Tony Romo took issue today with the heavy criticism being lobbed in the general direction of his offensive coordinator/ assistant head coach, Jason Garrett, a result, among other things, of the fact that Dallas's running backs got only 11 carries during Sunday's 17-7 loss in Green Bay.
This, of course, led to the Packers defensive front to harass Romo with impunity, a lopsided time of possession split and, eventually, a deluge of second guessing. In this, Romo sees a problem.
"When people talk about it’s time to run the ball more and things of that nature,it’s simply a matter of each game is different,” Romo said, per ESPNDallas. "If a team is consistently going to put an eighth man in the box, you’d be dumb to consistently run the ball 34 times into it."
As ESPNDallas's Tim MacMahon points out, though, there is a discrepancy in this description of Green Bay's defense and the one he gave in response to a question about Miles Austin: namely, they weren't loading the box quite as much as Romo seemed to think when discussing the run-pass ratio.
Even if they were consistently loading the box, the lowliest high school whistle-jockey could tell you that abandoning the run to the degree that Dallas did on Sunday is ultimately and incontrovertibly a detriment to an offense.
"It’s all different," Romo continued. "You want to be able to do everything well. That way, when a game calls for 45 passes, you do that well. When a game calls for 45 runs, you do that well. Over the course of a season, it ends up equaling out."
Which is true as well; but by this logic, a team that only throws in one game and only passes in another is a healthy, balanced offense. That is, a cumulative perspective says nothing of what is dictated by circumstance. And last Sunday, it's safe to assume, the run was in order more than the mere 11 instances in which it was seen.
