It's been a tale of two teams for the Dallas Cowboys so far in 2012.
In Week 1, the Cowboys looked excellent, marching into New Jersey and defeating the New York Giants in prime time to kick off the 2012 season.
In Week 2, the Cowboys looked awful in every facet of the game, losing to the Seattle Seahawks in Seattle.
There is, however, a common theme between both games: field position. Tom Ryle over at Blogging the Boysshared some insight into the numbers that he found, as he looked for links between the two games.
However, there is one thing that both games did have in common. Consider the following sequence of numbers:
24, 28, 20, 20, 20, 20, 18, 26, 16, 20, 5, 14, 15, 29, 20, 21, 19, 30.
Those are the yardlines Dallas started the eighteen possessions they have had in the first two games. And none of them were in the short end of the field.
The average is 20.27. Which means that Dallas faced an average of less than a foot less than 80 yards to the end zone every time they got the ball in the first two games. The best position was at their own 30 - and that was on the supremely futile last possession of the Seattle game, when the Seahawks turned the ball over on downs with :36 seconds left in the game and a 20 point lead.
We'll see if the Cowboys can get better starting field position this weekend, when they play host to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
For more on the Cowboys, check out Blogging the Boys.