- Joined
- Apr 7, 2013
- Messages
- 120,043
[h=1][/h]
By Bob Sturm Jan 22, 2019
Last Friday, the Cowboys finally announced a decision that many of us believe was actually made many weeks ago. They parted ways with offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, thus ending the namesake of this entire operation, “Decoding Linehan.”
Never fear, we started this series in 2008 when it was called “Decoding Garrett” and we will certainly continue to track the offensive progress (or lack thereof). but Scott Linehan’s five-year run is now behind us. What is not behind us, of course, is the fact that this remains largely Jason Garrett’s offense since the day he was brought in back in 2007.
That is why we all wonder if a staffing shuffle will lead to true change with this offense.
This is Garrett’s offense, and its existence is the reason that he has been as stable a coaching force with this franchise as anyone since Tom Landry. We are relatively confident that Garrett will begin his 10th year as coach of the Dallas Cowboys (ninth full season) and his 13th year as the offensive architect. We can discuss how much control was given to Scott Linehan or Bill Callahan during their years as “offensive coordinators” or while holding similar titles, but since the day he was hired in 2007, this has been the Jason Garrett offense.
What is the Jason Garrett offense? Let’s walk through this.
While I don’t allow for a whole lot of grey area, I will concede that Garrett’s blueprint has evolved quite a bit over the years and, of course, turned on a dime in the spring of 2014. Let’s take a look at what that looks like. Thanks to our friends at ProFootballReference.com, here is the Jason Garrett rankings sheet, which sums up the Cowboys offense during his tenure. As you can see, when he was hired, the Cowboys thought the best way to skin a cat was to let Tony Romo and his arm lead the way to Terrell Owens and a young Jason Witten. They were a top-10 passing offense each year from 2007-2012 under Garrett’s watch. Even the year when Romo was gone for most of the season in 2010, Jon Kitna was able to supply ample passing production. But the team managed to miss the playoffs in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. When you have a top QB and an impressive array of skill position players and still miss the playoffs in five of six seasons, something is horribly wrong. Some would argue that was when the defense was historically bad. (Quite untrue when Wade was here, progressively true with the post-Wade group, and very true by Monte Kiffin’s historically awful 2013 season.) Some would suggest the offensive line had declined. (Again, untrue through 2009, but 2010-2013 featured pretty ordinary OL play up front.) Some would argue that it probably doesn’t matter. If you have Romo in his prime (from 27 to 33 years old) and still miss the playoffs in five of six seasons, you are probably not the right head coach for this organization.
Offense Rushing Off Passing Off
Regardless of rationalization, the Cowboys stopped trying to run the ball from 2011 through 2013, as no team in the 32-team league had fewer rushing attempts during that span than Dallas did from 2011-13. This might explain how DeMarco Murray played here four years, yet was only actually used with any sort of regularity and conviction in 2014 (his contract year). The Cowboys decided to turn Romo loose and this led to all sorts of big highlights, dramatic wins, some horrible turnovers, awful defense, and similar 8-8 records each season for a sum total of 24-24 football in Garrett’s first three seasons as head coach.
Then, as if Zack Martin’s selection in the 2014 draft was the tipping point and changed everything in an instant, the Cowboys went from a team that never runs under Jason Garrett to a team that runs as much as anyone in the industry under Jason Garrett. It was quite a reversal of fields, but if you look up at the rankings again, you will see that only in 2015 (the year between Murray and Ezekiel Elliott) were the Cowboys not fully committed to running the ball early and often. Even with Tony Romo in 2014, the idea was to throw less but make the passing game far more efficient by dropping volume considerably. This all came during a time when the entire NFL was throwing more.
We don’t know where this was all headed if Romo’s body did not give out, but it did. Maybe because of the organization’s recklessness from 2011-13 or maybe because that was how his body was created, Romo was hurt severely in December of 2013 in Washington in an incident that required immediate back surgery. He then suffered another back injury in 2014 (the famous transverse process). Two collarbone injuries in 2015 would keep him out 8-10 weeks each — seemingly on nearly consecutive hits suffered three months apart — and the kill shot was yet another fractured vertebrae injury in Seattle during the 2016 preseason. Five severe injuries (some related to the others, some just bad luck) took him out of action in the final 22 games of his career, convincing most that his body had no more to give. (Certainly, to this day, we know a substantial number of fans are not convinced at all.)
Regardless, the Cowboys transformed from the 2011-13 offense to this modern Dak Prescott-led unit in 2016-18 that has many unique attributes of its own. This group takes very good care of the football (the 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 Cowboys finished 20th or worse in giveaways), tries to shorten games by dominating time of possession, and wins street fights in the trenches. In order to do so, they largely sacrifice passing yardage production and the ambition to search for big plays, but they find their way to wins on a regular basis and that is why we look at the offensive production through that lens. Winning games is the one and only goal for a football team, and while this sometimes seems lost on fantasy football fans who are perturbed that their favorite team doesn’t seem viable, it remains true.
Was it all because their QB was significantly more limited than his predecessor? That is a great question because the 2014 team seemed to find its best road to success in years by cutting back what they asked and allowed Romo to do despite his ascent to expert-level QB understanding. It stands to reason that once they were able to make this recipe work with Romo, they certainly were not going to invest in Ezekiel Elliott and then leave the path.
Why offer all of this background? Because a thorough review of the Garrett regime is required before we put 2018 under the microscope. If the general topic of ambition and disposition of the head coach is reviewed, you might see that any sort of radical changes to the Xs-and-Os of the offense will only take you so far. If Jason Garrett and the front office remain convinced that the best way to win a football game is the 2014/2016 recipe, then prepare for the team that ran the ball more than anyone in those two years and believed the pass was mostly reserved for third down. If 2018 was a failure, it was largely because the offensive line was not good enough to support the way Garrett and the Dallas front office want to see football.
Alternatively, is it possible that they see the NFL is going one way with offensive production while they are doubling down in the other direction? Is it possible they know what we wrote on Friday that the top teams in the league understand that their best road to a Super Bowl comes through scoring whenever possible? Let’s review the crux of Friday’s piece:
Here are those five magic ranking numbers for this year’s Patriots, Chiefs, Rams, and Saints, with the Cowboys added for the sake of comparison.
Points/Game
Points/Drive
Passing/Game
Passing/Play
Yards/Play
Yikes. That is certainly not an explosive offense at the bottom.
Is it possible that the Cowboys see Linehan’s view on offense as something that holds them back, even if it has been the path to winning football over the last five seasons? If Romo is 15-4 and Prescott is 32-16 during Scott Linehan’s tenure, that means the Cowboys are 47-20 with a healthy QB1 since he has been hired to run this offense. They are 2-3 in the playoffs, but the offense was probably good enough to be 4-1 in those games. In other words, if they thought their strategy was the path to victory and it worked 70% of the time, what was wrong about it? Only one franchise wins better than 70% of its games over a five-year sample and we all know which team that is.
Let me be clear: I wanted Scott Linehan gone. I have said a number of times that he would have been gone in November of 2017 if I was the boss, possibly on the tarmac in Atlanta. The Cowboys’ stubbornness and predictability, as well as their inability to stress defenses when they tried to take away Zeke, were high atop my list of issues. Then, when the offensive line was not at its best, the inability to scheme quicker passing routes to cover for poor pass-protection and a QB who was having trouble making quick decisions all falls to Linehan, as does another year of finishing in the bottom of the league in explosive plays. Third downs often featured identical routes from multiple receivers, which made defending the group frustratingly simple in repeated situations. The Cowboys never found a way to profit off their QB having a real talent on designed runs, rarely calling them. Finally, the last straw would be an inability to solve the team’s red-zone problems, a huge priority for a low-volume offense.
The 2018 rankings were as follows:
Let’s look at how those all break out in regard to some of the bigger categories that held this offense back. Below is a chart that shows total points/game, points per drive, yards/game, giveaways/game, third down and red-zone percentages, and sacks allowed per game:
2018 Tot Pts/G Pts/Dr Tot Yds/G GA/G 3rd % RZ TD % SACKED/G
As you can surmise, the home performances for most of the year were decent (thus, the 8-1 home record) aside from the red-zone offense and the sacks allowed; deficiencies which were often related. The Cowboys’ road column is horrendous throughout, which was best demonstrated at Carolina, Seattle, Houston, Washington, and Indianapolis. The trip to Los Angeles was better, but the lack of a running game and poor third-down play sabotaged that effort (as well as a defense that never had a prayer).
This is the bottom line: With what has been invested in this offense in terms of draft picks and contracts, this team should not be near the bottom of the league in any major offensive category. Especially if it appears to be by design. [HR][/HR]
That final phrase is where the rubber meets the road as Linehan drives off into the sunset. If the Cowboys’ biggest enemy appears to be their offensive disposition rather than the particular design of certain concepts, we must consider the overall mental approach to the game that this Cowboys brain trust currently employs. There were too many times, in 2018 alone, where we could see that the Cowboys’ offensive approach was careful and timid. The most adventurous and risky ideas might be play-action rollouts to multi-level tight ends off a middle-dive fake to Zeke. Linehan called a game that gave the team just enough breathing room to get ahead, then go in a shell until the defense needs them again, then show some adventure late and hope to have enough to win.
In other words, the Cowboys are not trying to maximize point-scoring opportunities. They are only willing to release just enough leash to accomplish their goal of out-scoring their opponent. Not one inch more.
Let’s flash back to Week 13, at home against the Saints. The Cowboys score on two of their first three drives to start the game, but once ahead 10-0, the offense goes into a shell of protection where they do mix run and pass, but all the passes are very short, safe routes that seldom challenge the secondary in any way. Carefully, they plod down the field four yards at a time. While they are still trying to score, they do so without taking any risk whatsoever. Generally, any mistake — a negative run, a holding penalty, a sack, a drop — brings the punt team on the field. But Garrett and Linehan are not worried, because they have a 10-0 lead and apparently, against the Saints, that will be enough.
Week 14, home against the Eagles: The Cowboys kick a few field goals early and then retreat into their shell. Since the Eagles are not scoring, maybe a 9-0 lead can be enough! An errant throw from Prescott does jumpstart Philadelphia’s day, but that is only part of the point. Once the Eagles force the Cowboys offense to be more aggressive, presto! They gain 273 yards after the fourth quarter begins and find three touchdown drives to end the game. Maybe all their offense required was some adventurous play-calling.
Week 17 versus the Giants — and the wildcard game against the Seahawks — featured more of the same. The Cowboys were cautious early and only became more adventurous when forced to do so. By the end of the game, Prescott made play after play to lead his team to victory. The fans left the stadium wondering why he can’t do that earlier in the game. I have my theories. You will recall that the Cowboys’ best drives happened once the Seahawks took the lead. Once the offense had to find points, magically, they could.
Here is a visual aid on this premise. It is merely a breakout of first-half and second-half performance since the Amari Cooper trade. I think it shows the Cowboys enter each game without a whole lot of offensive ambition and then adjust their disposition based on the game situation; which of course allows for an overall statistical underachievement if your coaches would rather not do anything risky until their hand is forced.
Half Pass Cmp Pass Att Pass Cmp % Pass Yds Pass Yds/Att Pass TD Pass Int Sacked Sacks Allwd % Rate
Please pay special attention to Yards per attempt and Sack rate. In both cases, there is a substantial uptick in the 2nd half when you would think conditions are more difficult. The yards per attempt go from what would be 27th ranked in the NFL (Blake Bortles) to 3rd (right behind Pat Mahomes). This is what disposition and aggressiveness looks like on paper. Further, outside the structure of the normal offense, the sacks drop substantially. How is this possible?
Hopefully, the point seems clear. Everyone knows Dak Prescott is not a top-five NFL quarterback. The object of the game then becomes the following: Either figure out how to acquire one of the very best QBs in the sport or make yours the best he can be. One of Linehan’s biggest failings (perhaps Garrett’s, too) is that Prescott seemed better when he left the structure of their offense and had to figure out plays off-script (oddly reminiscent of Romo back in 2011-13). When the offense had to score, they moved to a more aggressive posture — the two-minute offense, for instance — and suddenly, Prescott made plays with his arm and his feet. Amazingly, the Cowboys just might have a play-making QB when he is put in a position to do so. Does he have elite accuracy or the ability to read the whole field like the best? No. But we are looking for the very best version of Dak Prescott. And that guy was seldom found in the normal structure of the Dallas offense. We only saw it when they needed him to “make a play”.
I follow this team as closely as anyone outside the organization could. I study the Dallas Cowboys daily for many, many hours. And yet, as I sit here this morning, I cannot tell you that removing Scott Linehan from this group will fix what ails the Cowboys. Yes, I had countless issues with his offense, but I still can’t swear that it is completely his. It doesn’t resemble what Garrett was doing before Linehan arrived, but it also doesn’t resemble what Linehan did in Detroit, either. The Cowboys offense and their disposition with regards to risk and reward still seem more like a function of the entire brain trust. The Cowboys collectively decided to draft a tackle, center, guard and running back in the first round over a six-year span. They decided to pound the rock, seemingly resembling the Cowboys of 1992-1995 when Emmitt Smith followed a dominant offensive line into the end zone as the same brain trust watched this franchise win three Super Bowls in four years.
If it is the design that most suits Jerry Jones, Stephen Jones, Will McClay, and Jason Garrett, then your new offensive coordinator will likely please them, producing a similar blueprint. I would actually be pretty comfortable with asking a guy like Kellen Moore — someone who gets tabbed by anyone who spends time around him in a film room as a football savant — to look at the best offenses in the NFL and to try to design one that might allow the Cowboys to pursue the same objectives. I just don’t know if that would ever be authorized by this group. It is possible that Prescott appeals most to this front office because he can be trusted to do what he is told, make safe plays with the ball, be a strong leader of men, and bring home victories. The premise that the Cowboys want to turn their offense into a scoring machine is wishful thinking, in my view.
I want them to attempt to do what Chicago has done. Take an underachieving offense and try to make your own version of Kansas City or Los Angeles. Chicago isn’t there yet, but the strides they have taken under Matt Nagy are clear and obvious. They use vertical and horizontal stretching to give their QB easy throws into space where their weapons can rack up yardage without risking the ball. They use play-action and all the weapons at their disposal to stress every defender on the field. The Cowboys do not. They run Zeke into the teeth of eight-man boxes because that is how they did things with Emmitt Smith, and if you could win a Super Bowl that way in 1992, then it should still work nearly three decades later.
I guess I am saying this: They had better have an organizational agreement as to why their offense has struggled. They struggled because they started the season without an above-average wide receiver or tight end. They started a rookie guard next to a backup center all year. They panicked and had to make a mid-season trade that cost them their 2019 first-round pick, potentially salvaging a season and a head-coaching regime. Their design hasn’t changed with the times to make a defense’s day difficult enough. To see the contenders constantly put their opponents in conflicts and binds that make their head spin, only to watch the Cowboys seemingly run the same 10 concepts, is pretty frustrating.
In other words, if they are firing Scott Linehan to just revert back to the Jason Garrett offense, the Cowboys seem to be spinning their wheels with a new man on the headset. But if they are firing Scott Linehan to bring in someone with fresh ideas and a new approach to challenge the offensive disposition around here— someone who will try to maximize points every week in a league where the race to 30 seems to also be the race to the top of the standings — then, please, be my guest.
The NFL’s new trajectory has very little to do with how Emmitt Smith ran a FB lead in 1992. Instead, Andy Reid and Sean McVay have run plays that feature players going in every direction, leaving defenses with no idea what is happening until their man is on his way back into the end zone. The Cowboys ranked 20th or worse in most key offensive categories because they don’t concede that they need to get on board with this.
I tend to disagree.
Let’s hope that, behind closed doors, this idea is why they are trying a fresh approach for 2019. If they wish to attack moving forward, they will need to get to work immediately because they are well behind the pack at the moment.
[HR][/HR]
Older article but worth the read.
By Bob Sturm Jan 22, 2019
Last Friday, the Cowboys finally announced a decision that many of us believe was actually made many weeks ago. They parted ways with offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, thus ending the namesake of this entire operation, “Decoding Linehan.”
Never fear, we started this series in 2008 when it was called “Decoding Garrett” and we will certainly continue to track the offensive progress (or lack thereof). but Scott Linehan’s five-year run is now behind us. What is not behind us, of course, is the fact that this remains largely Jason Garrett’s offense since the day he was brought in back in 2007.
That is why we all wonder if a staffing shuffle will lead to true change with this offense.
This is Garrett’s offense, and its existence is the reason that he has been as stable a coaching force with this franchise as anyone since Tom Landry. We are relatively confident that Garrett will begin his 10th year as coach of the Dallas Cowboys (ninth full season) and his 13th year as the offensive architect. We can discuss how much control was given to Scott Linehan or Bill Callahan during their years as “offensive coordinators” or while holding similar titles, but since the day he was hired in 2007, this has been the Jason Garrett offense.
What is the Jason Garrett offense? Let’s walk through this.
While I don’t allow for a whole lot of grey area, I will concede that Garrett’s blueprint has evolved quite a bit over the years and, of course, turned on a dime in the spring of 2014. Let’s take a look at what that looks like. Thanks to our friends at ProFootballReference.com, here is the Jason Garrett rankings sheet, which sums up the Cowboys offense during his tenure. As you can see, when he was hired, the Cowboys thought the best way to skin a cat was to let Tony Romo and his arm lead the way to Terrell Owens and a young Jason Witten. They were a top-10 passing offense each year from 2007-2012 under Garrett’s watch. Even the year when Romo was gone for most of the season in 2010, Jon Kitna was able to supply ample passing production. But the team managed to miss the playoffs in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. When you have a top QB and an impressive array of skill position players and still miss the playoffs in five of six seasons, something is horribly wrong. Some would argue that was when the defense was historically bad. (Quite untrue when Wade was here, progressively true with the post-Wade group, and very true by Monte Kiffin’s historically awful 2013 season.) Some would suggest the offensive line had declined. (Again, untrue through 2009, but 2010-2013 featured pretty ordinary OL play up front.) Some would argue that it probably doesn’t matter. If you have Romo in his prime (from 27 to 33 years old) and still miss the playoffs in five of six seasons, you are probably not the right head coach for this organization.
| Year | Tm | Role | Yds | Pts | GvA | Att | Yds | TD | Y/A | FL | Att | Yds | TD | Int | NY/A | |
| 2007 | DAL | OC | 3 | 2 | 7 | 21 | 17 | 10 | 10 | 1 | 18 | 4 | 2 | 21 | 2 | |
| 2008 | DAL | OC | 13 | 18 | 31 | 25 | 21 | 22 | 12 | 26 | 8 | 9 | 4 | 29 | 11 | |
| 2009 | DAL | OC | 2 | 14 | 4 | 17 | 7 | 15 | 2 | 11 | 13 | 6 | 13 | 3 | 5 | |
| 2010 | DAL | HC | 7 | 7 | 20 | 15 | 16 | 21 | 15 | 17 | 9 | 6 | 7 | 20 | 7 | |
| 2011 | DAL | HC | 11 | 15 | 7 | 24 | 18 | 30 | 9 | 16 | 11 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 11 | |
| 2012 | DAL | HC | 6 | 15 | 25 | 31 | 31 | 27 | 30 | 17 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 28 | 10 | |
| 2013 | DAL | HC | 16 | 5 | 8 | 31 | 24 | 18 | 8 | 8 | 13 | 14 | 3 | 10 | 13 | |
| 2014 | DAL | HC | 7 | 5 | 20 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 29 | 31 | 16 | 4 | 7 | 3 | |
| 2015 | DAL | HC | 22 | 31 | 31 | 18 | 9 | 21 | 5 | 22 | 23 | 27 | 29 | 31 | 20 | |
| 2016 | DAL | HC | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 13 | 30 | 23 | 14 | 3 | 5 | |
| 2017 | DAL | HC | 14 | 14 | 14 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 18 | 29 | 26 | 18 | 16 | 18 | |
| 2018 | DAL | HC | 22 | 22 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 16 | 14 | 15 | 21 | 23 | 22 | 5 | 22 |
Regardless of rationalization, the Cowboys stopped trying to run the ball from 2011 through 2013, as no team in the 32-team league had fewer rushing attempts during that span than Dallas did from 2011-13. This might explain how DeMarco Murray played here four years, yet was only actually used with any sort of regularity and conviction in 2014 (his contract year). The Cowboys decided to turn Romo loose and this led to all sorts of big highlights, dramatic wins, some horrible turnovers, awful defense, and similar 8-8 records each season for a sum total of 24-24 football in Garrett’s first three seasons as head coach.
Then, as if Zack Martin’s selection in the 2014 draft was the tipping point and changed everything in an instant, the Cowboys went from a team that never runs under Jason Garrett to a team that runs as much as anyone in the industry under Jason Garrett. It was quite a reversal of fields, but if you look up at the rankings again, you will see that only in 2015 (the year between Murray and Ezekiel Elliott) were the Cowboys not fully committed to running the ball early and often. Even with Tony Romo in 2014, the idea was to throw less but make the passing game far more efficient by dropping volume considerably. This all came during a time when the entire NFL was throwing more.
We don’t know where this was all headed if Romo’s body did not give out, but it did. Maybe because of the organization’s recklessness from 2011-13 or maybe because that was how his body was created, Romo was hurt severely in December of 2013 in Washington in an incident that required immediate back surgery. He then suffered another back injury in 2014 (the famous transverse process). Two collarbone injuries in 2015 would keep him out 8-10 weeks each — seemingly on nearly consecutive hits suffered three months apart — and the kill shot was yet another fractured vertebrae injury in Seattle during the 2016 preseason. Five severe injuries (some related to the others, some just bad luck) took him out of action in the final 22 games of his career, convincing most that his body had no more to give. (Certainly, to this day, we know a substantial number of fans are not convinced at all.)
Regardless, the Cowboys transformed from the 2011-13 offense to this modern Dak Prescott-led unit in 2016-18 that has many unique attributes of its own. This group takes very good care of the football (the 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 Cowboys finished 20th or worse in giveaways), tries to shorten games by dominating time of possession, and wins street fights in the trenches. In order to do so, they largely sacrifice passing yardage production and the ambition to search for big plays, but they find their way to wins on a regular basis and that is why we look at the offensive production through that lens. Winning games is the one and only goal for a football team, and while this sometimes seems lost on fantasy football fans who are perturbed that their favorite team doesn’t seem viable, it remains true.
Was it all because their QB was significantly more limited than his predecessor? That is a great question because the 2014 team seemed to find its best road to success in years by cutting back what they asked and allowed Romo to do despite his ascent to expert-level QB understanding. It stands to reason that once they were able to make this recipe work with Romo, they certainly were not going to invest in Ezekiel Elliott and then leave the path.
Why offer all of this background? Because a thorough review of the Garrett regime is required before we put 2018 under the microscope. If the general topic of ambition and disposition of the head coach is reviewed, you might see that any sort of radical changes to the Xs-and-Os of the offense will only take you so far. If Jason Garrett and the front office remain convinced that the best way to win a football game is the 2014/2016 recipe, then prepare for the team that ran the ball more than anyone in those two years and believed the pass was mostly reserved for third down. If 2018 was a failure, it was largely because the offensive line was not good enough to support the way Garrett and the Dallas front office want to see football.
Alternatively, is it possible that they see the NFL is going one way with offensive production while they are doubling down in the other direction? Is it possible they know what we wrote on Friday that the top teams in the league understand that their best road to a Super Bowl comes through scoring whenever possible? Let’s review the crux of Friday’s piece:
Here are those five magic ranking numbers for this year’s Patriots, Chiefs, Rams, and Saints, with the Cowboys added for the sake of comparison.
| Chiefs | 1st | 1st | 3rd | 1st | 1st |
| Rams | 2nd | 3rd | 5th | 3rd | 2nd |
| Saints | 3rd | 2nd | 12th | 4th | 7th |
| Patriots | 4th | 9th | 8th | 6th | 9th |
| Cowboys | 22nd | 17th | 23rd | 22nd | 22nd |
Yikes. That is certainly not an explosive offense at the bottom.
Is it possible that the Cowboys see Linehan’s view on offense as something that holds them back, even if it has been the path to winning football over the last five seasons? If Romo is 15-4 and Prescott is 32-16 during Scott Linehan’s tenure, that means the Cowboys are 47-20 with a healthy QB1 since he has been hired to run this offense. They are 2-3 in the playoffs, but the offense was probably good enough to be 4-1 in those games. In other words, if they thought their strategy was the path to victory and it worked 70% of the time, what was wrong about it? Only one franchise wins better than 70% of its games over a five-year sample and we all know which team that is.
Let me be clear: I wanted Scott Linehan gone. I have said a number of times that he would have been gone in November of 2017 if I was the boss, possibly on the tarmac in Atlanta. The Cowboys’ stubbornness and predictability, as well as their inability to stress defenses when they tried to take away Zeke, were high atop my list of issues. Then, when the offensive line was not at its best, the inability to scheme quicker passing routes to cover for poor pass-protection and a QB who was having trouble making quick decisions all falls to Linehan, as does another year of finishing in the bottom of the league in explosive plays. Third downs often featured identical routes from multiple receivers, which made defending the group frustratingly simple in repeated situations. The Cowboys never found a way to profit off their QB having a real talent on designed runs, rarely calling them. Finally, the last straw would be an inability to solve the team’s red-zone problems, a huge priority for a low-volume offense.
The 2018 rankings were as follows:
Let’s look at how those all break out in regard to some of the bigger categories that held this offense back. Below is a chart that shows total points/game, points per drive, yards/game, giveaways/game, third down and red-zone percentages, and sacks allowed per game:
| HOME | 25 | 2.3 | 363.4 | 0.9 | 42.9 | 43.33 | 3.25 |
| AWAY | 17.4 | 1.64 | 324.3 | 1.3 | 40 | 55 | 3.75 |
| TOTAL | 21.2 | 1.96 | 343.8 | 1.1 | 41.4 | 48 | 3.5 |
| PLAYOFFS | 23 | 2.3 | 344 | 0.5 | 23.8 | 83.33 | 1 |
As you can surmise, the home performances for most of the year were decent (thus, the 8-1 home record) aside from the red-zone offense and the sacks allowed; deficiencies which were often related. The Cowboys’ road column is horrendous throughout, which was best demonstrated at Carolina, Seattle, Houston, Washington, and Indianapolis. The trip to Los Angeles was better, but the lack of a running game and poor third-down play sabotaged that effort (as well as a defense that never had a prayer).
This is the bottom line: With what has been invested in this offense in terms of draft picks and contracts, this team should not be near the bottom of the league in any major offensive category. Especially if it appears to be by design. [HR][/HR]
That final phrase is where the rubber meets the road as Linehan drives off into the sunset. If the Cowboys’ biggest enemy appears to be their offensive disposition rather than the particular design of certain concepts, we must consider the overall mental approach to the game that this Cowboys brain trust currently employs. There were too many times, in 2018 alone, where we could see that the Cowboys’ offensive approach was careful and timid. The most adventurous and risky ideas might be play-action rollouts to multi-level tight ends off a middle-dive fake to Zeke. Linehan called a game that gave the team just enough breathing room to get ahead, then go in a shell until the defense needs them again, then show some adventure late and hope to have enough to win.
In other words, the Cowboys are not trying to maximize point-scoring opportunities. They are only willing to release just enough leash to accomplish their goal of out-scoring their opponent. Not one inch more.
Let’s flash back to Week 13, at home against the Saints. The Cowboys score on two of their first three drives to start the game, but once ahead 10-0, the offense goes into a shell of protection where they do mix run and pass, but all the passes are very short, safe routes that seldom challenge the secondary in any way. Carefully, they plod down the field four yards at a time. While they are still trying to score, they do so without taking any risk whatsoever. Generally, any mistake — a negative run, a holding penalty, a sack, a drop — brings the punt team on the field. But Garrett and Linehan are not worried, because they have a 10-0 lead and apparently, against the Saints, that will be enough.
Week 14, home against the Eagles: The Cowboys kick a few field goals early and then retreat into their shell. Since the Eagles are not scoring, maybe a 9-0 lead can be enough! An errant throw from Prescott does jumpstart Philadelphia’s day, but that is only part of the point. Once the Eagles force the Cowboys offense to be more aggressive, presto! They gain 273 yards after the fourth quarter begins and find three touchdown drives to end the game. Maybe all their offense required was some adventurous play-calling.
Week 17 versus the Giants — and the wildcard game against the Seahawks — featured more of the same. The Cowboys were cautious early and only became more adventurous when forced to do so. By the end of the game, Prescott made play after play to lead his team to victory. The fans left the stadium wondering why he can’t do that earlier in the game. I have my theories. You will recall that the Cowboys’ best drives happened once the Seahawks took the lead. Once the offense had to find points, magically, they could.
Here is a visual aid on this premise. It is merely a breakout of first-half and second-half performance since the Amari Cooper trade. I think it shows the Cowboys enter each game without a whole lot of offensive ambition and then adjust their disposition based on the game situation; which of course allows for an overall statistical underachievement if your coaches would rather not do anything risky until their hand is forced.
| 1 | 133 | 190 | 70 | 1293 | 6.8 | 5 | 1 | 19 | 9.1 | 95.4 |
| 2 | 111 | 159 | 69.8 | 1366 | 8.6 | 8 | 3 | 11 | 6.5 | 105 |
Please pay special attention to Yards per attempt and Sack rate. In both cases, there is a substantial uptick in the 2nd half when you would think conditions are more difficult. The yards per attempt go from what would be 27th ranked in the NFL (Blake Bortles) to 3rd (right behind Pat Mahomes). This is what disposition and aggressiveness looks like on paper. Further, outside the structure of the normal offense, the sacks drop substantially. How is this possible?
Hopefully, the point seems clear. Everyone knows Dak Prescott is not a top-five NFL quarterback. The object of the game then becomes the following: Either figure out how to acquire one of the very best QBs in the sport or make yours the best he can be. One of Linehan’s biggest failings (perhaps Garrett’s, too) is that Prescott seemed better when he left the structure of their offense and had to figure out plays off-script (oddly reminiscent of Romo back in 2011-13). When the offense had to score, they moved to a more aggressive posture — the two-minute offense, for instance — and suddenly, Prescott made plays with his arm and his feet. Amazingly, the Cowboys just might have a play-making QB when he is put in a position to do so. Does he have elite accuracy or the ability to read the whole field like the best? No. But we are looking for the very best version of Dak Prescott. And that guy was seldom found in the normal structure of the Dallas offense. We only saw it when they needed him to “make a play”.
I follow this team as closely as anyone outside the organization could. I study the Dallas Cowboys daily for many, many hours. And yet, as I sit here this morning, I cannot tell you that removing Scott Linehan from this group will fix what ails the Cowboys. Yes, I had countless issues with his offense, but I still can’t swear that it is completely his. It doesn’t resemble what Garrett was doing before Linehan arrived, but it also doesn’t resemble what Linehan did in Detroit, either. The Cowboys offense and their disposition with regards to risk and reward still seem more like a function of the entire brain trust. The Cowboys collectively decided to draft a tackle, center, guard and running back in the first round over a six-year span. They decided to pound the rock, seemingly resembling the Cowboys of 1992-1995 when Emmitt Smith followed a dominant offensive line into the end zone as the same brain trust watched this franchise win three Super Bowls in four years.
If it is the design that most suits Jerry Jones, Stephen Jones, Will McClay, and Jason Garrett, then your new offensive coordinator will likely please them, producing a similar blueprint. I would actually be pretty comfortable with asking a guy like Kellen Moore — someone who gets tabbed by anyone who spends time around him in a film room as a football savant — to look at the best offenses in the NFL and to try to design one that might allow the Cowboys to pursue the same objectives. I just don’t know if that would ever be authorized by this group. It is possible that Prescott appeals most to this front office because he can be trusted to do what he is told, make safe plays with the ball, be a strong leader of men, and bring home victories. The premise that the Cowboys want to turn their offense into a scoring machine is wishful thinking, in my view.
I want them to attempt to do what Chicago has done. Take an underachieving offense and try to make your own version of Kansas City or Los Angeles. Chicago isn’t there yet, but the strides they have taken under Matt Nagy are clear and obvious. They use vertical and horizontal stretching to give their QB easy throws into space where their weapons can rack up yardage without risking the ball. They use play-action and all the weapons at their disposal to stress every defender on the field. The Cowboys do not. They run Zeke into the teeth of eight-man boxes because that is how they did things with Emmitt Smith, and if you could win a Super Bowl that way in 1992, then it should still work nearly three decades later.
I guess I am saying this: They had better have an organizational agreement as to why their offense has struggled. They struggled because they started the season without an above-average wide receiver or tight end. They started a rookie guard next to a backup center all year. They panicked and had to make a mid-season trade that cost them their 2019 first-round pick, potentially salvaging a season and a head-coaching regime. Their design hasn’t changed with the times to make a defense’s day difficult enough. To see the contenders constantly put their opponents in conflicts and binds that make their head spin, only to watch the Cowboys seemingly run the same 10 concepts, is pretty frustrating.
In other words, if they are firing Scott Linehan to just revert back to the Jason Garrett offense, the Cowboys seem to be spinning their wheels with a new man on the headset. But if they are firing Scott Linehan to bring in someone with fresh ideas and a new approach to challenge the offensive disposition around here— someone who will try to maximize points every week in a league where the race to 30 seems to also be the race to the top of the standings — then, please, be my guest.
The NFL’s new trajectory has very little to do with how Emmitt Smith ran a FB lead in 1992. Instead, Andy Reid and Sean McVay have run plays that feature players going in every direction, leaving defenses with no idea what is happening until their man is on his way back into the end zone. The Cowboys ranked 20th or worse in most key offensive categories because they don’t concede that they need to get on board with this.
I tend to disagree.
Let’s hope that, behind closed doors, this idea is why they are trying a fresh approach for 2019. If they wish to attack moving forward, they will need to get to work immediately because they are well behind the pack at the moment.
[HR][/HR]
Older article but worth the read.
