The story of this game was the offense's struggles.

The defense wasn't perfect, but they played better than I expected. Dallas overpowered them at times at the line of scrimmage, RB Marion Barber had a big day, RB Felix Jones was left wide open on his big 50 yard TD run, someone named WR Miles Austin looked unstoppable, and TE Jason Witten owned them as a blocker and a clutch receiver on 3rd down (he does that to a lot of teams). But WR Terrell Owens did nothing and they forced QB Tony Romo into some really really bad decisions with passes into coverage, fumbles, and two intentional grounding penalties. Their stats would have looked a lot better if the Packers offense could have stayed on the field. They played hard and physical.

The offense's stats look good. QB Aaron Rodgers had almost 300 yards passing and a rushing TD. 334 yards of total offense, but they were under 200 yards when the score was 27-9. Two late drives created 117 yards, nearly a third of the yards in garbage time. Rodgers played well, he fumbled a snap but recovered it, and threw no INTs. The offensive line did a good job creating some running lanes, and protecting Rodgers. Bottom line; the receivers just didn't get open and/or Rodgers didn't see them. I have no idea whether Mike McCarthy's game plan was just too predictible or whether Dallas' CBs are much better than the Packers WRs. 

Take away an 11 play drive to start the 3rd quarter, the offense had the following drives from the end of the 1st quarter until 6 minutes to go in the game:

The 12 yards of offense in the 2nd quarter was bad. Sometimes a team can vanish on offense for that long and pull out a win with one or two scoring drives, but not against an offense like Dallas. It's hard to get upset about one loss against argubly the toughest team on the schedule. Like I read in the open thread comments, it didn't help Dallas in the playoffs that they had beaten the NY Giants twice in the regular season. It didn't help the Packers in the playoffs that they smoked the Giants in the regular season either. Just secure winning the division and get into the playoffs. The lesson that Mike McCarthy and the Packers have to learn is how did Dallas shut them down during that awful six drive sequence.

Dallas Cowboys at Green Bay Packers
Sunday, September 21st, 2008
7:15pm CST, NBC
This is an open thread for the game.

UPDATE: The Packers inactives from the Journal-Sentinel:

Packers inactives: QB Brian Brohm, S Atari Bigby, CB Pat Lee, FB Korey Hall, T Breno Giacomini, G Josh Sitton, WR Ruvell Martin, DE Jeremy Thompson.

Two starters out, Bigby's no surprise since his injury in the Detroit game, S Aaron Rouse starts instead. Hall was looking like he would make it back but now FB John Kuhn will start. Greg Bedard says starting C Scott Wells is active, but not starting. Jason Spitz is still at center instead of moving to guard, and RG Tony Moll remains in the starting right guard for another week. Obviously it's always better to have all your starters available, but the Packers have solid backups at these positions and it shouldn't be a problem.

Usually I take a look at each teams' rankings broken down by passing and rushing from NFL.com and Football Outsiders, but since it's only week 3, the rankings at this point in the season don't tell much of a story:

Both teams' offenses are very good, not a surprise to anyone, but the defensive stats are all over the place. Is Dallas really below average or do they look below average because of a rough game against Philadelphia? Do the Packers really have a poor run defense or are they being punished because they've had to play half of their games against RB Adrian Peterson so far this season? Is the Packers pass defense really good or do their stats look good after being the recipient of a major 4th quarter meltdown by QB Jon Kitna? Let's just look at some matchups instead.

I've got a bunch of analysis after the poll, click on continue reading below, but because of all the factors in this game, I expect it comes down to the two quarterbacks. Who can make the most big plays and who can avoid any big mistakes. Since nothing has bothered Rodgers so far this season, you can watch Romo hand Philadelphia two TDs in the first half of last week's game here between 1:45 and 2:30 minutes into the highlights, I'm going with Rodgers and the Packers. I think the Packers will get a big lead, but squander it and the final score will be a close Packers win with a big score like 34-31.

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10 players listed this week on the Friday injury report. S Atari Bigby's on it and he's the only player who's a lock to miss the Sunday night game, but the good news is his replacement, S Aaron Rouse, hasn't been listed on it all week. Rouse looked slow to react on the two long TD passes to Detroit's WR Calvin Johnson, and Rouse was listed on the injury report last week with a bum ankle. He appears to be over it and he needs to be as close to 100% as possible if he wants to keep up with Owens and Witten.

Starting FB Korey Hall might play, but his iced knee looked bad last week during the game, so he might be out a bit longer. FB John Kuhn is a solid backup, and the Packers won't miss a beat with him instead. Starting C Scott Wells might be back, moving Jason Spitz from C to starting RG, but McCarthy isn't say whether Wells will be back this weekend or next. Backup TE Tory Humphrey might not play, but he hasn't made much of an difference when healthy.

The rest of the listed starters (Clifton, Woodson, Grant) should all play, plus DE Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila, which is very good because it would a big problem if any of them missed this game.

Dallas has 9 players listed, along with two starters, FB Deon Anderson and S Roy Williams, who are absolutely out for the game. I can't see why Dallas will miss backup LB Anthony Spencer, so that shouldn't cause them any problems. Anderson shouldn't be tough to replace either. You might think it might hurt them to lose Pro Bowl safety Roy Williams, but he's actually overrated and awful in pass coverage. His absence won't make a big difference in the game either.

Overall both teams come into this game pretty healthy, and hopefully the game ends that way too (of course, with a big Packer win!)

The SB Nation blogger from Blogging The Boys, Dave (Grizz) Halprin, is on a first name basis with the Football Night In America guys now. Instead of sending an email and begging him for scraps of Packers vs. Cowboys football analysis, I decided just to steal what he said to Jerome, Tiki, and Dan. The analysis is pretty good, but he keeps mentioning some former Packer QB who I guess is playing for the Jets these days instead of focusing on the 2008 Packers:

David Halprin, BloggingTheBoys.com: When the Green Bay Packers visited the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium in November of last year, it was a clash of the NFC titans. Fast forward to this Sunday at venerable Lambeau Field, where the tundra will definitely not be frozen, and you'll find two teams sporting identical 2-0 records and both coming off 13-3 seasons. The expectations are high as they each try to stake their claim to the NFC's best. The power in the conference rests in the NFC East but the Packers are determined to prove that they are the just as good without Brett Favre.

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This article is from last week and discussed the effect WR Terrell Owens will have on the game last Monday night against Philadelphia:

When the Cowboys routed the Eagles 38-17 in Week 9 last season, Owens caught 10 passes for 174 yards. Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson didn't blitz much in that contest; he dropped extra defenders into zones and tried to roll the coverage to stop Owens. The plan backfired, and Owens found plenty of soft spots to exploit.

I didn't watch all of the Monday night game, so I don't know what Jim Johnson was doing, but Philadelphia managed zero sacks and Owens caught 3 passes for 89 yards and 2 TDs. Obviously whatever Philadelphia was doing on Monday didn't work. There was a lot going on in that game, but Owens was one of the big reasons why Dallas won on Monday.

The announced plan is to shut down Owens with CB Al Harris. The Packers tried the same thing last season, and that was a complete disaster. Defensive coordinator Bob Sanders tried moving Harris around to stay on Owens at all times and he had 156 yards receiving and 1 TD.  

Hopefully they decide against doing it again this season. One big reason why they don't have to rotate Harris on Owens all game long is that CB Charles Woodson will play on Sunday night. Last season, he missed the game with a toe injury. 

Dallas can still do a lot of damage on offense with Romo and Barber, TE Jason Witten seperated his shoulder on Monday but appears to be playing right through the pain. But maintaining a constant pass rush on Romo and finding a way to cover up Owens might be the key to victory.

As everyone knows, next week is a big game against Dallas. At Lambeau. Jerry Jones must have been asleep at the wheel over at the league office on this one. The schedule makers NEVER schedule the game at Lambeau. In the bygone Brett Favre era (circa 1992-2007), the Packers played Dallas 11 times (including the playoffs) and Dallas has only played at Lambeau twice. Three of those games were playoff games at Dallas, but take them out and it's still 6 in Dallas, 2 at Lambeau. Dallas had four consecutive regular season home games at one point in the 1990s. Yes, it still pisses me off.

Philadelphia isn't on the Packers schedule for the first time since 2002. Not that the Packers needed them on it because McNabb looked good. It usually takes one full season to recover from a knee injury and maybe only now is he back to full strength.

A few things I noticed while watching the game:

• I do like that this will be a short week for Dallas after playing on Monday night, and then they have to fly up to Green Bay.
• Both teams rarely blitzed and both had trouble getting to the QB. Philadelphia had no sacks. Dallas had four sacks, but the couple I saw were coverage sacks. McNabb sure holds onto the ball for a long time. Since QB Aaron Rodgers has shown some ability to run with the ball, Dallas probably won't blitz too much to keep him from running.
• Both teams had trouble deep in pass coverage. With time to throw, both QBs could throw deep. The safeties had a lot of trouble helping out in coverage. S Brian Dawkins has a Pro Bowl resume, but he struggled against WR Terrell Owens and TE Jason Witten. Losing Pro Bowl S Roy Williams won't hurt Dallas in pass coverage because he's lousy in it. Rookie WR DeSean Jackson blew right past him before the idiot rookie "fumbled" it at the 1 yard line.
• QB Tony Romo gift wrapped two TDs for Philadelphia. I'm not expecting the Packers will be so lucky.