Bryan Broaddus, former NFL personnel man, joined the Shan & RJ show on 105.3 The Fan [KRLD-FM] on Thursday to talk all things Dallas Cowboys ahead of Sunday’s game against the Rams. Here are some of the highlights.
Is the Rams offensive line the biggest key to that offense’s turnaround?
Bryan Broaddus: “This is a big play offense and what it does is it relies on the offensive line to kind of give them the protection in order to make that happen. They’ve done a lot better job the last three weeks of protecting Jared Goff. And you know, he’s one of those guys as we’ve seen 1 everybody has watched enough Rams’ games to understand that when he faces pressure he is not as good of a quarterback. Quarterback rating is not as good, it’s down in the 70s, maybe 74%. But when he gets protection, they thrive, like I said, on those big plays.
“They lead the league in 20-yard plus plays. It’s a group that when they give him time and he can sit there and survey the field and they got the weapons on the outside with the Cooper Kupps and the Robert Woods and the Brandin Cooks and guys like that, that can kind of make some things happen. Tyler Higbee, this TE, is another weapon they have on offense. So they can kind of get you at all different levels, again, when they get that protection.”
How much has Goff really regressed?
Broaddus: “Well the pressure is clearly a problem for him. That’s where we talk about the protection, the weapons, the things around him. They’re still a very very big play offense like I talked about, but when he faces pressure he has not adapted very well. Teams get after him. My old friend Mike Lombardi likes to say this, ‘when you get heated up’ — when you heat him up, he is going to have problems.
“That’s the problem with the Cowboys now, they’re like a middle of the road pass rushing team right now. Can you bring pressure and even when you do bring pressure, quarterbacks have had success throwing the football against these guys. So, yea, this is going to be a tough matchup.
“The regression is — he is still the same quarterback as far as making the big plays, the regression is that he hasn’t been able to pick up the fact that teams know when the pressure him that he has problems. He hasn’t gotten better at that aspect of the game. If he were to improve on that, then you would see a quarterback that we would all be talking about like this is one of the top eight quarterbacks in the league when it comes to overall play.”
