In Depth Look: Dallas Cowboys

General Outlook

Oh boy, if you thought the Cowboys were being used a lot last year, you have not seen anything yet. Dallas had a very impressive off-season with the additions of Adam Jones and Zach Thomas, the draft that brought in two very promising players in Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins, and re-signing a key player on both sides of the ball giving Marion Barber and Terrence Newman nice, lengthy contracts. For you guys who love a well balanced team, this is one that you will fall in love with instantly in ‘09.

Offense

One of the best all around offenses in Madden 09. This team has what most people look for in an offense.

A quarterback with great accuracy, good strength, and is pretty fast

A runningback with good speed, vision, and an absolute beast at trucking.

A tight end who has good speed, can catch, and can block

A wide receiver who’s fast, great hands, spectacular catch, tall/big, and of course who can use the new celebration feature in ‘09 well

Combine those anchors to 2 receivers who are really good compliments to Owens in Glenn (possibly) and Crayton, a very good offensive line, and a couple excelent rookie backups at HB in Tashard Choice and Felix Jones, and you have an offense that will get you down the field as fast as it takes Ted Washington to devour a 4 course meal.

Utilizing the Cowboys Offense

Since their offense is pretty diverse in what you can do, there are many ways you can utilize them.
The best way of starting off drives (assuming you are not getting wrecked) would be to pound the ball with Marion Barber down the middle with an occasional stretch play. The stretch play will not work as well with him as it would for, let’s say, Adrian Peterson because he doesn’t have that great break away speed where he can run to the sidelines and up quickly. However, when the defense buys into you pounding up the gut, they will naturally tend to pinch and crash the line with the linebackers also coming down. This will leave some good space for an 8-12 yard gain (depending on the safety/cornerback and if you truck them).

The stretch play, toss, counter, or any play that involves going outside should be left to the quick Felix Jones (96 speed and 99 acceleration). Just like last year, the Run ‘N’ Gun playbook should be good with this team. Fullhouse it with Barber, Choice, and Jones and your going to have defenses not knowing what to do.

I’d say it’s pretty easy to conclude that Terrell Owens and Jason Witten are the focal points of the passing game.  Both are top 3 at their respective positions. You will be passing to those two a lot, and for good reason.

Tony Romo has excellent accuracy which means that precision passing is definitely recommended. Owens can burn pretty much any cornerback (although it may be different this year, so he won’t be consistently burning slower but great cornerbacks because of his speed….such as Nnamdi Asomugha) and has a size advantage over basically every corner. If you notice he’s match on a smaller corner, the obvious thing to do would be precision it up and to the right or left (depending on if the corner has inside or outside position on him). It will probably be different this year with that, however, because let’s face it, in ‘08 that would work way too often and it was extremely unrealstic having that happen to small, but good corners.  Anyways, this year, he has to probably have a very defined inside or outside position for it to work on a consistent basis. Use deep posts and fades with Owens, and you will find him making a lot of plays on slower corners or corners with a fairly low man coverage rating. However, it is not going to be like last year where you could do a deep post with him on every playing against (using my favorite example again) a let’s say, Nnamdi Asomugha, and he’d always get it (assuming this was a straight man, or man cover 2). Owens has speed and height, the best combination in Madden these days, so use it! Get him on streaks and precision up.

Jason Witten. What to say about this guy? He’s a beast. He has good speed, he can catch, he can jump, and can block well for a TE. He is one of those perfect tight ends. Unlike most tight ends, you can run him on streaks and hit him a good percentage of the times. Fade routes and streaks (with the occasional flat route) would be a good choice with Witten because of his speed, height, jumping, and catching ability.

As for Crayton and Glenn? Use both of them on short crosses, quick flat passes, up ‘n’ in, and occassionally deep posts. Their speeds(91 and 93 respectively) are not to fast, so you won’t be winning too many streaks. Screens also could be quite effective with Crayton and Glenn, because they both have a good elusive rating (94).
When it comes down to it though, Owens will be your main weapon, followed by Witten. However, you may see a lot of double teams which is why having 2 solid WRs is very good to perhaps get that extra man off Owens.

Key Offensive Players: Stength/Weaknesses

Tony Romo

Strength(s): Accuracy. With an accuracy rating of 96, he is among the best. What’s great is, is that you can  combine that with his speed and rollout a lot, being able to hit targets the majority of the time.  Use precision passing when you are getting ready to pass, and you will be having a lot of passing touchdowns with him

Weakness(’): Awareness. Among better QBs in Madden (Brady, P. Manning, Brees, Roethlisberger, etc) he has the lowest awareness rating at 80. While he does have accuracy, watch out for those occasional “what the hell was he trying to do” type of passes.

Marion Barber

Strength(s): Well, strength! Or power. Whatever you want to call it. You want to get in Barber’s way? Go right ahead, but don’t expect to be pushing him back, or even tackling him at all. Ninety percent of the time, Barber will go forward on a tackle from someone without the the big hit icon.  That, or he will demolish you by running you over like you are still learning how to tackle.

Weakness(’): Speed. You won’t be breaking many huge runs with him because of his speed of 92. He may run you over, but he won’t go far before being chased down.

Terrell Owens

Strength(s): Size, speed, and catching. One of the best in all three, it’s not hard to tell that he will get open A LOT and you will be throwing to him A LOT.  He will catch pretty much anything he gets his hands on, so don’t just worry about covering up if you are surrounded.

Weakness(’): He doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses, however, he tends to fumble more then one may like. I’ve often found him fumbling more then Moss, Chad Johnson, Steve Smith, etc. He won’t fumble much, but he I’d reccomend covering the ball if there is a big hitter close to where you catch it.

Jason Witten

Strength(s): Catching, speed, and jumping. Second to only Antonio Gates in the tight end category, Witten posseses some of the best receiving skills for a tight end. Precision up on streaks, and you are certain to hit him on a few flats.

Weakness(’): None. Witten has yet to show any weakness (Madden wise). He’s one of the 2 or 3 complete tight ends in the league.

Leonard Davis

Stength(s): Run Blocking. The guy is a flat out beast. He is one of the best run blockers in the game with 99 strength, 99 run block strength, and 85 run block footwork. Having Marion Barber run behind him, and you’ll pick up a lot of yards

Weakness(’): Pass block footwork. Only at 75, he does lack a little. While his strength is great, he will juked occasionally by a finnesse player.

Defense

The stock defense lacks at the defensive line position with Spears being the anchor. However, they have great depth at linebacker, so putting Ware and Ellis on the line will make the defense a lot better.

Let’s assume you don’t though, boy that linebacking corps is good. You have the best overall Linebacker in DeMarcus Ware (he can do it all, better at coverage then Merriman), Greg Ellis, and the off-season acquisition, Zach Thomas. It’s truly one of the best in Madden, and in real life.

Secondary, very good. Speed demon, Terrence Newman and Anthony Henry as the starting corners, with two big hitters with Hamlin at FS and Roy Williams at SS who will lay out anyone. With Adam Jones as a backup to Henry/Newman, you have a little depth just in case one of them gets injured.

Utilizing the Cowboys Defense

Utilizing the Cowboys defense is quite simple. Put DeMarcus Ware at RE and Greg Ellis at LE. Now at LOLB you have Anthony Spencer (fast) and Bobby Carpenter at ROLB (also fast). You now have a much better defensive line and a pretty good linebacker corp. This gets great pressure without losing the coverage at LB.

At cornerback, I believe a lot of people may put Adam Jones in for Anthony Henry because of speed (and of course experimenting). However, since ‘09 seems to not be as “if you have speed, you can be amazing” look to it, but more of how good the corner actually is (thank god).

Again, very simple. User controlling Roy Williams would be a good bet because of how atrocious his coverage is.

Key Defensive Players: Stength/Weaknesses

DeMarcus Ware

Strength(s): I believe DeMarcus is as close to a perfect Linebacker as you can get. He is good in everything…pass rush, run stop, coverage, strength, speed, ahhh. He’s a beast. I don’t want to pick out one strength because he doesn’t just do everything well, he does everything at an elite level.

Weakness(’): None. See strengths.

Terrence Newman

Strength(s): Speed and Man Coverage. He’s great at both. He will keep up with the fastest WRs with league, and play solid man. One of the best in the league, and he definitely shows it game in and game out. He also has a fairly good press rating at 85, so don’t be scared to press that WR.

Weakness(’): Tackling. Great at coverage, but not a great tackler with a 55 rating. So watch out if a, let’s say, Brandon Jacobs or Darren McFadden is coming at him. He will get run over and juked a lot.

Zach Thomas

Strength(s): Tackling. Zach’s getting a little old, but that doesn’t mean anything in Madden. He is a tackling machine. He won’t get juked or trucked much. The best of off-season acquisitions by Dallas, he is a great addition to an already great LB corp.

Weakness(’): Agility. Doesn’t have great agility at all. This combined with him being not too strong means he may have trouble at times getting in between blocks. Nothing huge, but it’s something that may make him a weak at times.

Roy Williams

Strength(s): Big hits. The best at it, he will rock your world. He will mess up spectacular catch receivers and anyone who is running his way. If you decide to run to him, be sure to cover the ball to POSSIBLY avoid a fumble.

Weakness(’): Coverage. Let’s face it, he is AWFUL in coverage. You better hope Newman doesn’t get beat or slip on snow or something, but Williams will not be able to do anything when trying to cover Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Andre Johnson, etc.

Conclusion

Dallas maybe the most used team this year, and for a good reason. They simply have one of the best all round teams.

See you in ‘09!