Yikes, The Cowboys Are Good

Really, really good.

I don't want to rehash what's already been written, so let's take as our starting point this preview of the game written by the Inquirer's Ashley Fox.  I've noticed a couple times this year that Fox has been the reporter assigned to writing about the Eagles' upcoming opponents, which has to be kind of a bummer of a way to cover a team.  Everyone else is in Philly rocking it up at the Linc and you get to drive up to the Meadowlands to cover the pitiful Jets. 

Anyway, she sets out a pretty good overview of what's roaring into town this weekend:

[Dallas has] the conference's top-ranked offense and defense, and the league's second-best offense behind the juggernaut that is the New England Patriots. Dallas is balanced, with the rushing tandem of Julius Jones and the shifty Marion Barber, and with Tony Romo, he of the new contract extension, under center.

In his first full year as a starter, Romo ranks fifth - behind Tom Brady, David Garrard, Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger - with a 95.6 passer rating. His 62.8 completion percentage is 19th in the league but still pretty good. The nine interceptions are the glaring weakness on an otherwise gaudy stat sheet.

As for Owens, he isn't the Cowboys' leading receiver. That honor goes to tight end Jason Witten, who has 42 catches. But Owens' 556 receiving yards and five touchdown catches are team highs.

Scratch the surface of those numbers though and they get even scarier.  Here's an offensive comparison between the two teams:

Ouch.  As we all know, those Eagles' numbers would look a lot uglier without the one big game against the Lions.  And check out that last column.  Those are the points and yards per game numbers for the Eagles during their first seven games last year, when Donovan's Deep Attack was blitzing the rest of the league.

Through seven games, the Cowboys are outscoring that offense.

The defensive numbers are somewhat more balanced:

The Dallas defense officially ranks higher than the Eagles because it's been stingier with the yardage, but as usual Jim Johnson's unit has been better at preventing points than the yard numbers would suggest.  The bad news is that that's the only major statistical category in which the Eagles surpass the Cowboys.

If you're looking for silver linings, Romo's tendency to throw interceptions, mentioned by Fox above, is a place to start.  Here's the turnover breakdown:

That table gives you a sense that these are two very different teams.  The Eagles take great care of the football.  Say what you want about Donovan's unwillingness to do a Brett Favre impression, but the results speak for themselves.  He's generally not going to put his defense in a bad position out there.  The bad news is that the Eagles defense has not done a good job forcing turnovers (which is kind of a scary stat). 

The Cowboys, on the other hand, treat the football like one of Tony Romo's increasingly long string of celebrity girlfriends: disposable, and if they lose it they'll just get a new one and score with that instead.

The funny thing is that both teams end up in the same place, with mediocre +1 turnover ratios.  It will be interesting to see if either side breaks the trend in this game.      

Now yes, you can argue that the Cowboys really haven't played anyone of note other than the Patriots.  But it's not like the Eagles have been facing the truly elite teams either. 

Long story short, there are better teams to be facing the week of a must-win game.  Maybe we could convince the Vikings to come back and take another shot.