Time to bench Brunell? (Mega Man Merge)

[mike340]

Give him a few more weeks.

Between the bad playcalling, no effective rushing game, no offensive line, and a defense that isn't getting the ball to the offense, it's been pretty tough all around. (But I would say that he turned INTO the sack a few times.)

I felt that Dallas was able to tee off on him a lot so I checked the play-by-play to see what happened. I excluded the last 2 drives where they got a lot of free yards.

On 1st and 10
8 pass plays 5/7 for 47 yards, 1 sack. Ended up getting a first down on 6 of 8 series.
8 rushes. first downs on 2 of 8 series.

So it's clear it's better to pass on 1st down.
In the second half, we had 5 first downs prior to the last 2 drives. Our breakdown on first down was
4 rushes, 1 pass. What's with that?

As far as for when Dallas could tee off, I analyzed 2nd and 8+ and 3rd and 6+ (combined). Brunell's stats were
2/10 with 1 pick and 2 sacks.
Pretty bad. How much was Brunell? I can't say.
But I think an indicator is the screen passes. EVERY time they've run a screen pass some defender has been in the receiver's face. So I think Brunell gets some more time. I can't lay it all on him. Maybe he's also frustrated by the play calling, and that can really wear the QB down. From what I understand, he has less leeway to change things at the line of scrimmage than last year.