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Cowboys don't draft RB, bet on O-Line to replace DeMarco Murray
By Jared Dubin | NFL Writer
May 3, 2015 1:58 pm ET
The Cowboys are betting their offensive line can make anybody look good. (Getty Images)
The Dallas Cowboys had arguably the best running game in football last season. In a stark change from previous years in the Jason Garrett Era, Dallas ran the football on 49.6 percent of offensive plays, the third-highest rate in the league. By the end of the season, Dallas finished with the league's second most rushing yards, the third-highest rushing DVOA, and the fifth-most rushing touchdowns. DeMarco Murray led the NFL by a mile in both carries and rushing yards, and he did it while still finishing sixth among backs with at least 200 totes in yards per carry.
The engine of that running game, even more so than Murray's brilliance, was the Cowboys' massive, mobile group of maulers on the offensive line. It's a group that took a few years to build, but whose building has paid off tremendously.
When Jason Garrett took over for Wade Phillips as the team's head coach back in 2010, the Cowboys were still starting Doug Free, Kyle Kosier, Andre Gurode, Leonard Davis and Marc Colombo (now an offensive line assistant for the team) from left to right along the offensive line. It was one of the biggest, oldest and slowest offensive lines in the league. Since then, the team has made a heavy investment in the line pretty much every year.
The overhaul started in 2011, with the drafting of tackle Tyron Smith with the ninth overall pick. Smith began his career on the right side, but flip-flopped with Free in his second season, and his since become one of the premier left tackles in the league. In 2012, Dallas signed left guard Ronald Leary as an undrafted free agent. Leary had at one point been an early-round prospect, but a knee injury that was considered possibly degenerative caused him to go undrafted. The Cowboys gave him a huge guarantee on a UDFA contract, and he's started 31 of the last 32 games for them while playing very well. The 2013 draft saw Dallas trade down and pick center Travis Frederick with the 31st overall pick. It was considered a huge reach at the time -- Frederick was seen by many as being a second or third-round prospect, at best -- but it has paid huge dividends. Frederick has quickly become one of the best centers in football, and he is arguably the best run-blocker in the league, at any position. The selection of Zack Martin at No. 16 in the 2014 draft -- which Stephen Jones reportedly convinced his father Jerry to make instead of the far more high-profile Johnny Manziel -- completed the turnover, as Martin stepped in and may have been Dallas' best offensive lineman as a rookie.
That group, plus injury fill-ins Jeremy Parnell and Mackenzy Bernadeau, simply dominated the line of scrimmage in nearly every game last season. Pro Football Focus gave them the second-highest run blocking grade of any offensive line in football, while they led the NFL in Football Outsiders' Adjusted Line Yards (which attempts to measure the contribution of the offensive line in the running game). Murray routinely had gulf-wide holes to run through, making it to the second-level untouched on numerous occasions. Murray averaged 2.2 yards per attempt before contact last season, the seventh-highest average among 42 backs with at least 100 carries. Lowering the treshhold to 50 carries, you see that Murray's backup, Joseph Randle, averaged 2.5 yards before contact per carry, the fifth-highest average among 76 such backs.
Those figures, plus the fact that Smith, Fredrick and Martin are all 24 years old and Leary is only 26, likely contributed to Dallas' decision to let Murray leave for the Philadelphia Eagles earlier this offseason. Frederick is under his rookie contract for three more years, Martin is locked in for four, and Smith recently signed a below-market extension that will keep him in Dallas for a decade. Free is the senior member of the group at 31, and he signed what will likely be the last contract of his Cowboys career earlier this offseason, one that lasts for three seasons. Leary's health will remain a question, but with Smith, Frederick and Martin as anchors, the Cowboys line should be elite -- not just good -- for the foreseeable future.
Even given all that, most figured that Dallas would draft a back in this weekend's NFL draft. The running back class was considered one of the strongest in years -- there were two top-flight options in Todd Gurley and Melvin Gordon, as well as considerable depth in the middle rounds like Tevin Coleman, Duke Johnson, Ameer Abdullah, Jay Ajayi, David Johnson, T.J. Yeldon, Jeremy Langford, David Cobb and Javorious Allen. Dallas' in-house options from last season included only Randle, scatback Lance Dunbar and preseason cut Ryan Williams, and their only notable free agent signing at the position was the underwhelming Darren McFadden. It made a ton of sense to expect the Cowboys to address this in the draft, and it seemed incredibly likely they'd do so on the first or second day. Instead, they were one of 12 teams to not select a single back in the draft.
“We tried not to push for a particular need,” executive vice president Stephen Jones said, per the Dallas Morning News. “We kind of let the draft come to us in a good way and were able to solve a lot of things, take care of a lot of things that we felt like we were short in. I think we really improved our football team.
“At the end of the day, maybe use the term we let the draft come to us. I think the right guys were there for us. Whenever we had a big question mark and started straying away a little bit, we always went back to who was the best player on the board.”
The DMN stated that after Tevin Coleman, Duke Johnson and David Johnson came off the board in a 13-pick span from No. 73 to No. 86, the Cowboys did not seriously consider taking a back after that. Instead, they drafted a player at No. 91 who will likely begin his career as the swing tackle before eventually taking over for Free, Chaz Green, as well as another tackle later in the draft, Laurence Gibson. The remaining picks were all used on defensive players and a blocking tight end.
Frederick, for one, did not seem concerned. "We have such a great stable of running backs already," Frederick said at the Cowboys draft party, per the DMN. "No matter what happens in the draft I have so much trust in Joe (Randle) and Darren (McFadden) and (Lance Dunbar) that whatever happens happens. There was talk about early on getting one and later on, it really doesn't matter."
Dallas did sign undrafted free agents Synyn Days (Georgia Tech) and George Farmer (USC, considered a hybrid RB/WR type) at the position, but it otherwise went completely unaddressed over the weekend. It appears the team is content to move forward with some sort of rotation that includes Randle, Williams, Dunbar and/or McFadden, betting on the idea that pretty much anybody can run behind the group of behemoths up front.
Combined, those four runners are scheduled to make just over $4 million next season, a scant 2.71 percent of the salary cap. That's the 14th-lowest figure in the league, before factoring in draft pick salaries (nine of the teams below Dallas are among those who picked at least one back). Even though the offensive line is only the 28th-most well-compensated in the NFL (again, before including draft pick salaries), it will be paid nearly four times as much as the group of running backs during the 2015 season. Smith alone will make more than the four backs combined, with a 2015 cap hit just north of $5 million.
It seems likely that Randle and McFadden will have a leg up in the competition for carries, given that Randle ran extremely well as the primary backup to Murray last season and McFadden was brought in as a free agent despite the presence of the other three backs on the roster. Dunbar is a passing-down back -- he averaged only 3.4 yards per carry last season, but hauled in 18 of the 22 passes thrown his way. Williams has talent, but he has not been able to stay healthy since leaving Virginia Tech, and the one year he did receive carries, he was extremely ineffective for the Arizona Cardinals. Counting on receiving any sort of on-field production from him would be unwise.
Dallas praised McFadden's big-play ability at the time of his signing, and because of that it seems logical that he'll be used as a change of pace back rather than a bell-cow. Randle, who totaled 343 yards on 51 carries last year, an average of 6.7 per attempt, and also crossed the goal line for three scores, looks to be in line for the biggest role. The Cowboys took him in the fifth round of the 2013 draft out of Oklahoma State, where he was a stud that carried 482 times for 2,633 yards and 38 touchdowns in his final two seasons. He's still just 23 years old, and with only 107 combined regular and postseason NFL carries on his odometer, he's relatively unscathed healthwise. He's had some legal troubles, with two arrests in the last year, but one was for shiplifting and the other did not result in charges after he was cleared of domestic violence allegations made by an ex-girlfriend. If he stays both healthy and out of trouble, he should be set up as the primary back next season.
Whether he succeeds may ultimately depend on the line more than anything else. Dallas runs a zone-blocking scheme that has shown over the years it can churn out 1,000-yard runners both anonymous and well-known. Gary Kubiak alone has had eight different backs run for 1,000 yards using the zone running system, seven of them drafted in the third round or later, including the undrafted Justin Forsett last season with the Ravens. And remember: Murray himself was a third-round pick for the Cowboys. Dallas is betting that the line, the scheme, the play-calling, and of course, the threat of Dallas' high-octane passing game with Tony Romo throwing to Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, Terrance Williams and Cole Beasley, will be able to produce yet another next season.
By Jared Dubin | NFL Writer
May 3, 2015 1:58 pm ET
The Cowboys are betting their offensive line can make anybody look good. (Getty Images)
The Dallas Cowboys had arguably the best running game in football last season. In a stark change from previous years in the Jason Garrett Era, Dallas ran the football on 49.6 percent of offensive plays, the third-highest rate in the league. By the end of the season, Dallas finished with the league's second most rushing yards, the third-highest rushing DVOA, and the fifth-most rushing touchdowns. DeMarco Murray led the NFL by a mile in both carries and rushing yards, and he did it while still finishing sixth among backs with at least 200 totes in yards per carry.
The engine of that running game, even more so than Murray's brilliance, was the Cowboys' massive, mobile group of maulers on the offensive line. It's a group that took a few years to build, but whose building has paid off tremendously.
When Jason Garrett took over for Wade Phillips as the team's head coach back in 2010, the Cowboys were still starting Doug Free, Kyle Kosier, Andre Gurode, Leonard Davis and Marc Colombo (now an offensive line assistant for the team) from left to right along the offensive line. It was one of the biggest, oldest and slowest offensive lines in the league. Since then, the team has made a heavy investment in the line pretty much every year.
The overhaul started in 2011, with the drafting of tackle Tyron Smith with the ninth overall pick. Smith began his career on the right side, but flip-flopped with Free in his second season, and his since become one of the premier left tackles in the league. In 2012, Dallas signed left guard Ronald Leary as an undrafted free agent. Leary had at one point been an early-round prospect, but a knee injury that was considered possibly degenerative caused him to go undrafted. The Cowboys gave him a huge guarantee on a UDFA contract, and he's started 31 of the last 32 games for them while playing very well. The 2013 draft saw Dallas trade down and pick center Travis Frederick with the 31st overall pick. It was considered a huge reach at the time -- Frederick was seen by many as being a second or third-round prospect, at best -- but it has paid huge dividends. Frederick has quickly become one of the best centers in football, and he is arguably the best run-blocker in the league, at any position. The selection of Zack Martin at No. 16 in the 2014 draft -- which Stephen Jones reportedly convinced his father Jerry to make instead of the far more high-profile Johnny Manziel -- completed the turnover, as Martin stepped in and may have been Dallas' best offensive lineman as a rookie.
That group, plus injury fill-ins Jeremy Parnell and Mackenzy Bernadeau, simply dominated the line of scrimmage in nearly every game last season. Pro Football Focus gave them the second-highest run blocking grade of any offensive line in football, while they led the NFL in Football Outsiders' Adjusted Line Yards (which attempts to measure the contribution of the offensive line in the running game). Murray routinely had gulf-wide holes to run through, making it to the second-level untouched on numerous occasions. Murray averaged 2.2 yards per attempt before contact last season, the seventh-highest average among 42 backs with at least 100 carries. Lowering the treshhold to 50 carries, you see that Murray's backup, Joseph Randle, averaged 2.5 yards before contact per carry, the fifth-highest average among 76 such backs.
Those figures, plus the fact that Smith, Fredrick and Martin are all 24 years old and Leary is only 26, likely contributed to Dallas' decision to let Murray leave for the Philadelphia Eagles earlier this offseason. Frederick is under his rookie contract for three more years, Martin is locked in for four, and Smith recently signed a below-market extension that will keep him in Dallas for a decade. Free is the senior member of the group at 31, and he signed what will likely be the last contract of his Cowboys career earlier this offseason, one that lasts for three seasons. Leary's health will remain a question, but with Smith, Frederick and Martin as anchors, the Cowboys line should be elite -- not just good -- for the foreseeable future.
Even given all that, most figured that Dallas would draft a back in this weekend's NFL draft. The running back class was considered one of the strongest in years -- there were two top-flight options in Todd Gurley and Melvin Gordon, as well as considerable depth in the middle rounds like Tevin Coleman, Duke Johnson, Ameer Abdullah, Jay Ajayi, David Johnson, T.J. Yeldon, Jeremy Langford, David Cobb and Javorious Allen. Dallas' in-house options from last season included only Randle, scatback Lance Dunbar and preseason cut Ryan Williams, and their only notable free agent signing at the position was the underwhelming Darren McFadden. It made a ton of sense to expect the Cowboys to address this in the draft, and it seemed incredibly likely they'd do so on the first or second day. Instead, they were one of 12 teams to not select a single back in the draft.
“We tried not to push for a particular need,” executive vice president Stephen Jones said, per the Dallas Morning News. “We kind of let the draft come to us in a good way and were able to solve a lot of things, take care of a lot of things that we felt like we were short in. I think we really improved our football team.
“At the end of the day, maybe use the term we let the draft come to us. I think the right guys were there for us. Whenever we had a big question mark and started straying away a little bit, we always went back to who was the best player on the board.”
The DMN stated that after Tevin Coleman, Duke Johnson and David Johnson came off the board in a 13-pick span from No. 73 to No. 86, the Cowboys did not seriously consider taking a back after that. Instead, they drafted a player at No. 91 who will likely begin his career as the swing tackle before eventually taking over for Free, Chaz Green, as well as another tackle later in the draft, Laurence Gibson. The remaining picks were all used on defensive players and a blocking tight end.
Frederick, for one, did not seem concerned. "We have such a great stable of running backs already," Frederick said at the Cowboys draft party, per the DMN. "No matter what happens in the draft I have so much trust in Joe (Randle) and Darren (McFadden) and (Lance Dunbar) that whatever happens happens. There was talk about early on getting one and later on, it really doesn't matter."
Dallas did sign undrafted free agents Synyn Days (Georgia Tech) and George Farmer (USC, considered a hybrid RB/WR type) at the position, but it otherwise went completely unaddressed over the weekend. It appears the team is content to move forward with some sort of rotation that includes Randle, Williams, Dunbar and/or McFadden, betting on the idea that pretty much anybody can run behind the group of behemoths up front.
Combined, those four runners are scheduled to make just over $4 million next season, a scant 2.71 percent of the salary cap. That's the 14th-lowest figure in the league, before factoring in draft pick salaries (nine of the teams below Dallas are among those who picked at least one back). Even though the offensive line is only the 28th-most well-compensated in the NFL (again, before including draft pick salaries), it will be paid nearly four times as much as the group of running backs during the 2015 season. Smith alone will make more than the four backs combined, with a 2015 cap hit just north of $5 million.
It seems likely that Randle and McFadden will have a leg up in the competition for carries, given that Randle ran extremely well as the primary backup to Murray last season and McFadden was brought in as a free agent despite the presence of the other three backs on the roster. Dunbar is a passing-down back -- he averaged only 3.4 yards per carry last season, but hauled in 18 of the 22 passes thrown his way. Williams has talent, but he has not been able to stay healthy since leaving Virginia Tech, and the one year he did receive carries, he was extremely ineffective for the Arizona Cardinals. Counting on receiving any sort of on-field production from him would be unwise.
Dallas praised McFadden's big-play ability at the time of his signing, and because of that it seems logical that he'll be used as a change of pace back rather than a bell-cow. Randle, who totaled 343 yards on 51 carries last year, an average of 6.7 per attempt, and also crossed the goal line for three scores, looks to be in line for the biggest role. The Cowboys took him in the fifth round of the 2013 draft out of Oklahoma State, where he was a stud that carried 482 times for 2,633 yards and 38 touchdowns in his final two seasons. He's still just 23 years old, and with only 107 combined regular and postseason NFL carries on his odometer, he's relatively unscathed healthwise. He's had some legal troubles, with two arrests in the last year, but one was for shiplifting and the other did not result in charges after he was cleared of domestic violence allegations made by an ex-girlfriend. If he stays both healthy and out of trouble, he should be set up as the primary back next season.
Whether he succeeds may ultimately depend on the line more than anything else. Dallas runs a zone-blocking scheme that has shown over the years it can churn out 1,000-yard runners both anonymous and well-known. Gary Kubiak alone has had eight different backs run for 1,000 yards using the zone running system, seven of them drafted in the third round or later, including the undrafted Justin Forsett last season with the Ravens. And remember: Murray himself was a third-round pick for the Cowboys. Dallas is betting that the line, the scheme, the play-calling, and of course, the threat of Dallas' high-octane passing game with Tony Romo throwing to Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, Terrance Williams and Cole Beasley, will be able to produce yet another next season.