LIVE: Cowboys Break Podcast | 10-08-25 | Dallas Cowboys 2025
Go Cowboys. Go Cowboys. Heat. Hey, Heat. Go kill boys. Go Cowboys. Heat. Heat. Go Cowboys. Go Cowboys. Heat. Heat. Go Cowboys. The following is a production of dallascowboys.com and the Dallas Cowboys football club. How about Cowboys? Let’s go, baby. Are you ready for a break? Yes. Are you ready for a break? Absolutely. Ready for a break? Yeah. And um so much for that. It’s time for the break on dallascowboys.com. We were on the break with Amar Garcia, Brian Bris, Vach Lombardi, and Derek Eagleton. It is Wednesday, October 8th, 2025, season 21, episode number 53. Welcome to the latest edition of The Break. We’re live WBC Mortgage Studios at the Star, presented by LG. LG is the world’s number one OLED PV brand for 11 years in counting. cylg.com OLED evo. What is up with you today? What is up with y’all today? Like we opening the show y’all. We got Amber over here dancing and you and B are like doing handles. They’re always doing hand signals over there. So I said let me join on the fun. Everything’s in the chat already. I thought we already let me open it up. Shout out to the chat. What y’all talking about now? Good. All right. Let’s uh let’s let’s first start. We got we’re going to get into the Carolina offense versus the Dallas defense. Uh but today before we get there, I want to start with uh quick roster move Cowboys made yesterday. Julius Wood, who was a guy that back, if you guys can remember back that far last year. He was at 24’s training camp. Uh he was a guy that was there safety um and and and turned a few heads. I thought he was a guy that that a lot of people kind of like coming out of training camp as an undrafted free agent. Um what were your thoughts on him? Do you have any thought? Do you remember him during camp or what the Cowboys might be expecting? How they could use him if he can really jump in and be of use to them right now while Malik Hooker is out? This the thing about Julius Wood and the Julius Wood types is he’s one of those box safeties that kind of walks down and, you know, does the tackling stuff, the run game stuff, but you really don’t want them one high too much. And typically what happens is when you bring in a guy like that, you find many other guys like that. So a guy like Elijah Clark that can do that but also give you other you know range and things like that you know you know now job titles and stuff like that gets a little weird but he’s like a do type guy he was around but he did make a bunch of plays in these games so that kind of get you know that got him a little hype but you can only carry so many guys but let me ask you this. Do you guys have questions now about the health of uh Hooker? Well, they put him on IR, so he has to sit at least four weeks. Yeah, four weeks that maybe that’s kind of I know that I know that the IR thing and all that, but I just wonder going forward. Is that something you know that or they just protecting themselves? Donovan Wilson had a shoulder at the end of the game. How did that how did that end up? Yeah, I didn’t hear any more about that to be honest with you because he would be a guy that fits the the Donald thing. So if anything’s wrong with him, it’ll be Maris Bale and Julius Wood that fit those similar kind of types and Clark will be the free safety kind of guys while Hooker is hurt. Yeah, I just Yeah, I I think he I think he nailed the guy. I think they really physical a physical player though, too. That guy that was always around the ball and stuff. So yeah, it’s uh up the middle. I mean, they’re trying they’re trying to find things to to to, you know, make this defense a little bit better. I think that’s where the biggest problems have been. I mean, we look at the defensive tackle room, it seems like with, you know, adding, you know, with Clark that that seems to be a positive. You’re getting some stuff. You’re getting some, you know, great really, I think, some very good play from Solomon Thomas. But yeah, the middle linebacker situation, trying new guys, trying things at safety. You know, they’ve got to get better up the middle of this defense and maybe Wood’s not the answer, but I mean, it’s just something that they have some familiarity with with something different, so might as well give it a go. Thinking about the safety position, um, obviously this last game, Wany Thomas, uh, was in for Malik Hooker. What were your thoughts on his play this last week? Did you see anything that was an improvement over what you had been getting before? Was it about the same? How would you assess his his play? I tell you what, uh, is going to sound real crazy because he plays safety, but he was deepest of the deep. He he he did that job right. He’s like, “Y’all ain’t getting past me.” He did He did that. Yeah, for sure. And uh there was a couple of times where you know he saved you know touchdowns where you know it could have been a a bigger uh play in the run game. He kind of came down and made a play or a passing game. So uh one is he’s doing his job and look hey Vash what’s so special about doing your job. Hey man it’s been a crazy couple of weeks where people haven’t always been doing their job. So when we see people doing their job it’s a positive step. Yeah, I think the thing is with with Thomas, you’re going to get a guy that I think is very comfortable playing the back and playing up. And so it still gives you that flexibility if you’re going to play some more man coverage, which they did about 17% more in this game. So he gives you the flexibility to be able to play him in coverage and you don’t have to worry about things there. And then his ability also to see things, to react to things, you know, he’s a very aware player. Uh, and I I I appreciate that about him because he is not going to give up stuff over the top and he didn’t have to make a whole lot of range plays the other day, but you know, and you’re about to play a team. We’ll get into Carolina. They’ll try and throw the ball deep, but they have no success doing it. And so, but you’re going to need somebody like that. Dallas has struggled with that ball over the top and, you know, he’s a guy that’s generally not going to let that happen. Looking at our inside ops, when we look at the Carolina Panthers, um they are right now two and three. Uh they are coached by Dave Canales, who is kind of an interesting guy to me. This is only his second year as a head coach. Uh last year they went five and 12. So not a successful year. Um before that, he had only been an offensive coordinator for one year uh with Tampa Bay in 2023. And in that year, just looking at some of the numbers, they didn’t have a particularly great year offensively. They were ranked 20th in the league in points, 23rd in the league in yards. This year they’re averaging 20 uh 20 20.4 points per game uh that they’re scoring and averaging 23.8 points per game against what other teams are scoring against them. Ranked 24th and 19th respectively. What are your thoughts on Dave Canales and and what he’s doing I guess from a from a schematic standpoint uh from building this team standpoint there in Carolina? Carolina. I don’t think they have the talent to do anything that he’s that he’s trying to do. Uh the offensive line is a mess. Uh the wide receivers can’t get going because the quarterback doesn’t always see things well. He’s short. So maybe you got to change things that you may want to do on your offense. You know, Brian’s old man. He likes the big tall quarterback that can see over everything. Sometimes against short people. Nothing against him. It’s just National Football League where everybody’s humongous. I’m short relative to them, but I may be bigger than everybody on this hall. not Brian because Brian’s tall, but uh you know, it’s kind of hard to to know what he brings to the table because, you know, these guys just haven’t gotten things going. Now, that’s where I kind of give uh or not give coaches that much leeway because I can see what the Colts are doing with Daniel Jones and go, “Hey, man, that’s a dude that hasn’t been all that great in the league, but you kind of figure things out. Michael Pitman’s a dude over there. Not the greatest pedigree of a wide receiver, but they can figure things out over there.” Uh but Carolina just hasn’t figured things out on offense. So, based on what I’ve seen, I haven’t seen a whole bunch of offense get moved. Yeah. You know what? He uh made his money initially dealing with a short quarterback and making it work. Ain’t that something? Baker Mayfield there in Tampa. You know, you look at what he was able to do and then now he is working with a shorter quarterback and it has not uh it has not translated. He is a very he could be very innovative. I think that Vach is on to something with with the way that they’ve tried to address it through skill. They’ve they’ve tried to The problem is their offensive line. They’ve tried they haven’t hit on the offensive lineman. It’s kind of been of a uh you know a situation where we’ll get into that. It’s just not a very good group and uh and that’s been a real struggle. And then you’ve got a quarterback that tends to not be able to see and now you have pressure and he’s doing with pressure and not being able to see and then they can’t get the ball out like they need to. But it’s interesting how they try and run the ball. If you watch the Dolphins game, you’ll be very impressed. If you watch everything else, you’re left to being like, “Oh, well that’s this is just a pretty ordinary team running the football.” They got after the Dolphins when they got down 17 nothing. they started running the football and they were really they got very good at it. Uh I think that will kind of be their plan again this week, but he he has just not it’s not as creative of an offense that we saw with what he was able to do in Tampa with Baker Mayfield. Was a lot of that you saw in that running game uh because they they were down 17 nothing. in most team or running the ball effectively at that point because typically you think they just got to hurry and get points on the board and so they start passing a lot more. That being said, do you think a lot of that success they saw was because Miami was playing this type of defense where they were more concerned about protecting against big plays and it allowed more holes for the run game or do you think it was just literally they were doing just a really good job of running the ball? I think Miami is getting ready to quit and the head coach might be getting fired soon. Oh wow. They probably going to be getting rid of some of those guys pretty soon. Breaking, breaking, breaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s according to my sources. No, I’m just playing. But, uh, but yeah, you don’t have a phone like that. No, no, no, no. They got a gang of seven. But the but the I got a gang of seven. Agent not in the league. Shouts out to Field Steel and but you know um the the the Dolphins went up early in that game. Yeah. I I don’t want to just, you know, chalk it up to they got comfortable because they they got a lead, but when the the U Carolina Panthers decided that they were going to run the football, and that’s probably because they can’t pass the football. That’s been happening for five games now. They just found success running it, and they just kept running it. It didn’t look like the Dolphins were, oh my god, we’re just playing a different kind of defense. They tried to stop the run. They just couldn’t. They were flopping around all over the place. And this offensive line who hasn’t really driven anybody off the ball all year. Yeah. Was driving the Miami Dolphins off the ball. And uh I can imagine that was just deflating. And by the time it was all over, Rico D like a damn Pro Bowler. Yeah. That’s the thing it it came down to. The Dolphins are just a bad tackling football team for sure. You know, and but let’s give Carolina some credit. When they were coming off the ball, they were winning the line of scrimmage. There were several times where Dolphin defenders, defensive linemen were turned. Uh they they ran the ball a couple different ways. They ran it on the edge. They went with toss. Uh they they did it inside. They any way they wanted to run the ball, they were having success. Rico Data, we all understand him. He has the ability to uh to be a physical ball carrier. He can make people miss initially and then he gets into the open field and there were several times where he he had runs that were going to be two, three yards and all of a sudden it turns into 10, 15 yards because the Dolphins inability to tackle. So, you know, when you start to talk about with Rico, he’s right about where we thought he was when it comes to successful runs, that four plus. He was doing it last year for the Cowboys. That’s what he’s capable of doing is taking the ball and then getting you four, five yards. You know, he gets tackled and now you’re kind of staying ahead of the change right there. So, um this is this is I think kind of a plan going forward, you know, with with with Chuba Hubert. He’s we’re going to talk about him. He’s dealing with a calf injury. They tried to play him in the game. He couldn’t play in the game or the week before he tried to play in the game, couldn’t finish the game, and then he had to sit out. And they’re saying that maybe they’re going to give him a little bit more rest. So, it’ll probably be the Rico D show coming up here uh against the Cowboys in Charlotte. Dallas, question real quick. It’s a little bit off topic, but uh Brian, I know this season you’ve been kind of leaning into the whole um theory of who has the most pressure, like the most threat team. So, what do you feel right now? Who who is currently the most desperate team for this week? Well, Carolina won last week, you know, and Dallas get so you got two teams feeling, you know, that Dallas I think that if you had to say a team that this is where and I don’t know if a will agree with me on this or not. I kind of feel like that Dallas is desperate in this way. If you’re a Dallas Cowboy fan, you want them to continue to play desperate if you want them to go make a trade. That’s just me. I I feel like that if they need to keep winning, you need to keep desperate to get wins to maybe convince general manager and front office to let’s go see and let’s see what happens within the conference and let’s see what happens within the division. You know, if all of a sudden Philly starts to falter, you get a chance to play the Commanders next week, maybe you get a win there. find ways, be desperate, be a desperate team to win these games in order to try and get the front office to maybe swing and make a big deal here to kind of put you into into another another level. That’s that’s where I think the desperation is right now for this football team. Also too, Brian, on that on that point, the games that the Cowboys lost are conference games. So, in the grand scheme of things, you don’t want that to come back to bite you at the end of it. So, Carolina is an NFC team. you kind of want to get get one, you know, one one back up on the conference there. All right, we’re going to take our first break. When we come back, we’re going to dive into the Carolina offense versus the Dallas defense. Brian Vach has some information on that. We’ll be back. DallasCowboys.com radio. If you can’t be at the stadium, there’s no better way to watch your Cowboys than on an LG OLED EVO TV. That’s because everything you see is more lifelike. Every play, every hit, I mean, you might as well be on the sidelines. That’s how clear it is. It’s all thanks to LG’s legendary technology. Perfect black, over 8.3 million self-lit pixels. No one comes close. LG OLED EVO is the best TV in the game for a reason. See for yourself at lg.com/EVO. I’m home. Hey, Mom. Before you ask, I’ve done my homework and the dishwasher’s unloaded. Nice. Hey, can you Hey, hun. Yes, I’ve got the finale ready to play. Here’s your wine. Wow. Isn’t it nice not having to ask? We think so. That’s why if there’s a network interruption, AT&T will proactively credit you for a full day of service, guaranteed. Credit for fiber downtime lasting 20 minutes or more, or for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more, caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers. Restrictions and exclusions apply. See at.com/gar for details. Hey y’all, Matt Pitman here. As the official pitm of the Dallas Cowboys, you know, I take cookware seriously, especially when it comes to America’s team. So, when the Cowboys are away, I’m putting my Yeti cast iron skillets to work to make my game day favorites for friends and family. I’m talking chicken fried steak, skillet queso, and peach cobbler. And just like the cowboys are forever, so are these heirloom cast iron skillets. Check out the full line of skillets on yeti.com or at a Yeti store near you. If you shout, “How about them cowboys?” You have that undeniable passion that’s the heart of Cowboys Nation. And if you like to drink Dr. pepper. You love the unique blend of its 23 flavors. Together, your one-of-a-kind fandom paired with the one-of-a-kind taste of a delicious ice cold Dr. Pepper is the game day lineup that can’t be beat. Better yet, gather your Cowboys and Dr. Pepper fan friends to watch the next game and crack open a delicious ice cold Dr. Pepper for everyone. The wins will be even tastier. It’s a pepper thing. Don’t put off getting your oil changed, Dallas. Take Five Oil Change, a proud partner of the Cowboys, is faster than you think. They’re so fast, you don’t even have to get out of your car. You can take advantage of Take Five’s stay in your car 10-minute oil change at any of their locations across the Dallas area. And remember, at Take Five, you stay in your car because they’re faster than you think. That means you won’t even have time to show off your best touchdown celebration. Take Five, the official oil change of the Dallas Cowboys. Back to the break. Choose perfection. Choose LG OLED Evo. Check out the best TV in the game at lg.com. We’re still waiting for those TVs. Derek Eagle, they’re coming. Welcome back to the final se third segment of the break live from the SWBC Morgan Studios at the start of the segment brought to you by blockchain.com. There we go. All right, Brian. Yeah, watch, sir. What y’all got? Carolina better be good. Carolina offense. What do you want to talk about first? What do you think? What do you think the your biggest concern is about this uh Carolina Panther offense? Man, Brian, I went to NextGen stats. Yeah, Derek Eagles and Amar Garcia, Brian Bro. I went to NextGen stats. I just like to scroll down to see what the rankings look like. I was like, boy, in terms of rushing efficiency, Carolina was a was a top 10 team. They was number 10. I said, “You a damn lie.” NextG stats. I said, “Let me go backwards and see what happened and play the game of what if.” like what if the Miami game didn’t happen then people like 27 Mhm. way at the bottom. I said cool that makes a lot more sense. Um I know there’s a lot of people going to fear Rico D for his uh humongous game that he had last week. Just looking at Rico over the other four games if we playing what if Miami doesn’t exist. 28 carries 55 yards. All right, cool. That’s how y’all been getting down. Even Chuba Hubard who was starting uh 53 carries, 217 yards. Much better than Rico, but still not going to blow you away. Uh just watching these guys, Brian, uh if they’re going to beat you, it’s going to be via run game. Yeah. But I don’t even think the run game is all that all that spectacular. It may still be like the second worst run game that you’ve gone against this year, just playing just playing football math like that. Uh I think the the Eagles were much better of a run team. I think the Packers were much better. Uh you know, Swift and the Bears weren’t good. You know, as much as we talk about the Jets, they were a good running football team and they kind of showed you. Uh, I just don’t think Carolina’s all that good versus the teams that you did line up against. Uh, you look around at the receivers, you don’t really see a whole bunch of numbers from them because Bryce Young hasn’t really been able to get going. Ted McMillan is the main guy and that’s because that’s that’s the only guy that can get things going. He’s elite. So, if Bryce Young does read things well and he does throw it out there, it may be high, may be low. Ted McMillan does have the ability to go up and get it. Uh, shockingly, uh, Carolina tries to deep ball a whole bunch. They don’t hit it a bunch, but they try it a lot. So, if the Cowboys, if you give up a bunch of D passes, our D pass defense will be flip it back the other way. Okay, big run. And then they they’ll do like they’ll do a zone run. They’ll do, you know, uh where they where they they everybody steps to the right, they push, and then back makes a cut. That was kind of what they were doing against the Dolphins. So, they’re a little bit of trying to It’s not like, oh wow, look, a bunch of pulls. They don’t have pulling linemen. They ran a crack toss. They got a 10 plus yard run, but you know, they didn’t get the tackle out. It was just the backs, you know, they cracked the end and all of a sudden there was just nobody on the outside, you know, in the Dolphins game and and now it’s the run to the edge. So, I think they’re a team that’s trying to kind of find their identity running the football. But the Dolphins game showed me one thing is if I think they’re going to try. I think that if you look at what the Jets did last week, and this is where I think Dallas might be a little bit uh you know that people we were worried about teams just lining up and throwing the football against Dallas because of the lack of pass rush and the problems in the secondary. Worried about that and you kind of saw that. You saw from that Giants game on it was it was throw the ball, throw the ball, throw the ball. This guy, you can’t make this quarterback look good. You just can’t. You just cannot. I mean, every metric tells you that things that Dallas are bad at throwing the football. Carolina’s just as bad. Yeah, Carolina has their problems when it comes to like Vosch was talking about throwing the deep ball. Maybe some of the intermediate stuff, maybe some of the stuff underneath. That’s about it. That’s about the stuff. I just think Dave Canelis is gonna watch that Jets tape and he’s gonna say, “Listen, I’m scared of this Dallas offense right now. I’m scared. But Dallas can do something offensively to take the running game away from Carolina. They can absolutely do this. And they did it with the Jets last week and I think they could do it again this week with Carolina. We’ll talk about Carolina’s defense tomorrow. But the best defense of Carolina strength and I think it is running the football. The do the Dolphins game showed me with Rico Dattle and their line coming off and if you don’t handle point of attack blocks and you miss tackles, which Dallas has done at an alarming rate, you do those things, you’re going to encourage Carolina to run the football even though this offensive line is probably built not in a good way to do either running the ball or passing the ball. So, to that point, when you look at uh the the season so far, Yeah. really Dallas has been a lot better against the run earlier in the season. Now, a lot of that can be pointed to, well, maybe teams just didn’t feel like they needed to run because they just throw all over you. But were there things last week that the Jets do particularly in their run game that you’ve seen shades of that in what Carolina, particularly what Carolina did last week that makes you think this could be a problem for Dallas because these are things that are problems for them when they’re trying to stop the run. Cowboys didn’t tackle last week, but I also think the Jets didn’t have a bad offensive line. I just want to keep banging that point there. They can actually block. The Cowboys just found some some good passers out of nowhere. But just run game though, they they the Jets do have a line that can move bodies. The Cowboys just didn’t always get moved. But what happened was when when it you know when it’s time to come up and field, you miss tackles. Everybody miss tackles from your safeties, your linebackers. uh Kenny Clark, not so much as he’s a superstar, but you you have to tackle Rico Dout. Yeah, you have to tackle Rico Dout. And the earlier you you get the Rico Data, the better chance you have of bringing him down. If you let him get ahead of steam and he’s going going, he’s probably going to, you know, take you all the way down the field. Get to him early, bring him down, and make Carolina do something they don’t want to do, which is pass the football. Yeah. You know, if you watch Carolina and I I talked about a little bit of a grabag of the offense though, but if you really break down the Cowboys, and we do every week, we watch them. A lot of their runs, what was happen last week? It wasn’t on the edge. It was inside. It was they were blocking Kenny Clark, they were blocking Solomon Thomas, they were blocking Osigua, they were getting up on the linebackers. James jumps around a block. Murray gets blocked. Now they’re on the safety. The one thing Dallas has struggled with this year is runs right at him. It hasn’t so much been stuff on the edge. It has been right at him. And what’s Carolina’s offensive line? Botch will tell you this is not a mobile offensive line. This is not a big like uh like, oh, we’re going to pull guys and get guys in space and all that. They’re heavy-footed guys. They’re very, very lungey, very heavy footed guys. So, what’s their going to be their strength? come off the ball, try and get into blocks, and then make you have to defend the inside run. I could see them doing that with Rico Da. Look what Rico Dattle again did with the Cowboys. It wasn’t anything on the outside. A lot of the Rico Data runs are in between the tackles. Sure, I can see that Dave Canelis attacking the same way after after watching what Dallas did last week against the Jets. And then if you kind of look at throughout the season, inside runs have been a problem for this Dallas defense. So, who’s more important as far as has to play better when it comes to defending that type of running game? Is it your defensive tackles have to just not get moved? Yeah. Or is it your linebackers that need to fill on a more consistent basis and be able to go through blocks versus going around blocks? Linebackers for sure. Linebackers for sure. I feel like this Dline does a decent job of not getting driven three, four, five yards down. That’s old. That’s old Cowboys. They haven’t done much of that this year at all. Uh it’s when you come up tackle when you come up bring somebody down. And that’s that’s Sambourne. That’s Murray. Uh you know, and listen, we’re we’re talking about the young guys, the young linebackers. The young line, it’s interesting. They don’t have a problem missing tackles. They have a problem like not being around the tackle. Like, you know, Le get too wide sometimes, right? James will come down the play. Take stuff out the play. You know, Jame, you know, James will be a little late. San Barn and Murray, you know, they’ll know the general direction to be at, but they’ll miss once they once they actually get there. This Carolina group doesn’t like to block the second level. They can’t stand blocking linebackers. So, maybe they get a more free look, I would say, getting down there and tackling, but you know, everything every way that the Panthers can beat you in the run game, it’s on Dallas to not get beat that way. Yeah, I think to me this, you know, it’s last week was not one of the better games with Kenny Clark playing and and and Kenny Clark has played very well up until this point. The pass rush stuff and all that I think has been really really good, but last week they got blocked as a front and it was a problem. It really really was. Carolina is going to try and block you the same way. I me personally, nothing against Mazy Smith. I think this might be a good game to put Jay Toya back inside and let a bigger B let the let Mazy seems to have now had some problems playing a little bit of the run defense stuff. Some of the pass rush stuff been a little bit better, winning a little bit more on that. But man, they’re going to need some stuff. They’re going to need some stoutness up front and and I I just think this is the only way that Carolina can beat you in this game offensively. See now T McMillan they might get all of a sudden Dallas decides they don’t want to they don’t want to pressure they don’t want to pressure Young and he makes some throws like Caleb Williams made and all of a sudden Ted McMillan downfield is making plays and and Hunter Rimfro is making catches underneath and getting third downs. I don’t see that as always happening because I think Dallas can pressure I think Dallas can put pressure on these guys offensively. But all of a sudden this turns into hand the ball off four yards, hand the ball off again four yards. Yeah. Third and shorts. Hand the ball off again. We’ve seen Rico Dattle convert, you know. So that’s you’ve got to find a way to keep the Carolina Panthers behind the chains and then make them want to throw the football against you because if you don’t, you make them very comfortable. But we saw again what the Bears were able to do that 19play drive that they had all those runs. You know, look at the Jets last week. Take seven minutes off the clock. You know, with the way that they played, you know, Dallas can’t get in one of those games. They’re going to need to be pretty stout up front against this group. I don’t mean to be super critical, but I’m I don’t feel very confident just yet about having the Dallas Cowboys defense be able to shut somebody down. both. No, I was going to say you have both things of like pressuring the quarterback of what we saw last week while also stopping the run. So when you say looking into this game based on everything that you’re saying, you would dedicate mo most of those resources into stopping the run rather than trying to continue to again you can do both things, but I just don’t feel confident that they’re there yet to do both at once. I think Rico Dattle can make your life pretty miserable. I don’t think Bryce Young can and I mean throwing the football. So yes, and I think Vach is again absolutely right about this is they tackling this game is going to really come down to are two yard, three yard runs, two three yard runs. Don’t let two three yard runs turn into seven, eight, 10 yard runs. That’s where this game Carolina can’t beat you throwing the ball in my opinion. No, where they could beat you is if they can hold the ball, finish drives, but just chew up clock and you can’t do anything to stop him running the ball. That that would be my biggest concern. Yeah, you’re you’re daring Bryce Young to beat you in this game because the the thing about it is even if he gets even if he hits some big plays, the reality is he’s got to keep up with Dak Prescott. Yeah. and the way Dak Prescott and this offense are playing right now, that’s going to be the that is the formula for almost every team they’re going to play this year, which is put pressure on their offense by your offense scoring a ton of points and moving the ball efficiently down the field. And I think that’s the part where I’m just like, yes, I’m stopping the run. That’s going to be my primary concern. And and if Bryce has a couple big plays, great. I just I’m gonna bet on the fact he can’t go through go in a duel with with Dak Prescott and come out on the other end of that. Yeah. In a positive way. Film and the metrics tell you this quarterback can’t win on most series. He can’t. I mean, he he he he misses passes. He turns the ball over. There’s problems that he has. Pressure gives him problems. Pressure in the pocket causes turnovers for him. Hell, he’ll just damn drop the ball running around back there. Yeah, you get turnovers from him. So if but if you go out there and allow allow them to run the football and have success doing it and make it very easy for Dave Canelis to call the game that way, you know, this could be it could be very very difficult just for that aspect because you might not have as many you might be used to having 10 12 possessions a game. You might be two possessions short, you know? I mean that that might be something that you have to deal with. It could be a very close game. I just don’t in my heart believe that this quarterback can beat you throwing the ball. I just don’t. But I do feel like that they could keep it very very close if your defense doesn’t play very good run defense. All right, we’re going to take our final break. We’ll come back. I’m going to ask these guys about some of the actual specific matchups, some players that you should watch for the Cowboys and how they match up with some of the offensive players for the Carolina Panthers. We’ll be back. DallasCowboys.com radio. 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I want to know about some specific matchups uh for the Carolina Panthers offense versus the Dallas defense where fans should watch. These are going to be the moments or the the the the specific matchups that you think will affect the outcome of this game. I thought you had a match up in particular. All right, cool. So, uh we can start with offensive. No, it just sounded like I thought he was going to Cool. Left tackle. You can start with him. I quanu man. I was a big fan of him coming out of the draft process. He was a he was a big dude. Move well. Great length. Uh you know what happened to him. You just never know what happened to these guys once they once they get to the league. You know, you got to work hard and it ain’t going well. It ain’t it ain’t going well. I was watching him and when me and Brian look at this offensive line say, “Hey, this group is kind of sluggish, slowooted.” I’m I’m talking about him. He has a lot of lazy sets. Uh he, you know, if if if pressure is coming, nine times out of 10 by the numbers, like seven out of 10, I would say, is coming from the left tackle. Now, depends on what the Cowboys do here. Fuse, we looking back at you. Uh if you want to build on what you did last week and we run some slants and some gap exchanges and some stunts and all this kind of stuff, there’s a way that you could beat up on the um Panthers front uh front five here. But if we just want to rush four straight up and down just like that may have a Pro Bowl day against you because that’s just what the Cowboys have been doing. Derek, as I look at the bottom of my sheet here, they got a character on the practice squad named Michael Tar. Never heard of him. Brian Brian hasn’t neither. If we rush guys straight up and down, I don’t have faith that we can beat uh Michael Taren one-on-one. But if we did what you did last week, we run some gap exchanges stunts, mix up the looks. Also, you can muddy up the looks. So, we talked about this. Ambar was like, “Hey, can you rank the guys that diagnose defense really well?” Um Bryce Young is in the lower tier of guys that diagnose uh you know, diagnose defenses. So, he’s up there with Justin Fields and Jaylen Hurst. Even though it sounds like I’m hating on Hurst, those guys don’t don’t see very well. So, what happens with Bryce? Not only can he not read it well, but he doesn’t stay on on task because he can’t improvise because he little. So it ain’t like he can find somebody new if his number one guy is open. Don’t laugh cuz he little. So he’s not going to find somebody different. He’s going to run around and try to get out of the pocket and then maybe make something happen. So uh this another week where you have to maintain rush lanes and uh if you want to do it versus Ike Muonu, he’ll he’ll uh he’ll let you do it. So matchup wise, Dante Fowler, right? One thing that he that he did really well last week was like get off the ball quickly and whatever you gave him whether it be the inside or outside he would attack that quickly. It’s a fantastic game that if I would come out here slow feet uh you know uh setting very deep giving you the inside then that’ll be a fantastic way for Dante foul to beat up on them. Yeah, they had like 33 pass attempts last week and they gave up 21 pressures out of that. I mean this team will they they they just do not they just do not do a very good job. They’re just not an athletic group and and it’s and it shows they they they want to try and do things I think scheme wise and we talked about Dave Canelis earlier what he would like to do. He just can’t do it, you know, and they’ve tried to throw resources at this offensive line. It hasn’t worked out. It’s kind of a mismatch group. The tackles set extremely deep. They give up pressures. You can carry him back to the quarterback. You know, the quarterback can’t see over rush. So if you get him if you get him in the middle of that pocket, he’s going to he’s going to collapse. Now Derek does remember a time he got him at the University of Texas and he escaped and won the game for Alabama, but those days you had to bring up some old stuff, huh? Few and far between. No, those those kinds of situations have not happened for this guy throughout the career. So yeah, it it is an offensive line that is much maligned that they’re going to try and run the football. They’re going to try and beat you up that way. They’re going to try and be physical. Will Dallas allow it? I I I like what everybody’s talking about with Flu. Can you determine that this group are they going to try and man stunts? If you’ve determined, we saw last week with the Jets, if they’re going to man twist stunts, you’re going to have opportunities to get guys home. This is not, I repeat, not an athletic offensive line. Dallas, the one thing rushing the passer can do is they could put some pressure on you with some movement. And I would do that right from the jump, but it’s going to be about them being able to control that run. Don’t give Carolina any reason to run the football. Dallas’s offense has to to help you out as well on that. But you need to take advantage of this group because they’re just not as good as some of the groups you’ve played this year. And just another matchup in terms of offensive line. You know, we talked about the um outside guys, Brian Cade Mazize and Damen Lewis are slower footed somehow than Ike is. So even if they do get turned, I mean that I mean that’s a way to get them. But I just feel comfortable with guys like Osa, Solomon, Kenny Clark just lining up and just kind of running past those guys. Uh you know, we talked about Mazi and do you play Towi or whatever? Toia got a little more juice in terms of quickness and moving forward somehow cuz he’s the bigger man, which just shouts out to him. I think this will be a this will be a fantastic time to make him active this week and let him pass rush a little bit. When you talk about uh Trayvon Diggs, it’s interesting. Week before last, he he’s they uh they he doesn’t start the game. He plays uh in it, but doesn’t start the game. And last week, he played 100% of the snaps. Uh how do you assess his play last week and obviously going into a game like this where you have someone a young rookie uh but guy that certainly can go up and get the ball and can create some matchup problems in in certain situations. Uh how do you assess where Trayvon is, I guess, at this point in the season? Trey did fine last week and that Jets wide receiver core wasn’t really uh wasn’t really a a group that went a whole bunch of one-on- ons outside of um of Garrett Wilson. So when Trey was, you know, not kind of around there, he was doing his fine. He was doing his job just fine. Uh and you you kind of get a similar group here. You know, it’s like McMillan and the rest of them just kind of exist. And Trey, the history says that, you know, these wide receivers that are bigger and not like quick and, you know, these like bigger moving guys, uh, Trey has good days versus those guys. So, if he’s against McMillan, you don’t want him, you know, getting on like Renfro or nothing like that. Renfro is quicker. He’s, you know, down under. But, uh, Trey versus McMillan, if if that’s the matchup that we’re going to see for the most part, you you would feel good about that matchup because McMillan is not a terribly quick guy. Yeah. I think with the thing with Trey is and and we we had some questions about health on but really both corners but you know talking to people in the organization they’re like no it’s just these guys are fine everything’s cool so it’s now it’s about going out and covering people we’ve talked about McMillan if you’re a fan of the draft show you know that the Dallas Cowboys were in the mix of wanting to draft this guy so it would have been nice to have him too Brian and the reason well your guy Booker probably wouldn’t have got picked but but and right now you look at your wide receiver court group and you’re like h we’re okay let him to Yeah, but the the thing with I think with McMillan is he’s what we talked about in the draft show all those days is the ability to run down the field, good route runner, can separate when he needs to se separate, can go and get the football. The, you know, we need to see Dallas play some some tight man coverage if they have to and and be able, you know, if this if they let if they let T McMillan just run in space, it could be a long day. Now, again, I I’ll say this, the quarterback sometimes can’t get him the ball. that that’s going to be a problem. But all of a sudden, we didn’t think that, oh, Caleb Williams, can Caleb Williams get these guys the ball? And he was able to do it. So, just don’t let that happen. McMillan is is a guy that is very, very capable. He hasn’t have a touchdown yet, but he has a lot of targets. He’s going to he’s going to be sure-handed, and you have to be ready for him going and getting that football because that’s something he’s really really good at. Have they been throwing interceptions or I think he has I think he has four. I think we got eight touchdowns, four interceptions because I’m curious to see just if this is another opportunity for the defense to kind of keep building on that because that’s something that Shottenheimr continues to talk about and he emphasized that last week getting ready to face the Jets. They were working on punching the ball, getting the the turnovers, creating those um uh getting attacking the ball, getting the ball. And a lot of people I’ve heard people say, “Oh, well, how about you just mainly focus on tackling?” Well, you can do both. Okay. And with tackling also comes you getting to the ball and vice versa. If you’re trying to get to the ball, you can also tackle at the same time. Anyways, the point is I I know that has been a big emphasis right now and something that the Cowboys continue to work during the week. So, I’m curious to see I was curious to see how uh with this matchup if it creates more opportunities for the defense to get their hands on the ball. The quarterback drop the quarterback will fumble the ball in the pocket. He like to get set. He likes he likes to get sacked. He would he would he would rather get sacked than to throw the ball downfield to the other team somewhere. So if you’re if you’re getting turnovers, it’s him and his little hands just dropping the football somewhere. Good thing is that they they’ve been poking the ball out that they certainly had one last week. I think that’s what they’ve been practicing all throughout training camp. Coach believes that at some point it’s going to kick in and you’re going to start getting a spa getting them in spades. So we’ll see if that happens. Uh but we’ve seen it happen a couple times now. We’ll see if that continues and we’ll see. Certainly they they will be trying to create those kinds of turnovers. Uh we’ll see if that happens this weekend. All right, that’s a wrap. We’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll go into the Carolina’s uh defense versus the Dallas Cowboys offense. Till then for Vot Lombardi, Brian Bratus, Amber Garcia, I’m Dererick Eagleton. This has been the break live on dallascowboys.com radio. This has been a production of DallasCowboys.com and the Dallas Cowboys Football
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3 comments
Watching this then crown global at 1 everyday has been amazing
😊 my daily local Cowboys news 😊
Do you think the young Lbs can't see thru or filter out the wash in font of em ?