Cold, Hard Football Facts.com: An Amazing Gridiron Grid: Green Bay vs. Dallas

An Amazing Gridiron Grid: Green Bay vs. Dallas
Cold, Hard Football Facts for November 29, 2007

Call us suckers for a good comeback story.

Actually, don’t. We’d rather gnaw off our own fingers (maybe with a little mustard and plenty of relish) than feel emotion over something as ethereal and fleeting as a feel-good story.

But the Packers and Cowboys give us two of the great revival stories of the 2007 season.

The Packers were 4-7 at this point last year and calls echoed from near and far for aging old warhorse Brett Favre to hang up the lucky horseshoes and retire to the great big gridiron glue factory in the sky (or maybe in the broadcast booth). The Cowboys last year were mired in controversy at quarterback – out went the old (Drew Bledsoe) and in came the new (no-name Tony Romo). The season ended disastrously, with a humiliating wildcard playoff loss to Seattle, and then the departure of famous coach Bill Parcells, leaving the organization in flux.

Today, the Packers and Cowboys are undoubtedly back as the two premier teams in the NFC and, in all likelihood, one of these legendary franchises will return to the Super Bowl – the Packers for the fifth time, the Cowboys for the ninth. Tonight's meeting between the two will play a role in that outcome.

In fact, this game is so great, it makes us think of beer (of course, everything makes us think of beer). Specifically, it reminds us of those old Miller Lite commercials from 25 years ago: everything you wanted in a game, and more!

Here's what it offers.

Great records: Both teams are 10-1.

Glitz and glamour: America’s Team vs. the Title Town Packers in a battle of the NFL’s two premier franchises of the past half century.

Big names: Green Bay’s Brett Favre is a first ballot Hall of Famer, former Super Bowl champ, three-time MVP, all-time wins leaders and top passer in almost every category in history. If that’s not enough for you, he just so happens to be playing the best ball of his career. Dallas’s dimpled boy-wonder Tony Romo is the game’s next quarterbacking wunderkind while his batterymate Terrell Owens has been making big plays and big headlines for more than a decade.

Postseason impact: The winner of this game will have an effective two-game lead in the race for homefield advantage throughout the NFC playoffs, with just four games to play.

Great legacies: In 1966 and 1967, Dallas and Green Bay gave us two of the most memorable NFL championship games in history, with the dynastic Packers barely edging out the upstart Cowboys each time to advance to, and win, the first two Super Bowls. If not for those two nail-biting victories, the teams today might by vying for the Landryy Trophy at the end of the season. The two franchises have met four times since in the playoffs, including a win by Troy Aikman’s Cowboys over Favre’s Packers in the 1995 NFC title game. And today, we’re just 32 days shy of the 40th anniversary of the most famous game in NFL history, the Dallas-Green Bay Ice Bowl.

National attention: Well, one thing is missing tonight. The game will be shown on NFL Network, which is available in only 35 million of the nation’s 105 million households. The greed-soaked pissing match between the NFL and cable broadcasters remains the lone dark cloud separating this game from a true national classic that every football fan can remember years from now.

So the game has everything ... except, yet, a winner. But we'll take the best shot at picking one you'll find anywhere in the seedy, booze-soaked underworld of online gridiron analysis.

Here are the Packers and Cowboys sized up in our Gridiron Grid. Agree or disagree as you will. But in either case, soak in the pure statistical and analytical majesty of the Cold, Hard Football Facts.

GREEN BAY at DALLAS

Green Bay Packers	Teams	Dallas Cowboys
10-1	Overall Record	10-1
3-0 (+13.3)	Quality Records (differential)	2-1 (0.0)
18.75 YPPA (4)	Bendability Index (rank)	14.89 YPPA (18)
14.14 YPPS (7)	Scoreability Index (rank)	11.95 YPPS (2)
12.3 (11)	Offensive Hog Index (rank)	6.7 (2)
8(4)	Defensive Hog Index (rank)	7.3 (2)
7.45 (3)	Passing YPA (rank)	7.95 (2)
77.0 (10)	Defensive Passer Rating (rank)	73.4 (5)
+20 (3)	Big Play Index (rank)	+12 (7)
+6.5	Line	-6.5
51.5	Over/Under	51.5

As we noted earlier this week, Green Bay and Dallas are, like their AFC powermates New England and Indy were a few weeks ago, statistically tight as ticks. In our seven Quality Stats, they combine to rank in the Top 10 in 12 of 14 categories.

Dallas has the edge in five of our seven Quality Stats. But the edges are not great. For example, how much stock do you put in the ability of Dallas's No. 2 Offensive Hogs to overpower Green Bay's No. 4 Defensive Hogs?

Dallas's No. 2 Defensive Hogs, meanwhile, clearly have an advantage over Green Bay's No. 11 Offensive Hogs. In fact, it's the biggest statistical mismatch in favor of the Cowboys. But those Offensive Hogs for the Packers suffer from a well-known inability to run effectively (3.58 YPA, 25ht in the league). And that inability to run, which all Cold, Hard Football Facts know really has little impact on a team's overall ability to win, hasn't stopped the Packers from scoring a solid 26.9 PPG (5th). For their part, of course, the Cowboys are second in the NFL, scoring an awesome 32.5 PPG.

Green Bay, on its side of the ledger, has two huge advantages, and they're the advantages that should concern Cowboys fans the most. Neither team has feasted upon a particularly tough schedule, as noted by the three games each has played against Quality Teams. In Green Bay's case, it's been wins over the Giants, Chargers and Lions, hardly a power troika. In Dallas's case, it's been two wins over the haphazard Giants and a loss to the Evil Empire.

But given this test limited test group, the Packers have clearly performed better against teams with winning records. Even if we toss out Dallas's game against New England (which Cowboys emailers this week have insisted we do, with a rare combination of arrogance and admission of inferiority), the Cowboys are 2-0 with a +10.5 scoring differential against Quality Teams. The Packers, meanwhile are 3-0 and +13.3 against Quality Teams.

The Packers even outperformed Dallas against their lone common Quality Opponent: Green Bay beat the Giants by 22 points (35-13) in New York. The Cowboys beat the Giants by 10 points at home (45-35) and 11 points on the road (31-20). Of course, as Dallas fans have been quick to point out to us all week, the Packers lost to another common opponent, Chicago, 27-20, at home. The Cowboys killed the Bears, 34-10, in Chicago.

The other concern for the Cowboys is this, and it's a big concern: the disconnect between their defensive stats and their ability to keep teams out of the end zone. Dallas is No. 2 in Defensive Hog Index and No. 5 in Defensive Passer Rating. Sounds like a formidable defensive unit: tough up front and in back.

Yet why is Dallas merely 10th in scoring defense, allowing 20.1 PPG? Compare that to Green Bay, which doesn't look as good on paper defensively, but certainly looks much better on the field than Dallas, surrendering 16.8 PPG.

Even worse for Dallas is the 34.3 PPG it has surrendered to its three Quality Opponents.

To put that in perspective, folks, in the entire NFL, only Buffalo is worse, surrendering 36.2 PPG to Quality Opponents. Everybody else, even the Rams, Dolphins, Jets, 49ers and the rest of the NFL's bottom dredgers have been more effective defensively against Quality Teams than the Cowboys.

There's no way to sugarcoat that performance, folks, and to do is to suffer from fan-itis, the disease that renders football fans incapable of looking at their teams rationally and critically.

Again, we can toss out the Patriots game for Dallas as a statistical outlier (New England scored 48 against Dallas), and the Cowboys have still surrendered 55 points in two games against the Giants (27.5 PPG), again a figure among the worst in the league. And that was against an offense led by a below mediocre Eli Manning. Imagine what a first-rate Brett Favre might be able to do?

Which brings us to another concern with the Cowboys defense: they're No. 5 in Defensive Passer Rating (73.4). But agains the one above-mediocre quarterback they faced all year (Tom Brady) they were absolutely shredded in every way shape or form (Brady's day: 31 for 46, 388 yards, 8.4 YPA, 5 TD, 0 INT, 129.6 rating). Favre and the Packers won't match those numbers. But they do pose the second-best passing attack the Cowboys have faced all year.

This disconnect between the way the Dallas defense looks on paper and the way it performs on the field is highlighted in our Bendability Index, where the Cowboys rank just 18th in the league. Clearly, it's the worst measure in our Quality Stats among either team.

It tells us a lot: Basically, it tells us that the Cowboys are a talented team, but one that does a lot of little things wrong and constantly puts itself in bad situations, whether by turnovers, poor special teams play, penalties, or any of a number of other factors. The bottom line is that Dallas routinely gives up way more points than it should. (Tony Romo is one place to look. He has thrown 13 picks and only three struggling QBs on struggling teams have thrown more Drew Brees, Eli Manning and Carson Palmer, with 15 each).

The Cowboys are America's Team and deservedly so, based upon their historic greatness that extends now into its fifth decade. But that status sometimes earns them accolades they don't deserve. And this appears to be one of those times. That status is compounded by pigskin "pundits" and public who are routinely "wowed!" by thrilling offensive play, to the point that they're willing to overlook obvious defensive flaws.

In this case, Dallas is the team with those flaws. Green Bay may not be as flashly. But they've been highly productive on both sides of the ball. And, lest we forget, the Packers are an amazing 14-1 over the past 15 regular-season games, the same record as New England.

The questionable status of Green Bay DB Charles Woodson has given us pause. But at the end of the day, as we always do, we're rolling the dice with the more balanced overall team. Even if you don't agree, do not be suckered in by the 6.5 points (and in some cases 7) the Cowboys are giving to Green Bay. It's a spread built upon Dallas's telegenic status as America's Team and by a public willing to overlook its defensive concerns.

Final score: Green Bay 28, Dallas 27