Cowboys Q&A with Blogging the Boys

As we take this journey through the Eye On the Enemy series, it’s important (at least to me) to get insight from those that are closer to the rival teams than we are. That means having conversations with writers from opposing teams. That’s exactly what I did for an Eye On the Enemy Extra for the Dallas Cowboys.

RJ Ochoa of Blogging the Boys was kind enough to swing by and answer the remaining questions we had about the Cowboys after The Kist & Solak Show #101. When I raised concerns about the hype around the offense, he had some interesting things to say about the Jason Garrett-Scott-Linehan-Kellen Moore dynamic.

“... the 2017 season was horrific for the Cowboys in many ways, especially offensively. I don’t know that people realize there was a stretch, and one of the games was that game against Philadelphia, where the Cowboys scored single digits in three straight games. That had never happened before in franchise. And somehow Scott Linehan was retained…

And if you look at it every time Garrett has been on the ropes as a head coach, there’s always been this sort of thing to save him. Whether it was that 2014 season or whether it was Scott Linehan’s incompetence. He always has the buffer between him and death. It’s like when you play Mario and you would run into the bad guy but right as you jumped you caught an extra life, so that was the life you burned? That’s kind of how Garrett is…

I do believe that Jason Garrett willingly – as ridiculous as this sounds – allowed Scott Linehan to be incompetent with the offense. I mean, you have the fortune of covering a team that is really creative offensively, and the Cowboys have refused to adapt to that, at least until now.”

The theory that Garrett happily offered up as a sacrificial lamb his long-time friend is a fascinating one. It seems that Garrett had an ace up his sleeve towards the end of the season. Ochoa went on to explain that there were rumblings that Kellen Moore had more to do with the gameplan in Week 17 against the New York Giants than Scott Linehan. The Cowboys posted their second highest point total of the season and Dak Prescott threw for 4 touchdowns and 387 yards. Despite that, Ochoa remains skeptical that Moore will be a cure-all.

“Two of the three quarterbacks on the Cowboys roster beat out Kellen to be on the roster, that’s kind of unnerving. And the third Kellen hand-chose last year during the draft in Mike White as his first sort of quarterback pick. Look, if Kellen Moore is this brilliant young mind that’s just waiting in the wings then great, but I feel like we’ve placed a lot of optimism on his not so sturdy shoulders, but I hope that he certainly lives up to it.”

Other topics include:

• What to expect from an offense coordinated by Moore
• Ezekiel Elliott vs. Saquon Barkley
• Finding a complementary pass rusher to DeMarcus Lawrence
• An update on Randy Gregory’s shaky situation
• Concerns in the secondary
• Win-loss predictions for the Cowboys

You can hear all of that on Eye On the Enemy Extra with RJ Ochoa of Blogging the Boys. Listen to it on the media player below or click here if the player doesn’t load. New to podcasts? Check out our guide on how to listen to BGN! FLY EAGLES FLY!