Cowboys News is Redskins News

So obviously this is a Redskins Blog, but let’s face it, there are a bunch of us out there who wouldn’t mind going 2-14 if the Cowboys go 0-16 and our two wins were against them. With that in mind a brief Cowboys story.

I love these stories, because they’re so stupid. I know that NFL beat writers have to make a living and sometimes there isn’t much to write about. Heck, let’s face it, would I be posting this story if there was anything going on this weekend?

But they are still ridiculous. Every year a team either has a “new attitude” because of a new coach or a new system. Or some player has come into camp “in the best shape of his life.” And, of course, it doesn’t take more than a couple of regular season games to realize that the new attitude doesn’t make up for the lack of talent, the new system is really the old system but instead of calling the formation X-ray they now call it Zulu, and that player in the best shape of his life still pulled his hamstring making a tackle.

So why bother linking to this story about the Cowboy’s defense? Mostly to mock the Cowboys. But let’s look at it more closely. The main thrust of the article is that because the Cowboys signed Ken Hamlin, they don’t need to use Roy Williams as a deep safety and he can play the run more. Is this a good idea?

Anyone who watched the Cowboys already knows Roy puts his nose in the running game anyway and despite this he only had 63 tackles. Compare with Sean Taylor (who also didn’t have a center fielder type safety) who had 111 or Stuart Schweigert who had 107. Frankly, I had never even heard of Schweigert who plays for the Raiders until I sorted NFL players by tackles.

And consider this–the Seattle Seahawks defense was 24th in passing TD’s allowed in the NFL last year. If Ken Hamlin was that great at playing center field would they have been that bad?

To sum up–the new Cowboys coach has decided to take a ball hawking safety who is an average tackler (though admittedly a hard hitter) and make him an extra LB because he signed an average deep safety with 8 career interceptions. Keep up the good work, Wade. We’ll see you in November!

DW