Green Bay Packers vs. Dallas Cowboys Preview & Prediction | PFF

Green Bay Packers vs. Dallas Cowboys Preview & Prediction | PFF

All right, teased it a little bit there. Let’s hear from Terron Armstead as he helped us preview Micah Parson’s coming back to Dallas and what we can expect from that matchup. Let’s hear it. All right, back with our guy Terron Armstead who’s midworkout. I want you guys to know how much he wants to tune into the show. Make sure that he gives us his This man is midworkout right now. You can see the sweat going. He’s getting after it. And now he’s about to give us some trench analysis. Terron, before we get into uh sort of the trench breakdown, we’re going to talk about Micah Parsons, his return to Dallas, all that good stuff. But what are we working out today? What are we getting into? You got to let me know what’s what’s the workout regimen today. Yeah, just just post post retirement work, man. Just staying staying in shape. Uh I’ve been cutting weight. I’m down 40 pounds since my last game, so I’m I’m grinding. Look at you. Look at you. The man’s going to be the man’s just going to be a sleek fighting machine out here now that he’s poster time. Okay, now I do have to ask you this one thing. I feel like all the trench players, whether it’s offense or defense that I talk to postretirement, they say to themselves, “Oh, hey, you know what? When I get into retirement, I’m still going to work out. I’m still going to be in shape. I’m still going to do all this, but I am never touching a squat bar ever again for as long as I live.” Have you squatted once postretirement? You got to let me know. Uh squat bar? Not at all. Not at all. I do dumbbell squat. I mean, I I wasn’t I wasn’t touching a squat bar while I was playing. Probably like the second half of my career yet. That was over with. See, see, this is this this is why we have you on. This is the expertise because we got to get the answer to things like that. I I I know the uh the trench players, they’re always crazy about making sure the knees are healthy and everything, not putting too much stress on the spine, you know, all that good stuff. So, you’re well ahead of the game. You’ve been preserving the knees and the spine for years. So, we didn’t even we didn’t even need to ask you that. Okay. So, Michael Parsons, he’s got his return to Dallas. Cowboys, they’re facing off against the the Green Bay Packers. Packers coming off of a bit of a surprising loss from the uh from their match up against the Cleveland Browns. I know our producer Tyler’s very happy to make sure that I make I got that in the show once again, but hey, he’s going up against Tyler Gayton, Terrence Steel. These are guys that he knows very well from practice obviously with his time with the Dallas Cowboys. So, just your thoughts. I know that when when you were a member of the Dolphins, you didn’t have that, you know, return to home in New Orleans, anything like that, but just any thoughts on sort of the emotions of of coming back home for Parsons and and what this game might mean to him before we get into the matchup specifically? That’s that’s exactly where I’ll start, the emotions, especially in Parson’s situation specifically because the situation went sour so fast in Dallas. Uh all the dialogue and the verbiage back from Jerry Jones and company. Um, so I don’t I don’t think they had had great closure, you know what I mean? I don’t think they ended on on the best terms. Mike is going to come in off a off an upset loss, too. So, they they will be hungry as a team, but he will personally look to destroy and dominate the Cowboys. Um, he is familiar with the two guys that he’ll be going against. The hardest the mo the most difficult part about Michael Parsons is you never know where he’s going to line up, right? So, a lot of these guys, you can assign a tight end or you can slide the protection right to him because you know where he will will be before you got the huddle. It’s not the case for Micah. Micah can be over the center. He can be over your slot receiver. You never know. So, that makes it really hard to game plan for him. So, talk to me about that uh that like double agent intel that you kind of get to have. Do we overblow that as a media side of things like, oh, this guy, you know, played for this team, that means like, you know, he knows all the tricks to the trade. He knows the he knows exactly what their their their play calls are going to be, all that kinds of stuff. Like now I was going to say like is is that overblown or is there actually something to that cuz Micah was, you know, around for training camp and everything even for like this year going into he didn’t play a game with him, but is that is that intel part of it as as much of a a deal as we as the media sort of make it out to be? Uh I mean like the opposing sides coach so Mike is on defense in Green Bay. So the offensive coordinator might grab him like, “Hey, what were you guys calls or checks in this situation? What did you do when we go from two 2×2 formation motion over to 3x one?” You know what I mean? So those conversations can can help. Um, but other than other than that, it’s not really much information that can be shared. Like the film going to tell you the story. You might be able to get some insight on a few calls. All right, we called this diamond or we we checked cuz you know what I mean? That’s about as far as it’s going as far as double agent. So the guys he’s going to be going up against at least if it’s yeah on the edge obviously you said Micah can basically line up anywhere but Tyler G and Terence Steel they haven’t really fared well against a lot of guys this season they’re ranked either somewhere in the 50s or 60s when it comes to overall blocking grade pass blocking grade out of about 70 eligible offensive tackles that we have so far you know three weeks into the season. So, they’re not playing too well in particular. But when it comes to Parsons, do you feel like he is going to mainly be more of that edge rusher or do you think they are going to switch it up? Do you think that he is going to be kicking inside a lot because the Packers very clearly they’re not afraid to do those things? And so, when it just comes to this matchup in general, what do you think is going to happen here with these offensive tackles versus Parsons himself? Yeah, game game game plan wise, I don’t see the Cowboys allowing him to rush the edge one-on-one like ever. Probably not once this game. It’ll be some type of some form of help chip or slide. Um, so I think game plan wise for the Packers, you have to move him around. You have to find ways to get him a one-on-one matchup. And it’ll only be a few of those opportunities, but if I’m the Cowboys, I’m I’m most definitely having a plan in place for Micah. What makes it harder is those first and second downs like the the quick game and those type things because you got five guys going out. So, it’s really hard to add extra help. Third down, you build in a plan just for third down. Like, let’s find Michael, let’s put somebody else over there with him. First, second down, those those the situations where Michael can really be disrupted. Well, Don, we appreciate it every single week. We specifically appreciate it this week seeing the sweat pouring middle workout. He’s he’s coming to give you guys these analysis. He’s making sure he gets it in every week. Terron, we appreciate it, my friend. Get back to it. Yes, sir. Thank you, bro. All right. Appreciate it, Terron joining us as always here. Dalton, what do you want to start talking about here with this game? Cowboys Packers. What do you I mean, let’s let’s stick with the obvious. You know, let’s just take a look at Micah Parsons and and I’m sure if the Cowboys didn’t already know what they’re missing, they’re going to be finding out this Sunday. And and honestly, you look at the numbers and they’re missing an elite player, a guy with a 91.5 pass rush grade in his first three games uh with the Packers, just under a 17% pressure rate, which is usually higher, and I’m sure it’ll get there this season. 27% pass rush win rate is ridiculous. That’s top five in the NFL. And the Cowboys, you know, as I just mentioned as we were previewing the Bears game, they have not been good in pass protection, and the injuries are racking up. Their starting center, Cooper BB, has been out. Tyler Booker is now on IR with uh with with an ankle injury. So, if you look at the front five of this Cowboys offensive line right now. Tyler Gton pass blocking grade 37.5. It’s going to be Tyler Smith 53.8. Uh Brock Hoffman at center 50. TJ Bass is probably going to play right guard. He had a 45 pass blocking grade last year when he played and Terrence Steele with a 50. So, think about that. All five of their starters 54 or below pass blocking grade against not just Micah Parsons and him moving all over the place. I’ve told you I think he’s the most unique pass rusher in football, but Rashawn Garry and Lucas Vaness coming off maybe his best career game last week and Devonte Wyatt and everything this team has on their defensive line. It’s a huge mismatch and and even without Parsons, it might be a problem just with Gary and the rest. But the fact that you have Micah Parsons in there coming back for revenge in this game and it could be such a huge mismatch between the Packers Dline as a whole and the Cowboys offensive line down two starters. This is I mean Dak Prescott better get rid of the football quickly or he’s going to have a real problem. Yeah, Dak I think just the whole offense overall uh struggled more last week than we thought they were going to against the Chicago Bears. We sure need to see the Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys sort of version of that offense even without CD Lamb uh that we saw in week one against the Philadelphia Eagles or I think the Packers are going to have an easy time with this one. I really do. Now, the only chance that I think the Cowboys really have in this game is of course if if Dak goes nuclear and plays like an MVP candidate. Anytime that’s the case, the quarterback position has so much sway. But specifically, the Packers offensive line was horrendous last week. Now, we have talked about how good the Cleveland Browns defensive line is. So, it’s not like they were bad against anybody, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this, Dalton. An 11.1 pass blocking grade as a team last week against the Browns. 20 pressures allowed. Yeah. No offensive lineman on the team had a pass blocking grade above 40 last week. It’s rough. Not great. I I think the one that I the one that sticks in my mind, well, there’s two. One’s a NFL one, one’s a college one. One NFL one that sticks in my mind is the the Bengals in the Super Bowl against the Rams had like a 13 or something and then I got to find the official number, but um last I checked and this is a college one. You’re uh I have to bring this up for fun. Your Florida Gator against Miami last week. Oh, it moved. It was It was almost at a zero. It’s up to an 11.8 uh last week against Miami. 11.8 is better than 11.1 that the Packers got last week. It is. It is. I’ll take it. I’ll take it. You can’t No, you can’t dunk on me. Omit that. Omit that from the podcast. Never happened. Still not great. Packers one is worse. Obviously, if you have a pass blocking grade that bad, literally anything can happen. But I don’t think it’s going to be that bad for this team. Even though um Oh, I saw Zack Tom is is is out, right? Did I see that correctly? The Zack Tom is out or did I just see he was um Let’s look into that. I mean honestly with with as poorly as the um the Cowboys are rushing the passer as well. Okay. Unlikely to play not expected. Unlikely to play. I mean that that matters but I also think your problem is Dallas without Parsons really has no pass rush right and you talk about it the other you talk about this same thing going the other way. The Browns are the number one pass rush team in football. Cowboys are 24th. Okay. So I mean it’s not the worst but it’s also not great. We know the Cowboys have not been getting a whole lot of pressure because well they traded Micah Parson. So that’s really the big story on both sides in this game. Can they get any because if they don’t get pressure on Jordan Love and they get let him tee off down the field on this secondary, I mean we just saw what Caleb Williams did to him. We’ve seen what Russell Wilson did to him. The Eagles just kind of chose not to throw the ball downfield in week one. But this they cannot let Jordan Love get a free ride into this secondary because they’re going to have a serious problem. Man, you’ve got the Packers winning big. I see your score here. 34 to 20. You have the Packers winning by 14. I got the Packers winning 28 to 23. I think it’s going to be a little bit closer, but um yeah, it’s man, 14 points. You really do not believe in this Cowboys secondary at all. Um the secondary is has been awful for the last two weeks. Their offensive line is super beat up and the pass protection’s not good and they don’t have CD Lamb. I I just I don’t know, boy. I I I just I the avenue for the Cowboys winning this game really is just maybe they stop the run and they make Love drop back, but I I think this is a big- time bounceback game for Jordan Love, too. I I know the Browns are the Browns and in Cleveland it’s even tougher, but you’re going from facing that team to facing this defense. I think Jordan Love’s got to feel like he’s got an opportunity to bounce back here. I 34 to 20 I’m in on Green

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Green Bay Packers and The Dallas Cowboys.

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