pragmatic approach to this 2-0 preseason start, quick to remind it's just preseason, but wants to point out none of this doesn't matter because "if you can't do it in preseason, I don't know you have a great opportunity to do it in the regular season."
Now evidently some of the Broncos got their tails braided too tight Saturday night, something about Phillips unleashing all these blitzes, which is supposed to be in Preseason According to Mr. Lynch, a no-no.
What a compliment to the Cowboys defense. Those guys were so suffocating, it must have appeared to the Broncos the Cowboys were throwing the kitchen sink at them since to a man they insist they did nothing differently in the game from what they practiced four times in two days against the Broncos.
But what's a blitz? If you are playing a 3-4, does that mean you are only allowed to rush three guys? So if I send one linebacker, that's a blitz? Gimmie a break.
If you are playing Phillips' style of the 3-4, and your base defense calls for each man up front to slant into predetermined gaps, does that mean you are blitzing when Bradie James simply fires into his gap next to nose tackle Jason Ferguson? And if Fergie gets a sack - he did - was he blitzing?
"Believe me, we didn't show it all," Ferguson insisted. "We might have shown two bullets."
Listening to the Broncos, you'd have thought the Cowboys had emptied a Gatling gun.
Just hope the Cowboys didn't unleash some exotic plays to produce those 190 yards rushing for gosh sakes.
Whatever.
None of that matters. What matters is there is this growing sense of confidence building in that locker room, along with this underlying camaraderie evidenced just from listening to the exchange between Ferguson and Leonard Davis, whose lockers are now next to each other, but with very little room to spare between them on the benches when they are sitting down at the same time.
This is a team starting to feel good about itself.
"You can see it in our faces," James says of the excitement, and that is important, preseason or not, especially with basically a new coaching staff onboard needing some results to qualify its methods and teachings.
Now if you are looking for that same excitement in the head coach's face, you are wasting your time. Phillips is a sly ol' fox, one of those Texas-bred, aw-shucks, understaters. But if you listen carefully, he says a lot not saying much, if you get what I mean.
And don't think for one minute this isn't important to him, or he doesn't have the reins properly clutched on this team.
"It means something to Wade Phillips to be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys," said former Cowboys special teams assistant Joe Avezzano at the book unveiling Monday afternoon. "He's from Texas."
A mouthful, really, but yet another one of those many indicators floating around The Ranch suggesting something just might be a brewin' out here.
Beware the oomph.
