With Cowboys left tackle Tyron Smith injured last year, Falcons defensive end Adrian Clayborn repeatedly blew past Chaz Green for six sacks. The Cowboys did nothing about it during the game. Now that the game, and the season, have ended, Dallas is doing something.
After selections guard Connor Williams with its second-round pick on Friday night, Cowboys owner/G.M. Jerry Jones explained that the Atlanta loss drove the offseason strategy.
“That has influenced this coaching staff and that has influenced really this selection,” Jones said, via the Dallas Morning News. “We don’t want to have that happen [again]. That took a lot of air out of us up there. Connor Williams and what we’ve done in free agency . . . that’s addressing some of the things there. The Connor Williams pick was a real classic here . . . we decided to frankly cure what happened in Atlanta as best we could.”
It’s a far cry from what the coaching staff did while Clayborn was treating Green like a blue line turnstile. Instead of rattling off a stream of expletives, coach Jason Garrett should have been bolstering that side of the line and/or having Dak Prescott sprint away from it once he got the snap on passing downs.