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By Bob Sturm Oct 26, 2021
As the bye week comes and goes, the Cowboys prepare for a stretch that they hope begins with QB1 in full health on Sunday night. Dak Prescott is said to be “good to go” after his calf strain, but we will know more as time creeps closer. We will over-report on this soon enough.
But, the week off allows us to look at one interesting aspect of the offense today and another on the defense Wednesday. I have selected them with plenty of help from you, our valued subscribers.
Today is about Kellen Moore and his future. It seems like very few Cowboys’ topics get thrown around like the one revolving around his ultimate candidacy to be a head coach sometime very soon and whether the Cowboys should do more than just open the door for him to go elsewhere.
You know how it goes from here. Some — often found in our comments below every time I write about the team — suggest Dallas should fire its Super Bowl-winning coach for one who has never been a head coach at any level, rather than allow someone else to take him away.
As you predicted before you read this paragraph, I find that just as ridiculous as allowing Terence Steele to keep his job over La’el Collins on Sunday night. When someone demonstrates they can do a job at a very high level, we are not looking for opportunities to potentially downgrade unless there is a great reason. A great reason from the man with the job, that is. Mike McCarthy was hired for reasons of credentials and resumé to lift this program to levels it has not attained in quite a while. There is no reason to believe that isn’t happening. Case closed.
If the circumstances change and the progress subsides, we reserve the right to alter our current views. For now, the Cowboys have a very good right tackle and a very good head coach. It seems pretty funny to replace either one of them because a younger version might have appeared.
That said, Moore could be the next Sean McVay or Matt LaFleur. Which is true. You would hate to lose out on either of them. But, he could also be the next Norv Turner, Mike Martz, or yes, Jason Garrett. A hot coordinator who has all the trimmings of a future head coach who will do great things — only to find out that they were actually good coordinators and never good head coaches.
There is usually only one way to find out if he can do the many things that are required by a head coach and then have the good fortune to be able to make it all matter.
Is he the best offensive coordinator to hire? Buffalo’s Brian Daboll is surely that man for me. After that, is it Moore or Joe Brady or Eric Bieniemy or even Nathaniel Hackett? Who can say? Moore is highly coveted for consideration, but the beauty is in the eye of the beholder and his ability to sell a very rich owner in an interview. And would Moore leave an offense that is beyond loaded with weapons and star power for a team that needs talent everywhere just to say he is a head coach by age 33?
Who knows?
My quick prediction: He will take interviews and the Cowboys will do their best to keep him at a considerable raise as the coordinator by doing what they normally do — back up the truck. Heck, there is a good chance that he might be the unofficial “head coach in waiting” because we never thought McCarthy was here for more than five years, anyway. Nobody knows what is around the next corner, but Moore sure looks like the new version of Garrett — blessed by the Jones family as the chosen one. This pays well and you don’t even have to work on your “all-team meeting address” game just yet.
As anyone knows who has read this space for years, I am a big Moore enthusiast. He is so much better at almost everything than his predecessors — Scott Linehan and Garrett — that it is almost not worth the debate. He is so creative and understands the horizontal attack as well as the vertical attack. His offensive mind is tremendous and his grasp of the concepts that matter are unquestioned.
But, there is one fatal flaw. Will it keep him from getting hired? No.
Might it keep Dallas from hitting its ceiling if it doesn’t get it fixed?
Certainly could.
Below, please find the league rankings of the Moore offense. On the left, we have the entire era of his OC work and on the right, we have just 2021. In both cases, they are league rankings from best (1) to worst (32).
Heck, we even color-coded them as green is great and red is horrid. Yellow is somewhere in the middle.
You might find it interesting to see how close those two rankings are. On one side you have a three-year window where Moore’s team has yet to make a single playoff. On the other, you see what many consider the best offense in the sport this year.
And yet the rankings are almost identical.
Of those 10 key metrics, there is one Achilles heel — that stat is thought to be maybe the most important of them all.
The all-important “Red Zone TD Conversion Rate” usually determines the best of the best.
I recently tweeted about this very issue (which followed some radio on the topic):
The Cowboys have been mid-20s in Red Zone TD% since Moore has taken this job. Yes, there has been great improvement in all the other stats, but this team is inefficient when it is time to get paid for your work. You just chewed up half a quarter and 70 yards to get down the field in 12 plays. But, now you are kicking a field goal and the defense is celebrating for “holding you” in a way that feels like a gut punch.
Another tweet from that thread:
Dallas has 72 RZ TD’s since ’19 when Kellen took over. 6 different teams have 90+ RZ TD’s in same span. That is at least 18 TDs fewer in 38 total games. Small margins, but huge ramifications. I believe issue is they may run too much in RZ when strength is pass.
Can you imagine giving up about two points per game? That is a very big deal. It could cost you a few games in the standings which could cost you a bye week or a home game in the playoffs.
Not good!
I went back and looked at the Cowboys’ last decade or so on this topic to see where they normally have ranked.
This visual aid took me a while, so I hope you can sort through it. Basically, the best red-zone offenses hit about 70 percent, the NFL average is usually around 55-60 percent and the bad red-zone offenses are below 50 percent.
With that in mind, the red line is the annual league average line and the blue line is the Cowboys each season. At the top, I divided the years by offensive coordinator and at the bottom, I divided by QB1.
Also, the gold circles are seasons when the QB was injured for a significant portion of the year.
In the three seasons of Moore’s offense, the Cowboys have ranked 15th, 29th and now 24th for an average of 23rd. That is simply not good enough.
Why are they so far below the best in the league? Titans, Packers, Saints, Seahawks and Buccaneers are the top 5. The bottom 5 are the Jaguars, Giants, Broncos, Bengals and Jets.
In other words, good offenses often have good red-zone conversions. Bad offenses often are really bad at this. All of the other explanations — less field to work with, getting too cute, etc. — just feel like grasping at straws.
Heck, you can see from the chart that the Cowboys were a great red-zone offense with Tony Romo and with Dak Prescott. People may find this impossible to believe but Prescott outperforms Romo on third downs and in the red zone. Not by much, but his offenses have out-converted Romo’s in both. Third down is a slim 44 percent to 43 percent margin and red zone is 59 percent to 57 percent. I would not have predicted that.
What gives? To be so good elsewhere in the offense and so disappointing here is the type of thing that can come back to derail you when the competition stiffens. And, frankly, it is curious that Moore has answers for everything, but in the red zone, the performance hasn’t really moved substantially in three seasons. Yes, the numbers are better with Prescott than without, but not enough to put Dallas in the top half of the league. This season clearly tells the story. I looked at plenty of numbers and I came up with two massive issues with regards to the Cowboys’ red zone under Moore.
Reasons for red-zone struggles under Kellen Moore:
1. Too many run plays.
2. This offense has many great stars, but no great red-zone targets.
There may be more than just these two, but these two are pretty high on my list of suspects. And the more I think about it, they may be related.
1. Too many run plays in the red zone.
This seems to be a real interesting theory. Especially the closer to the goal line. There are many ways to skin a cat (I have been told) and this one is a very subjective conclusion, I admit. Tennessee is a great red-zone team and it runs the ball a lot. Green Bay and Kansas City are usually great red-zone teams and they never run the ball down deep.
But, Dallas runs the ball quite a bit. The NFL average in “goal-to-go” situations is a 51.2 percent run rate. Dallas is sixth under Moore at 55.3 percent. The top team in the league is New England with 63.3 percent and we know their love of the QB sneak with Tom Brady and Cam Newton, in particular.
Now, here is where it gets incredible. Dallas was 55.3 percent, but I wanted to just use games in which Prescott was the starter to see if that lowers because he is such an exceptional passer. I found out just the opposite. When Prescott is the QB, the run rate shoots up to 63 percent! The Cowboys are basically running it more than any team in the league with Prescott. Understand how crazy it is to pass more (by a huge margin) in the red zone when you have a lesser QB back there like Andy Dalton or Garrett Gilbert. That is what they were doing.
I want to be clear — they don’t always fail at it. Prescott is very good and Ezekiel Elliott is very good, too. Their zone read in the red zone was a killer for several seasons from 2016-18. But the league adjusts. The more I see this current form of the offense, the more I am convinced the Cowboys need to understand that Prescott is closer to the top QBs than he is allowed to prove near the end zone. We have seen him put the ball where it needs to go with precision and timing. The solution to this problem — it is a problem to be in the bottom 25 percent of the league at scoring touchdowns in the red zone — is to allow Prescott and the passing game to get you those last yards.
This leads us to this second reality.
2. This offense has many great stars, but no great red-zone targets.
I have long thought this was a massive problem. It will certainly elicit some cheers and some eye rolls, but it needs to be said. This team missed Dez Bryant and Jason Witten more than it missed Tony Romo. All of them had bodies that declined and slowed down and needed to be replaced, but I am talking about in their primes. When this team was its best in the red zone, it had two massive matchup problems that opponents had a very difficult time defending. And when you have matchup issues, you get red-zone TDs.
The Cowboys had Bryant, who was as dangerous in the red zone with his ability to win on fades and back-shoulder fades as well as anyone in the sport and Witten, who could win on the Y-option as well as anyone. The Cowboys could play them together and off of each other. It was impossible to stop.
In fact, to prove it, here are all Cowboys’ receivers in the red zone since Romo became a starter in 2006 until now — sorted by touchdowns scored in the red zone.
Many receivers can be considered “great” but have places on the field or things in their game that vary. I submit this current group of Cowboys’ receivers may have as excellent a group as anyone and yet lack a true “red-zone bully” among them. Amari Cooper is incredibly low on this list in many categories. His completion percentage is very low, his touchdowns are low (behind Patrick Crayton?) and we know he is an exceptional route runner. He has played the same number of games as Terrell Owens did in Dallas and he is 18 for 38 with 11 touchdowns while Owens was 31 for 31 and 18 touchdowns in the red zone? That statistic feels impossible.
But, if you consider what makes him great, seldom would anyone suggest he is able to win with strength the way Bryant used to do. Cooper and Bryant are both excellent and top targets but in wildly different ways.
Let’s go back to that Red Zone Conversion chart by the years:
At the end of 2017, Dallas let Bryant and Witten go and the red-zone offense ceased to be dominant or even at league average and it has never really returned. This seems like the realities of players getting older and a team making a tough decision with ramifications.
As great as CeeDee Lamb and Michael Gallup are, they also don’t seem to be used much in this space on the field. So, the coaches conclude that the best choices are probably Prescott and Elliott in a running concept. I submit that hasn’t worked nearly enough.
Conclusions
The conclusion is that there may not be ideal conclusions, but I submit it may be found in the same ways this team is so good on third down. Passing concepts that use bunches, jet sweeps, motions and creativity, but with the final destination being using Prescott as a point guard to find the best weapon in the best situation and then let him make a play. With Bryant and Witten, it was just let them go “box out” their man, but they aren’t here and that style is used less and less in today’s NFL.
This sort of thing may not keep Moore from being a head coach soon and it may not even prevent the Cowboys from a deep playoff run. But, it feels like a massive concern as margins shrink and the stakes raise. They cannot settle for field goals or worse in the red zone as the weather shifts. I suspect Moore is well aware of this.
