Absence of Downfield Throws Doesn't Bother Garrett

In his first start in the place of Tony Romo, Brandon Weeden took a shot downfield exactly once, on the second play of the game.

For awhile, that seemed fine. The run game was working, Dallas jumped out to a few 14-point leads, and everything was hunky dory. But then the run game stopped working, which led to a lot of third-and-longs, which led to a whole lot of third down check down passes--in most cases to Lance Dunbar, who accounted for almost half of Weeden’s 22 completions--and a whole lot of punts.

Simply put, there was zero deep threat for the defense, which made their job a whole lot easier down the stretch.

But, aside from acknowledging that there might have been some missed opportunities over the course of the game, Garrett defended Weeden’s decision-making after the 39-28 loss.

“You have to understand what their style of defense is,” Garrett told the team’s official website. “They commit a lot of people to the line of scrimmage and then their corners play high. If you can picture Seattle’s corners how they play high and deep. Not many people make a lot of big plays. That’s the style of defense. So they help themselves that way by making it difficult for you to run the football and equally make it challenging for you to make big plays in the passing game. There were some opportunities to throw the ball outside to the outside receivers that we didn’t take full advantage of. To say we should’ve thrown it down the field more, I don’t know that’s accurate.”