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It is the era of metrics and analytics in the NFL. With advanced stats Chidobe Awuzie Jersey Stitched , all-22 breakdowns, and sites like Pro Football Focus and Pro Football Reference, we have an unprecedented array of tools and measurements to dissect teams and players. That is great. But the game is still played and coached by human beings, and there are things beyond stats and grades. They are called intangibles. In a week leading up to the Dallas Cowboys playing the Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round of the playoffs, you are being bombarded with countless arguments and counterarguments about which team is quantifiably better. But let’s take a look at things that can’t be counted or measured and see what they might say about this matchup.Momentum and confidenceRight off the bat, we get to a subject, momentum, whose very existence is frequently debated. It is something that seems evident - up until one play completely reverses it, which argues against it having existed in the first place.But a big part of this particular article is how things affect the mentality of the men involved in the game and that is where momentum might be better described as confidence. That is why they are lumped together.Here, the Cowboys have both in tons. They are on an 8-1 run stretching back to the midpoint of the regular season, and are just a vastly different team than they were in the first half of 2018. They have found multiple ways to win. And in both interviews and social media, the players are exuding a belief in themselves. That is not just as individuals, but in each other. Here are a couple of examples from the war daddy himself.This kind of faith and support is evident on both sides of the ball. Normally, getting a bye week is seen as a real advantage. But when a team is riding a hot streak like the Cowboys, it is sometimes not a bad thing to have to keep the routine going. That is where the much-discussed decision by Jason Garrett to play Dak Prescott and many of the starters in the season-finale may have paid real dividends. Now, they are coming off a very satisfying win over the Seattle Seahawks that not many expected them to get. Now, I don’t study the Rams much. But they clinched a playoff berth early, and may have been guilty of coasting a bit late in the season. They had a shot at getting home field throughout the playoffs, but went 3-2 in December, letting that slip away. Those three wins were against losing teams, the 6-10 Detroit Lions, the 3-13 Arizona Cardinals, and the 4-12 San Francisco 49ers. Both losses were against eventual playoff teams, the Chicago Bears and the Philadelphia Eagles. That is not exactly entering the playoffs on a roll. While they no doubt have a lot of confidence in their 13-3 record, it is just not the same as the Cowboys should have.Home field advantageFor years, this was something that just did not exist in Dallas. But they went 8-1 in the suddenly very friendly confines of AT&T Stadium. So having to go on the road Saturday bodes poorly for them.Well, not so fast. The Cowboys have long had one of the best “traveling” fan bases in the NFL. I put that in quotes, because the truth is that there are actually a ton of Dallas fans in almost every NFL city. Los Angeles has long been a place where a decent percentage of the people who show up are wearing Cowboys colors. There is talk that this could be closer to a 50-50 crowd than one would expect. In any case, there should be a lot of vocal Cowboys fans in the house. Los Angeles has always been rather lukewarm in its support for the home team, although this season should have warmed them up some.This isn’t like going into, say, the New Orleans Superdome. For which we really should be grateful to the Eagles, as painful as that is. They get to face that hostile crowd this week. Now, I never actively root for Philly. But if the Cowboys advance on Saturday, I will be pulling for a New Orleans Saints loss. One last home game would be ineffably sweet.The coachesSean McVay is known as an offensive genius, one of the darlings of the NFL at the moment. The media swoon at his ability to rattle off the roster of his upcoming opponent. Jason Garrett is known for clapping and delivering the absolute minimum in meaningful information in his media interactions.McVay also is appearing in just his second playoffs, and has not yet coached his team to a win. Garrett is now 2-2 in the tournament. Seemingly endless articles were written about the latter’s inability to win prior to last Saturday. No one seems to be really interested in McVay’s lack of success, which is somewhat understandable given his newness, but it is also a fact that Garrett knows how to win in the postseason, albeit not as consistently as we might hope.The head coaching job is about much more than just the three hours of a game each week, as well. While McVay has clearly done a good job cultivating and leading a winner, Garrett has been superb at building the culture he wants and getting his team to buy in. Holding his team together through the 3-5 start and then fighting the way into the playoffs is clear testament to that. McVay may be very good on the sidelines, but in everything else it looks like Garrett has the edge here.The quarterbacksIn the 2016 draft, Jared Goff was taken with the first overall pick. He, along with Carson Wentz, was one of the perceived “can’t miss” prospects. He has since shown that may have been justified, as he has lit up the scoreboard and stat sheets the past two seasons once he was free of the ball-and-chain named Jeff Fisher.Prescott was taken with a fourth-round supplemental pick. He is the unlikeliest of candidates to become the franchise quarterback of the most visible team in the league. Yet he has gone 33-17 in his young career, despite the travails of 2017. Like Garrett, he now knows how to win a playoff game.More importantly, at least for this discussion, was how he led his team in the Wild Card round. He played his best ball in the fourth quarter, something that has become a habit for him, as Bob Sturm pointed out in his Tuesday Decoding Linehan piece about that game at The Athletic. Another thing that is clearly an intangible is the idea of being “clutch”. So far in his young career, Prescott has shown that trait in full. Along the way, he has completely won the confidence of his team.Goff may have those things as well, but it is worth noting that in December he passed for 207 or less yards in four of the five games, and had a truly dismal passer rating of 19.1 against the Bears, sandwiched between a 68.6 and a 75.9. That would seem to indicate a bit less “clutchiness” for him. He did rebound with very high ratings in the final two weeks of the regular season - against two unimpressive pass defenses that were just playing out the string.The running backsFor fans of the running game, this is the most exciting matchup of the postseason. Ezekiel Elliott won the rushing crown, and Todd Gurley came in third in yards, even though he missed the last two games with an injury. (Elliott also missed the final game, but just to rest him for the playoffs). The big question here is whether Gurley is going to have a bit of rust, another one of those vague intangible thingies. He is also coming off that injury. Meanwhile, Zeke certainly got back in his groove with his 169 total yards from scrimmage and a rushing touchdown against Seattle. Like Dak, he is on a roll and playing at the top of his game. Maybe Gurley will also be at peak form. But he may not. The “verdict’It is by definition not definitive. But from my (admittedly not purely objective) viewpoint, the intangibles in this game favor the Cowboys. And that is pretty much across the board.As always, we have to see how it plays out on the field. But the team certainly looks to be feeling it. That is just one more intangible that can really have an impact. The NFL's revision of the catch rule figured to grab the spotlight this season.Then the league altered the regulations on using the helmet when making contact on both sides of the ball, basically making it a 15-yard penalty no matter where on the helmet strikes an opponent. Even players on offense and linemen in the trenches are subject to being flagged, with potential fines and ejections for particularly flagrant hits by lowering the helmet.Players are upset. Officials are deeper under the microscope. Fans are wondering why replay review isn't part of the entire process.Suddenly, the Dez Bryant and Jesse James non-catches are non-issues. It's all about the helmet hits Youth Jourdan Lewis Jersey , which unquestionably need to be removed from the game in a similar way that tacklers launching to make hits pretty much has been eliminated in the pros.Here's where things stand from a variety of constituencies as we head toward the kickoff of the 2018 schedule:THE LEAGUENFL executives were encouraged that the flags thrown for helmet-initiated hits dropped from 51 through the opening two weeks of the preseason to nine for Week 3 — when many regulars get on the field, though in a limited capacity. Officials have been instructed not to flag incidental or inadvertent contacts with the helmet or facemask by defensive or offensive players. The deeper we get into games that count, the better those with the whistle or ball in their hands or the guys attempting tackles will have a handle on what's legal."These are necessary changes where the rules come in," says Troy Vincent, the NFL's football operations chief and one of the hardest hitters in the league when he played defensive back from 1992-2006. "As stewards for the long term, the well-being of the players comes first."Adds Giants owner John Mara, a long-time member of the competition committee that advises rules changes for teams to vote on:"I think officials and players will adapt to the rule, that is what happens every time we have a change based on player safety. There's an outcry at the beginning that it will change the game, and it never works out that way; statistics don't bear that out at all. Players should not lower their heads is what it is all about, and we should not have some of the injuries we have seen."THE OFFICIALSThe rule change has placed the men in stripes in even sharper focus. Simply put, at the current speed of play and with the size and power of players, any call is difficult. Now, a bit more judgment has been added, with decisions made in split seconds."It's still a work in progress because officials need to learn to instinctively read and react to this type of hit that they've never looked at before as a foul," says recently retired referee Terry McAulay, now an analyst for NBC. "So there is going to be some learning curve yet to come, but I think they're in a much better place than they were a week ago."One somewhat puzzling question remains: Why isn't video replay involved when some of these calls, especially if they lead to ejections, can be game changers?Well, it actually is, on a limited basis. Should a player be ejected for initiating helmet contact, Al Riveron and his staff at New York headquarters can affirm or overrule the ejection."Our charge is, No. 1 player safety: Make it safer in all ways," Riveron says. "No. 2, make sure we still have a product that is entertaining. And No. 3, find a happy balance with replay and how much it gets involved. We always stop the game to get it right."Mara believes replay could play a further role if officiating the rule becomes too problematic."I certainly think are a lot of people who would support adding those calls to instant replay and making them reviewable," he says, "and I think that's another discussion we could have in the offseason if it is warranted."THE DOCTORS AND RESEARCHERSThousands of hours and millions of dollars of data gathering, research, technological innovations and testing helped lead to the new rule. Every penny will have been well spent if usage of the helmet as a weapon disappears."It's an offshoot of all that work," says Jeff Miller, the league's executive vice president of health and safety initiatives, whose department works with medical professionals, researchers and equipment manufacturers. "An identification of what causes concussions and why there was a troubling increase in them."We see patterns, the increased velocity of the hits, the positioning of the head and neck ... that increase in force and magnitude of a hit, and not just with the crown of the helmet."Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL's medical director, believes all the data helped construct a comprehensive story that required immediate action."Everything we saw said we must act on this," Sills says of the injury rate for helmet-first hits. "There was a sense of urgency when the data was so compelling to do something now on this."THE COACHESFor decades, the head was taught to be part of the tackling process. That has changed 180 degrees — at least in the NFL — as the consequences of that technique became so clearly grim and far-reaching.NFL coaches — yes, even those who don't win with regularity — are the elite of the profession. Still, changing a culture that was part of football for so long, and might still be at lower levels of the sport, is challenging.Throw in that some coaches were caught by surprise by the wide-ranging change, and others aren't truly certain when flags will fly, and there's concern on every NFL sideline.New Titans coach Mike Vrabel, a Super Bowl-winning linebacker, narrated a league-distributed video on tackles that are kosher and which are outlawed. Yet his team was among the most penalized early in the preseason."It's frustrating because I'm not doing a good enough job explaining to them what they're calling," Vrabel said during training camp. "I think they look at me like I'm nuts when I say, 'This is what they're looking for. This is what they're calling.'"We just really have to start watching. The helmet thing extends drives. Penalties are going to lead to scoring opportunities; 15 yards is an explosive gain. ... To continue to give them the 15-yard penalties is frustrating because I have to do a better job of making sure these guys aren't using the top of the helmet."Another worry among coaches is whether the calls on offensive players will be equitable to those on defenders. Former Cardinals coach Bruce Arians, now a CBS analyst, recalled seeing three flags thrown on the defense for helmet-first hits when it was obvious to him that the ball carrier initiated the contact."It's a great rule," he says. "They just have to not over-officiate it. They shouldn't use the posture of getting in a protective position by the running back before he gets tackled, yet he's the one making contact with the helmet."THE PLAYERSUltimately, as anyone involved in any sport will say, the players have to make the plays. And make sure they are permissible plays.It's not going to be easy at first. According to 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman, it won't be easy ever.Or fair."It's an idiotic rule, so there's no need to go down that road," Sherman says. "There's no way you can tackle and play football. I could tackle like that if I was standing still, got on my knees, no one was moving and I was tackling bags or something. But to ask you to do that at full speed?"Adds Texans safety Tyrann Mathieu: "It's going to be extremely difficult. Obviously, guys are trying to take the initiative to really go about it the right way, but sometimes it's like, what do you expect a guy to do? Hopefully, we'll get it corrected and like I said, hopefully it doesn't take too much money from the guys."I just don't know when it's a foul, when it's clean. I have no idea." Custom Atlanta Falcons Jerseys