said once more that times change. We can never truly compare person A to person B because we can’t simulate the exact same environment for both experiments. People try to compare though, and they do so in clever ways. People look at common denominators like their home records, road records, and records during certain stretch of time like their first 16 games for example. As we’re looking at 100% of Dak Prescott’s body of work here it’s really not fair to compare him to all of Romo’s because that one is larger.Let’s take a look at Dak Prescott versus the final version of Tony RomoESPN’s Mike Sando did something a bit interesting on Tuesday night and compared all of 37 of Prescott’s starts so far to Romo’s final 37 ones. Give it a gander for yourself.Romo’s final 37 starts begins with the December 16th, 2012 game where he helped propel the Cowboys to an overtime win over the Pittsburgh Steelers (the Brandon Carr interception). It encompasses the final three games of that season, 15 games in 2013, 15 games in 2014 (what is agreed to be his finest season), and the four games he started in 2015 (although he didn’t finish two of them). Obviously Tony Romo threw more, explaining more yards and touchdownsPhoto by Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesYou’ll remember that Dallas was throwing the ball like crazy in 2012 and 2013 (Romo threw it 122 times just in those final three games of the former season) and that it wasn’t until 2014 when they landed on the run-heavy mentality that they know and employ today. Obviously that’s factored in with Romo to a degree.Romo trounces Prescott when it comes to attempts, completions, yards, and attempts. Interestingly Dak holds his own when it comes to yards per attempt, yards per completion, and even completion percentage. What’s worrisome is that Prescott has only eight less interceptions than Romo despite almost 100 less attempts, but obviously he’s been bad as of late. This feels obvious, but we need to qualify this whole discussion with the fact that part of the time included here is the 2014 season which, again, is generally agreed upon to be the finest of Romo’s career. We’re not looking to prove a point necessarily, but it’s important context that Romo is wearing his finest suit in this sample size.Dak Prescott has won just as much, he runs far more (duh), and he even has a higher QBRPhoto by Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesThere’s no denying that Dak Prescott is a far more lethal weapon on the ground that Tony Romo. He has over 600 more yards on the ground and double digits there where Romo doesn’t have any. This part can’t be debated.The Cowboys obviously don’t ask Prescott to do as much through the air as they did Romo which is evidenced in the number of passing attempts that he has. The run-heavy mindset was developed over the course of Romo’s career whereas Dak was born in it. The offensive focus throughout Prescott’s entire tenure has been Ezekiel Elliott save for the six-game stretch when he was suspended in 2017.What’s most important to note here is that Dak Prescott is equal in the number that matters - wins. Winning is the name of the game in football and if you do that then everything else is all the more forgivable. This is partly why Dak has been under such scrutiny as of late... because the Cowboys aren’t winning.It’s an interesting debate and it always will beObviously Prescott got off to an insane start for his Cowboys career with 13 wins as a rookie. That’s almost a third of the wins he has at this point, and he’s only five games into his third season. What Romo did throughout his career will always be criminally underrated, but the reality is that we may romanticize it a bit when we look back and only remember the good.Prescott has an opportunity to change the narrative this Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars. If he’s able to have success against the ferocious defense that they have, including the player in Jalen Ramsey that the Cowboys selected Zeke over, people will inch their way closer to him. Again, that’s just the way sports goes. Coincidentally as Dak tries to right himself in the eyes of Cowboys fans all over the world there will be one man watching from up above telling us all about it. His name is Tony Romo, and he’ll be on call this Sunday at AT&T Stadium.