By Wayne Tackett
The Cowboys got blown out in the home opener against the New Orleans Saints 44-19 in embarrassing fashion. Let’s start with the positive highlights before all of the negatives in this game. Brandon Aubrey was the only bright spot going 4-4 on FG attempts and 1-1 on an extra point attempt. Now, let’s get to the nitty gritty of this embarrassing loss, the Saints first 6 drives of the game resulted in 6 touchdowns and 4 of them came from star running back Alvin Kamara. Now we can point the fingers at the coaches but after rewatching the game, it was simply an effort issue with this defense on Sunday. How could they dominate in week 1 against the Browns and then fall completely flat against the Saints in week 2? While rewatching this game, the scheme and disguises set up by Cowboys Head Coach Zimmer were there to stop them multiple times, but the lack of effort and execution by the players were the main reason they lost. It all started with the Defensive line and specifically the Defensive tackles. Their job is to do the dirty work, fill in the gaps to make the linebackers job easier to get the running back and to say they didn’t do their job is an understatement. The defensive tackles in the trenches were beat off the line of scrimmage almost every single rep and usually you’d see those lineman try to get back but they decided to just give up on the plays. When it rains it pours, and Derek Carr made it rain on the Cowboys secondary passing for 11/16, 243 passing yards and 2 Touchdowns but what made it worse was how bad the safeties were during the game. The Saints chose to go after the Cowboys secondary on the deep ball and they got beat every time, the footwork was poor and the eyes of the secondary faced a different direction in some of the reps against the big plays for New Orleans. Overall, whenever you play probably the worst game of the season on both sides of the ball, the only way from here is up.
