Cowboys vs. Patriots: The latest news from the New England side of things

We stay you up-to-the-minute on all things Cowboys, however now we’re beginning a brand new collection the place we take a peek at the enemy. This week it’s the Patriots.

• By
  
  TCDeckard
  
• on September 29, 2023 8:00 pm

Patriots Gameplan: Keys to Victory and Marquee Matchups in Sunday’s Showdown vs. the Cowboys in Dallas – Evan Lazar, Patriots.com

The Patriots might glance to the Arizona movie for a blueprint to overcome the Cowboys.

Getting into the Patriots gameplan, the Cardinals gave the Pats a blueprint of their large win ultimate week. Arizona’s formulation was once proscribing the Cowboys to just 8 offensive drives with a dominant run sport and forcing Dallas into lengthy drives on offense to attain. Defensively, the Cardinals had a sport plan very similar to New England’s in opposition to the Jets ultimate Sunday in the Meadowlands.

Arizona performed 32 snaps in a base 3-4 protection in opposition to Dallas’s under-center formations. By taking part in heavy body of workers, the Cardinals saved the Cowboys from totally gashing them on the floor as they constructed a lead. Arizona then performed zone protection, most commonly split-safety zone, to have a five-man beneath zone distribution to take quick passes, whilst the deep safeties and middle-hole defender took away play-action photographs. The Cowboys effectively ran the ball even down more than one offensive linemen, however Arizona held them to five.5 yards in line with go, made a number of key pink zone stops in the 2d part, and Dallas’s scoring drives have been 10, 13, 13, and 12 performs.

The Pats used a identical technique, albeit in opposition to a far lesser quarterback, of their win over the Jets. New England performed 21 snaps in base protection and 16 go performs in the split-safety zone, proscribing New York’s speeding assault to one.7 yards in line with rush in a 15-10 win.

Although it’s in opposition to more difficult pageant, the plan shouldn’t trade a lot this week. The opponent’s head trainer and offensive play-caller has publicly proclaimed that Dallas needs to be a run-heavy operation, they usually aren’t working the ball from unfold formations with Dak concerned on designed quarterback runs as frequently. Unless the Cowboys totally trade their method, that is smash-mouth soccer with a Pats workforce that’s greater than keen to play that emblem of protection, and Dallas has a number of accidents alongside its offensive line which might be value tracking.

Will Mac Jones get Patriots’ deep passing game going against Cowboys? – Mike Reiss, ESPN

Mac Jones needs to hit the deep ball to get the Patriots offense in rhythm.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — When it involves hitting large passing performs down the box, New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones is decided to stay casting his line regardless of restricted good fortune.

“I love chunk plays. My whole career, I’ve kind of thrived off those — play-action and normal chunk plays. Just trying to keep doing them — you have to keep the hook in the water, have the bait out there and continue to fish,” he mentioned.

The 24-year-old Jones is aware of lots about the price of explosive passing performs going again to his faculty days at Alabama, however the ones have eluded him early in the 2023 season.

“We definitely work hard on that,” offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien mentioned. “I feel there’s some things that we’re doing beautiful smartly, and we need to do so much of things higher offensively — together with our skill to get the ball down the box, bite performs.

“There are a lot of different factors that go into that. How the game is being played. How we want to play the game as a team. What we’re trying to do to win the football game — a lot of it based on how our defense is playing, how their defense is [playing]. We’ll continue to do what’s best for us in order to win the football game, but we definitely need to improve getting the ball down the field, chunk plays.”

Six reasons to be optimistic about the Patriots’ chances against the Cowboys – Ben Volin, The Boston Globe

New England appears to take advantage of spaces of worry for the Cowboys, regardless of the roster merit for Dallas.

On paper, Sunday’s sport at AT&T Stadium is a mismatch. The 2-1 Cowboys rank 5th in the NFL in scoring (29 issues in line with sport), whilst the 1-2 Patriots rank twenty sixth (17). The Cowboys completed 12-5 every of the ultimate two years and taken again a star-studded roster with 8 Pro Bowlers, together with go rusher Micah Parsons, perhaps the best defensive player in the NFL. The Patriots have completed beneath .500 in two of the ultimate 3 seasons and had only one Pro Bowler ultimate 12 months, Matthew Judon.

“They’ve got a lot of firepower,” Bill Belichick mentioned. “A lot of experience on this team. They go out there and they do a lot of things well. You can see why they have the consistency that they’ve had.”

But don’t mark this one in the loss column simply but. The Cowboys can have secured blowout wins over the Giants and Jets to start the season, however a number of flaws have been uncovered in last week’s 28-16 loss at Arizona.

Coach Mike McCarthy recognized 3 of them:

“We’ve got three blinking lights as a football team — team penalties, red zone offense, and run defense. So they’ve been highlighted, they’ve been coached, but we are on to the plan to beat New England.”

Friday’s damage file for New England @ Dallas.

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