Cowboys Corner

A couple of days ago I stayed awake for the whole night watching my beloved Dallas Cowboys host the Atlanta Falcons. While they played well in the 37-21 win, there are a couple of things I would like to talk about.

Small School, Big Players - A couple of years ago, a young undrafted Cowboy coming from a small school made his mark by outperforming the incumbents when the opportunity came. While that path was treaded by Tony Romo, it is now followed by wide receiver Miles Austin. Following the injury to starting receiver Roy Williams, Austin started the last two games and had 16 catches, 421 yards and 4 TDs. While many believe that Austin should start opposing Williams now that the latter has returned from injury, in my humblest of opinion, Austin should start in place of Williams, who is having lots of troubles catching passes from Romo. Against the Falcons, Williams only had one catch for 16 yards, but also a couple of easy drops. To make matters worse, when he wasn't dropping the ball, Romo somehow couldn't throw proper passes to him, the throws either being too low or too high. At a hefty price of three draft picks (1st-, 3rd- and 6th-rounder) plus a huge contract, Williams definitely looks like a bust.

Triple Trouble - With the Cowboys having one of the best running back groups (Marion Barber, Felix Jones and Tashard Choice) in the league, why not put them all on the field at the same time, as a Cowboy-version of the "Wildcat Offense"? Just put them all in the backfield and let the linebackers cover them, and I'm sure that they can beat them at least nine times out of ten.

Late Boomer - For some reason, the Cowboys defense did not play well at the start of either half. In the Falcons' first drive, it marched some 80 yards for a TD to take an early lead. At the second half, the Falcons also scored a TD in their first drive. Were they still sleeping?

Lethal Lapses - Mental mistakes are still killing the Cowboys. Reserve defensive lineman Stephen Bowen jumped offside on a third down play which they had stopped, gifting the Falcons a first down when the game was still close. And when they shifted their defensive alignment on a third-and-long late in the game, they somehow forgot to cover receiver Eric Weems for the game's final score.

Help Needed - Opposing teams would love to put three receivers in the game and have Orlando Scandrick covering any of them. The second-year player is just not good enough and always gives opposing players too much room, while not possessing the speed to recover the lost ground. Of course they do need more young offensive linemen and receivers in next year's draft, they also need to find more quality corners too just to give Scandrick some competition.

Be Careful of What You Say

"I really think that Ferrari will be my last team," said two-time Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso, upon being confirmed as Kimi Raikkonen's replacement with the Ferrari team from the 2010 season onwards.

If you ply your trade in a potentially life-threatening sport, the last thing you want to do is to make an innocuous prediction that you might have a career-ending, or even fatal accident in the shortcoming future.

It has happened to Ferrari before. Remember shortly after the San Marino Grand Prix in 1982, when an angry Gilles Villeneuve vowed that he would never speak to his teammate Didier Pironi again "for the rest of his life," after the latter disobeyed team orders and stole victory from him? His words turned out to be prophetic as less than two weeks later, the French-Canadian died in a violent crash at Zolder.

Good luck and take care, Fernando.

Backup Rules

A couple of days ago I talked about the absurd statistics of Dallas Cowboys running back Felix Jones. In fact we only have to look no further than the NFC East to find another running back with similarly absurd statistics.

Here are the career statistics of Ahmad Bradshaw of the New York Giants so far:

2007: 23 rushes, 190 yards, 8.3 average, 1 TD.
2008: 67 rushes, 355 yards, 5.3 average, 1 TD.
2009: 35 rushes, 201 yards, 5.7 average, 0 TD.
Career: 125 rushes, 746 yards, 6.0 average, 2 TDs.

What's up with the rushing defence in the NFC East, especially against the backup running backs?