The Seahawks face the Dallas Cowboys Saturday night in a key NFC Wild-Card game. This week on Schooled with the Professor, Tim Cowlishaw from the Dallas Morning News joins us as we take a close examination of the Dallas Cowboys, one of the most interesting teams in the league.

There were plenty of things to study: The Seahawks have faced the Cowboys in four of the past five years, and the Seahawks have won the past three games. What's amazing is the Cowboys are "America’s Team" but they have done so poorly in the playoffs. Tim goes in depth breaking down the play of quarterback Dak Prescott. He talks about a good, young defense that started to come together after the Seahawks beat the Cowboys in Week Three. We get into a deep discussion on the successes and failures of Jason Garrett as a coach. At mid-season, Garrett looked like a coach on the hotseat. Surprisingly, Garrett’s future remains a topic in Dallas.

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Concussions are a huge topic in the NFL. The league is constantly trying to improve its ability to make the game safer for players, largely due to the worry about concussions leading to CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) and how it will affect the future of the game. Many mothers are no longer allowing their kids to play football for fear of concussions.

Merril Hoge played football for the Pittsburgh Steelers and had to retire early because of concussions. But he has written a controversial and fascinating book called "Brainwashed: The Bad Science Behind CTE and the Plot to Destroy Football." He joins us on Schooled with the Professor.

Hoge isn’t saying CTE doesn’t exist. His position is that many of the evaluators on concussions are embellishing their reports to get extra attention and do damage to the league. And he has accumulated a lot of medical studies in his book and on his website.

I know his struggles with concussions personally. Doing radio with him on ESPN, we often had to change the lighting in the room because of how it affected him. We talk concussions and the NFL this week on Schooled.

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This is a great education week on Schooled with the Professor. This is the first full season Zebra Technologies has put their expertise into closely studying and analyzing the data it tracks in NFL games and NFL practices. Zebra is a Seattle-based company and more teams are jumping aboard and getting their information.

John Pollard, Vice President of Zebra, joins us to give us a detailed look at this season. Many of the results are found in Next Gen Stats, which is put out by the NFL. Pollard gives us a detailed look at so many of the metrics that give team accurate information.

We get into the successes of Russell Wilson. His ability to make difficult throws ranks among the best in the league. Because of the technology, Zebra can precisely measure throws in tight windows, time to throw, separation between receivers and defensive backs and the aggressiveness throwing into tight coverage. Pollard also talks about how the information fits in during this pass happy league. One of the things Zebra can do is show the true speed of the players. Speed on defense is going to be key for teams to stop the fast-paced offenses of today!

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It’s been a tough year for NFL officials. The league made some of the most significant rule changes and changes in what they wanted called. Four referees retired, so this is the youngest group of referees in league history.

Kevin Seifert from ESPN.com joins us on Schooled with the Professor to judge how officials have done this year. The main debate this offseason was how officials were going to call personal fouls with helmet hits, particularly on quarterbacks. As it turned out, the number of calls for helmet hits haven’t been a much as expected. Instead, roughing the passer penalties have taken the main stage of controversy. Kevin breaks done how those calls have been made.

Out of the blue Tuesday, the news from league is it wants to upgrade the punt return roles. As Kevin states, this might be a change not necessarily for safety reasons. Punt returns are the most penalized play in football. The league is even soliciting fan input on how to improve the punt return play.

And since Seifert lives in Minneapolis, he also throws in a preview on the Vikings prior to Monday night’s game in Seattle.

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The game has changed. The NFL is going through the best offensive year in the history of the league. On Schooled with the Professor, we get a Master’s Degree on current NFL scouting from long-time general manager and scout Scot McCloughan.

Scot goes position by position regarding how the scouting game has changed. He discusses the new ways to find a quarterback, the difficulty of finding good offensive linemen, how different it is for defensive players. Interior defensive tackles are getting better and better in college. Scot tells you why.

Scot’s current company is Instinctive Scout, which gives scouting reports and personnel evaluations for teams in the NFL. Finding the right offensive parts is now the challenge of talent evaluators. We get into the difficulty of scouting the Spread and Air Raid offenses and figuring out how they fit into NFL teams.

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Herman Moore would have been a perfect receiver in this age of high-scoring offenses. He is 6'4" and 218 pounds. Bigger receivers are coming out of college nowadays and they are doing so well in this quarterback driven league. He played 12 seasons but he played in the 1990s when receivers were smaller.

Moore joins us on Schooled with the Professor this week to discuss how the game has changed since he was in the league. Believe it or not, he said he prefers the days when defenses were dominating. It's a surprising statement for a top receiver and top offensive talent. Moore goes in depth on how the game has made a transition from the 1990s until now. Good football talk on Schooled.

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This is an incredible stretch for the Los Angeles Rams. Last week, they lost to the New Orleans Saints, 45-35, in the battle for the NFC’s No. 1 seed. This week they host the Seahawks and they have a game coming up in Mexico against the Kansas Chiefs. On Schooled with the Professor, we go straight to the sidelines of the Rams and get a scouting report on the Rams from D’Marco Farr.

The former Rams defensive lineman who was on the Rams Super Bowl team known as the Greatest Show on Turf does sidelines for the Rams broadcast. What’s great for me doing the opposing team sidelines on the Seahawks broadcast is I get to spend two games a year working with Farr on the sidelines. His insight on the team is spot on.

Farr discusses why the offense is so good, what is needed to get the defense better, and the growing rivalry between these two teams. Farr also gives a great scouting report on the New Orleans Saints and his comparisons between them and the Rams.

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Bill Belichick is difficult for reporters to get information from. He’ll shy away from giving detailed injury reports. He makes it tough to get into his thinking and his planning about his team. But, John Powers of The Boston Globe found out Belichick tells reporters more than you can imagine!

In his book Fridays with Bill: Inside the Football Mind of Bill Belichick, Powers did a remarkable job of digging through 10 years of Belichick press conference transcripts. From those transcripts, he wrote about what made Belichick the football coach considered to be one of, if not THE, the best in NFL history.

He detailed some of the philosophies in personnel that make the Patriots strong. He grabbed great anecdotes about things Belichick likes on and off the field. From those Friday interviews, you learn more about Belichick that you would imagine. That’s this week on Schooled.

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The Alliance of American Football, a developmental league that has been much needed, is set to start the week after the Super Bowl. Former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward is working as a Players Relation Executive with the AAF. He joins us on Schooled with the Professor.

Hines goes in depth on how the league is being set up and some of the unique rules that will be tried. The mission of the league is to keep players developed for the chance to get into the NFL. Ward talks about how the AAF won’t have kickoffs or the point after touchdown. On the football front, Hines talks about the LeVeon Bell holdout. He discusses how the rule changes have made it easier for receivers to get into the middle of the field to make catches with limited fear of being hit. Plenty of good football talk with Hines Ward.

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The Seahawks fly to London to play the Oakland Raiders this weekend, and The Raiders remain one the most interesting stories in sports. Jon Gruden returned to the NFL after a decade on Monday Night Football to sign a 10-year deal to be the coach. He’s also making the personnel decisions.

With that in mind Schooled with the Professor went to Bill Williamson of Raiders Snake Pit to breakdown what is going on with the Raiders. Gruden traded Khalil Mack, who is having an MVP season and has gotten rid of or benched several of the Raiders most recent high draft choices. Derek Carr has thrown eight interceptions, including five on first downs. The Raiders are giving up seven yards a play, which could be the worst since the merger if that continues.

What is the story on Raiders? We give it to you on Schooled with the Professor.

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