The game was blacked out for me, and attempting to watch the game online didn’t cut it for me. After I saw the game replay on NFL Network I found myself not to concerned. Some of the comments during the game had me concerned, but after watching the game myself I knew it wasn’t as bad as I thought.
The main beef was the penalties, yes we had a lot of penalties, but I would say at least half of those were total BS nit-picky calls. Sometimes I think the refs are also getting their practice in by being extra picky, so they can get their verbiage down pat. There were some stupid calls out there. Of course the other half were legit and that can be attributed to discipline. Whether you agree with the penalty calls or not, the Cowboys have racked up alot of penalty yards. These are mistakes, and Wade said himself that the mistakes were on him and effort was on the team. We can’t go into the season with these types of penalty riddled games.
As for the gameplay, the Bronco’s 1st teamers manhandled our 1st team defenders, bigtime. Besides Zach Thomas, there was a lot of sloppy tackling and inability to wrap up players. The secondary had some struggles tackling after the catch as well, just plain sloppy.
Special Teams -Â the special teams looked somewhat better, but I want to see more consistency. There were some seams in the return game for Adam Jones and Isaiah Stanback.
Mike Jenkins – the Broncos went after Jenkins and were able to capitalize several times. Brandon Marshall scored a easy TD on Jenkins. Overall Jenkins didn’t have such a good night in my opinion.
Bobby Carpenter – missed a couple of tackles, Andre Hall ran right through him early in the game, he just didn’t make any plays that stood out. He, along with the rest of the defense didn’t seem to have an answer to the zone blocking early on. They’ll get another shot next week when we play the Texans, they use the same style.
Adam Jones – looked better in this game, looks like his timing is getting better, he had several near INTs in this game, coupled with his nice punt return. Its just a matter of time before Jones is back and free from the rust. He looked good.
Zach Thomas – this dude is bad to the bone. Thomas has the type of intensity we need at LB, bigtime upgrade over Akin Ayodele.
Felix Jones – when you watch Jones you can “feel” something is going to happen, as in big yardage or a breakaway homerun TD. I’m excited about this rookie. When we have Barber and Jones back there in the backfield, watch out. Defenses will have to pick their poison. Jones has really good hands, and has been money in the passing game. The cat is out the bag.
Tashard Choice – they didn’t run him much tonight, he had negative yardage on 2 plays, and had one catch for 9 yards; however, he did have a nice punt block. Very good. Not too bad for a short night of work.
Danny Amendola – wasn’t much of a factor, he had 1 catch for 12 yards and 1 punt return for 9 yards. There was that INT that Bartel threw at the end of the game, its questionable whether or not Amendola has some fault since the pass came his way he inadvertedly faked out Bartel and then the INT happened. I’m not sure that was his fault, but its there for the coaches to look at.
Martellus Bennett – gotta give him some props. He didn’t do anything that deserved any lashings, he had a nice catch and bulldozed for a few yards and covered up the ball too. Looks to be taking the coaching from John Garrett after all. Now, I’m not completely sold, he’s a rookie and needs to keep it going. I don’t want to see him show up at the Texans game and screw up. Keep it going.
Brad Johnson – he had some better blocking in this game, and he looked better. Let’s just hope the line keeps protecting Romo most of all. I don’t feel comfortable with Johnson for any stretch during the season.
Alan Ball – I don’t think he makes the team, he’s not playing well at all. He’s definitely looking like a late round pick, he had a rough night in coverage.
Dreadlocks – either I missed something, but looks like there’s some sort of mandate on the dreadlocks for players. Over the last few games, I’ve noticed the players donning pony tails to hold there’s dreadlocks together. Not just Cowboys players but other players in the league.
Well that’s it. Its the preseason, we’re always going to have work to do, but we can’t give away our new plays, and we can’t reveal our full arsenal. I’m not too worried; however, I would like to see more intensity and swagger from other players, we just don’t have enough of that.
The Texans are next, and expect another Texas sized brawl. The Texans are no longer the caretakers of the NFL’s basement, these guys are turning the ship around. I’ll take a closer look later in the week. Its going to be a tough game.
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