Machota: NFL history says Cowboys will be successful if wide receivers meet expectations

Cotton

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By Jon Machota 1h ago

Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup and CeeDee Lamb are trying to accomplish something this season that has never been done in Cowboys history. It’s only happened five times in NFL history and technically only four times by a wide receiver trio.

“I think the expectation is to have three 1,000-yard receivers this year,” Cooper said Tuesday.

The Cowboys weren’t far off from making that happen last year. Cooper totaled 1,189 yards, Gallup finished with 1,107 and Randall Cobb added 828. That’s the closest Dallas has come in franchise history when only counting wide receivers.

Dez Bryant (1,382), Jason Witten (1,039) and Miles Austin (943) were closer in 2012, but that included Witten at tight end. The same can be said for the great Cowboys teams of the 1990s. The closest they ever got with a trio included tight end Jay Novacek. In 1995, Michael Irvin finished with 1,603 yards, Novacek had 705 and Kevin Williams added 613.

The closest a franchise trio came during the Tom Landry era was in 1979 and 1985. Tony Hill (1,062) and Drew Pearson (1,026) both went over 1,000 yards and tight end Billy Joe DuPree finished with 324 in 1979. Six years later, Hill ended up with 1,113 yards while Mike Renfro added 955 and tight end Doug Cosbie finished with 793.

Cooper has several reasons to believe this year’s group has a realistic chance. They lost Cobb in free agency but replaced him by selecting Lamb with the 17th overall pick.

“I think it was a great pickup,” Cooper said. “You have to draft the best player on the board. Everybody understands that. I think he’s a great receiver.”

Lamb was arguably the top wide receiver in this year’s draft class. Adding him into the mix with a four-time Pro Bowler like Cooper and another 1,000-yard receiver in Gallup led to Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones recently saying it’s the position group he’s most excited about.

“Jumping on CeeDee Lamb there in the first round, this receiving corps is going to be something else,” Jones told DallasCowboys.com last week. “I think this is a very unique receiving corps. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it.”

Despite COVID-19 creating its own limitations, Cooper, Lamb and Gallup have found time to work out with quarterback Dak Prescott, including at times on the recently finished football field Prescott had built in the backyard of his home in Prosper.

“Me, Dak, a couple of the other receivers, tight ends, running backs, we’ve all been getting together pretty consistently for months now,” Cooper said. “We’ve been working on our route-running, working on the offense. We’ve been getting a lot of work in, getting that timing right as if we were doing a minicamp or OTAs.”


Although the Cowboys have a new head coach in Mike McCarthy, Cooper said the changes to the offense that have been implemented during web-conferencing sessions have been subtle.

“The plays really haven’t changed that much,” Cooper said. “The verbiage is a little bit different. I think that has a lot to do with Coach McCarthy coming in and kind of being used to calling certain plays and certain things. The plays are pretty much the same, or similar.”

Cooper said Green Bay Packers star wide receiver Davante Adams had a lot of positive things to say about McCarthy’s offense when they talked at this year’s Pro Bowl. Adams played for McCarthy for five seasons.

“He really liked the offense,” Cooper said. “He told me I was going to really like it.”

The previous NFL teams to have three players finish a season with over 1,000-receiving yards were the 1980 San Diego Chargers, Washington in 1989, the 1995 Atlanta Falcons, the 2004 Indianapolis Colts and the 2008 Arizona Cardinals. All five teams finished with winning records. The 2008 Cardinals went the furthest. Larry Fitzgerald (1,431), Anquan Boldin (1,038) and Steve Breaston (1,006) helped lead Arizona to the Super Bowl after going 9-7 in the regular season. The Cardinals lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 27-23, in Super Bowl XLIII.

The 2004 Colts (Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, Brandon Stokley) lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion New England Patriots in the divisional round. The 1980 Chargers (John Jefferson, Kellen Winslow, Charlie Joiner) lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Oakland Raiders in the AFC championship game.

The quarterbacks of those five teams were Dan Fouts, Mark Rypien, Jeff George, Peyton Manning and Kurt Warner. Two of them are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and Manning will soon become the third to reach Canton.

Considering that Ezekiel Elliott is still expected to be a focal point of Dallas’ offense, it’s important to note that two of those five teams had 1,000-yard rushers, with Edgerrin James running for 1,548 yards for the 2004 Colts. James was also the leading rusher for the Cardinals in 2008, finishing with 514 yards.

The Cowboys went four straight years without one 1,000-yard receiver on the roster from 2015 to 2018. A lot will have to go right to have three in 2020.

Prescott, Cooper, Gallup and Lamb will have to stay healthy. Lamb will have to duplicate the way he hit the ground running during his true freshman year at Oklahoma when he caught 46 passes for 807 yards and seven touchdowns in 13 games. Second-year offensive coordinator Kellen Moore will have to be on the same page with a new offensive-minded head coach. They will need solid center play after losing five-time Pro Bowler Travis Frederick to retirement.

Other weapons will also be involved. Blake Jarwin is stepping into the No. 1 tight end role. He could potentially see twice as many targets as his 41 last season with Witten no longer on the roster. Second-year running back Tony Pollard is expected to get more opportunities as a runner and a receiver.

Three 1,000-yard receivers is possible. History shows it will probably be a very good first year for McCarthy in Dallas if that happens.

 

ravidubey

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Three WR's going over 1000 yards is a meaningless stat and a really dumb goal to shoot for.

We have three talented WRs but if they all go over 1000 it's probably an indication we are overbalanced in some fashion. We're either ignoring our intermediate and underneath backs and TEs or we are passing too much.

The most successful teams play tough defense and run the ball late in the season.

Teams like Washington in 89, SF in 98, or those great Chargers passing offenses might get good overall records, but they all have failed to win it all.

Washington retooled its defense and in 1991 would have gone undefeated were it not for Troy Aikman and Alvin Harper.

So who's playing DE?
 

Smitty

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The plays haven’t changed much? That can’t go over well.
 

Simpleton

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The plays haven’t changed much? That can’t go over well.
I don't think playbooks from one team to another are drastically different, where guys like McVay, Reid, Shannahan and such truly excel is by continuously looking to add wrinkles and new iterations of similar plays that they've ran in the past to keep defenses off balance.

It's a week to week and year to year adjustment that never really stops. Do you think Shannahan's playbook is radically different from what you might see in Cleveland where half the playbook is just completely different?

It's impossible with how copycat the league is, all coaches have to do is watch All-22.

Ultimately what's making the difference is timing, situational play-calling and adjusting what you do in real-time and within seasons to keep defenses off balance based and give them different looks based on favorable matchups, not to mention just general attention to detail and coaching the more subtle points of what you want out of players within the scheme.

Look at SF's OL last year, they have 2 very good OT's and a bunch of JAG's on the interior, they were a zone heavy team in the running game just like we were but their OL was clearly better coached and there were subtle differences in what they did with their running scheme that kept defenses off balance and allowed them to consistently churn out 5+ YPC with a bunch of JAG RB's.

Then they perfected their play-action game by making everything look the same as far as how the OL operated and they were able to scheme guys wide open, particularly Kittle and their FB, by making pass plays look exactly like it did when they were run-blocking before leaking them out into wide open spaces because defenses bit so hard on the run action.

I wouldn't be surprised if 90-95% of the playbook looked more or less the same, especially as far as someone like Cooper is concerned since there are only so many routes/concepts you can ask WR's to run, but I'll be shocked if the offense doesn't look drastically more efficient and unpredictable once they get 5-6 games into the season.
 

DontCryWolfe

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Not to totally piggyback of what Simp said, but the nuance of the game is what i’m looking forward to most with this team, should the season play out uninhibited. I hate the talent argument, solely because it’s true. We have seen a lot of teams, year after year, do more with less. What’s the common denominator then? Dipshit Garrett, and his equally incompetent staff. The offense was good enough last year, though they left a lot to be desired in certain situations. But despite McCarthy’s pedigree, I expect we’ll see the biggest leap in production from the defense,.
 

Shiningstar

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we need stupid penalites to drop, the St has to work more efficently and overall the team has to stream line much better, Garrett would only get one aspect of the team to work really well but the other 2 would falter
 

boozeman

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we need stupid penalites to drop, the St has to work more efficently and overall the team has to stream line much better, Garrett would only get one aspect of the team to work really well but the other 2 would falter
I would hope McCarthy gets the discipline right and the penalties go down.

The key is forcing turnovers. If Nolan can uptick that, the offense should be more than sufficient to make the playoffs.
 

p1_

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The key is forcing turnovers. If Nolan can uptick that, the offense should be more than sufficient to make the playoffs.
I assume it almost has to be improved from the Marinelli/Richard void. It’s just hard to say how much it will improve, it’s been so bad.
 

Cowboysrock55

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I would hope McCarthy gets the discipline right and the penalties go down.

The key is forcing turnovers. If Nolan can uptick that, the offense should be more than sufficient to make the playoffs.
Yeah turnovers are so huge in the NFL.
 

Cotton

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I assume it almost has to be improved from the Marinelli/Richard void. It’s just hard to say how much it will improve, it’s been so bad.
You don't have to do much to improve from that shit show.
 
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