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By Bob Sturm and Diante Lee
Jul 28, 2022
One important thing I attempt to do in the offseason is my annual quest to expand my knowledge of the game and how the X’s and O’s are vital to this job. Following the ball is no way to understand why things are happening or not happening for a given offense or defense. We must try to consume expertise to keep up with a rapidly changing league that is comprised of brilliant architects who scheme to deceive each other.
There are many ways to do this and I try to do as many as possible. And with video and audio outlets having the expert explain things more and more, there has never been a better time to teach yourself this wonderful game on a deeper level. The great news is that you never actually graduate. The game keeps evolving, so you have to run just to keep up — but it is great to evolve our thinking with it.
Today, I visit with one of the best acquisitions of The Athletic’s NFL department in 2022, the great Diante Lee. I have enjoyed Lee at ProFootballFocus for a long while, but am so excited we have added him to our team so I can bother him frequently. Lee was honored this week in the Guardian as one of the top 10 NFL analysts in the game today.
No. 6: Diante Lee
Football is a complex game, but the best X’s & O’s analysts find ways to navigate the audience through the maze by making things seem simple. No one does that better than Lee.
Lee is still a coach, and his analysis of the game is designed to teach rather than to flash his own credentials. Now a mainstay of The Athletic Football Show, Lee strips away as much of the football-ese as possible while still providing the insight that hits the erogenous zones of every football nerd.
Anyway, Lee joined The Athletic Football Show podcast with Robert Mays and Nate Tice (two other valuable football brains) to discuss lessons learned from 2021 and I thought it was great. I recommend listening to it when you get the chance.
Well, in there, Lee had some specific thoughts about where the Cowboys went wrong tactically in the wild-card loss to the 49ers and the autopsy to that game will never be satisfying for sure. I have told you about the Kurt Warner masterpiece video to help show you the shortcomings of the coaching staff and quarterback in that disappointing home loss that may alter the course of this franchise for a bit. I think it should be required viewing.
Lee was kind enough to visit with me about his comments and further elaboration. This one might end up being called a #longread, but that’s OK. It’s July.
Sturm: What we saw in the second half of 2021 was a real problem for the Dallas offense. Their final rankings and final stats were great. But, their effectiveness dropped considerably after, let’s say, Week 9. It started with Denver, the trip to Kansas City, all of December, the Cowboys were winning games, but they were playing bad divisional teams and their offense was ineffective. Then that Arizona loss in Week 17 and the wild-card game — it all looked like the offense was just off. Before we dig a little deeper, I’m curious what your observations were on that second half of the season and where it went.
Lee: I think a lot of this kind of started with losing Michael Gallup to injury. I definitely think that was a major factor for them offensively, because just from a personnel standpoint, it allowed them to do a whole bunch with CeeDee Lamb, and, you know, kind of moving guys around and losing one of the tight ends (Blake Jarwin), as well. Those two events stacked on top of one another — I do think took away a little bit of the versatility that they would have had otherwise. So from a personnel standpoint, that was kind of the first thing that I noticed.
No. 2, and I think this is obviously a conversation that Dallas fans have been having basically since he’s been in Dallas — he kind of started stacking up touches — it’s the viability of Ezekiel Elliott as a runner. I thought that he looked pretty good in the first half of the season. Obviously, the combination of him with Tony Pollard works really, really well when Zeke is the best version of himself. As all of those nicks and bruises continue to kind of load up, I think that over the course of the season we kind of have to treat him, not necessarily to the same extreme as Leonard Fournette, but in the same conversation, right? It’s just hard to count on a guy who has taken on that kind of mileage between his college and pro career and think that he can go 17 games plus the postseason and be the same level of productive.
Ezekiel Elliott (Matthew Emmons / USA Today)
Schematically, a lot of these things are tied together, like what made them so good in the first half of the season is probably part of the problem in the second half. That offense is really just kind of built to take whatever the defense gives them regardless of the situation. Something I wrote about when I was at PFF was things like routes converting on the outside based on the coverage shell. And Dak Prescott really only working certain ways in his passing progression based on single-high safety versus split safety and things like that. It’s really effective in terms of solving problems. I think in the abstract on a down-by-down basis is a really safe way to run an offense. What they lost though was actually going out and chasing those explosive plays. When you think about what the Rams were by the end of the season. And some of that’s getting Odell Beckham Jr., but they were aggressively looking for explosive offense, basically at any opportunity. That was part of the reason why you go out and trade for Matthew Stafford, right? That was kind of the evolution of their whole deal was that they felt they needed to generate more explosive offense through the air on early downs.
As the year went on for Dallas, I think that they were a little bit more focused on turning first-and-10 into second-and-3 or second-and-5, and just keeping it manageable. By the time we got to that 49ers game, I think ultimately kind of what undid them is that they met a defense that was comfortable living in that world. Playing a bunch of soft coverage, forcing Dak to take the underneath stuff and making them work 11-, 12-, or 13-play drives and it’s just hard to live in that world offensively in today’s NFL.
Sturm: That rings true on so many levels. If I tried to quantify what that means, according to what the data seems to show, is that a team like the 49ers might just be a horrible matchup for this is that you’re facing far more zone defense and far more four-man rushes. The 49ers don’t really need blitzes, they might sprinkle one in to cross you up, but once they’re dropping seven and playing zones, it just felt like the Cowboys were out of answers.
Lee: Right! I mean, that’s what that offense is really built to punish. So it’s archaic. Well, that is probably too strong of a word, but I definitely think they get better results in an older era of defensive football. We saw a little bit more investment being made in the sending pressure and playing a lot more one-on-one coverage across the board. When that was the era of football we were in, then an offense like Dallas is exactly what the rest of the NFL was doing — trying to attack teams on the inside up the seams or taking one-on-one matchups out on the perimeter, which is another big reason why I feel like Amari Cooper’s production was so up and down. Throughout the years, when he was in Dallas, it’s kind of based on that. You know, it’s hard to find those opportunities where you get press coverage on the outside and one-on-one, and you know that there’s no safety help coming and you’ve got talented matchups across the board and they might be sending guys in pressure. There’s even less help underneath there. That’s just not the way that a lot of teams are playing defense now.
We talked about the Niners, because they have the defensive line that they do, and then have maybe the best linebacker in football right now in Fred Warner. They don’t need to invest that same degree of sending pressure or trying to generate pressure with non-traditional pass-rush guys. That is a big thing. That’s a big story of it. When you look at what the Eagles did this offseason, I think that they’re trying to build that in a similar manner — trying to address the defensive interior. Also that way, you don’t have to send as much pressure to get home. A lot of NFL teams are copying that Vic Fangio/Brandon Staley-type of approach to defense, too, which is a lot of the same. Try to keep seven in zone coverage, force an offense to check down and to not take chances when it is not necessary. That is going to be the story for the Dallas offense this year — whether or not it can generate explosive offense when it really needs to.
Sturm: There are a couple directions I’d like to pursue. The first one is going back to that 49ers game — you hit on this already, but elaborate on that it felt like the 49ers were almost asking the Cowboys to dump the ball down to Dalton Schultz and Cedrick Wilson, and making sure Cooper and Lamb are almost decoys. Their two leading receivers that day were essentially their third- and fourth-best targets, right?
Lee: Yeah, looking at the All-22 It’s important. You’ll see a lot of plays where outside receivers and Lamb and Cooper are running slants or hitches or something underneath. And you can see their depth corners are just dropping forever deep. You know, their safeties are dropping way over the top and their linebackers are just handling everything underneath and forcing them to work down the field in small chunks.
Dalton Schultz had seven receptions for 89 yards in the wild-card loss to the 49ers. (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
That is what NFL defenses are trying to get to nowadays. The data supports the fact that it’s hard to generate explosive offense on the ground in a way that it was in a prior era. So now you don’t need to load up the box that often to take away the threat of explosive offensive on the ground, You can play more deep safeties, and that lends itself a little bit to getting corners help on the outside if you don’t feel threatened by what teams are doing in between the seams and that’s just not what Dallas had after Gallup was hurt. It just did not have a guy in between the seams that can really stress out safeties or pick on linebackers. Gallup can be an imitation version of Cooper Kupp, the best version of him on the inside. And CeeDee can do that as well, working inside because he’s so good right after the catch. If you have a guy like Gallup, who you can move around, then you can put your best receiver, in my opinion, in Lamb on the inside to work against their third-best corner or their slot defender in zone coverage. The Cowboys just did not have that ability. When you don’t have the personnel and it forces you to play a little bit more of a mellowed offense against a defense that talented, you’re gonna see a lot of Cover 4, a lot of Cover 6 or Quarter-Quarter-Half stuff or guys who are just getting a bunch of depth and forcing you to work underneath to tight ends and slot receivers or checking the ball down to running backs. That was really what did it for them in the second half of that game.
Sturm: I’m kind of confused why they didn’t leave Lamb in the slot for that game and even use Pollard in some respects because those are their two real explosive players.
Lee: I don’t know if that’s a Kellen Moore thing or a Mike McCarthy thing, and there may be more similar to complaints from back with Green Bay at the end of his tenure there which is just personnel usage. Guys not moving around as much or being a little headstrong in your play-calling tendencies, not attacking what the defense is giving you as much and I think that also affects Dak Prescott. One thing that is really similar between Dak with McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers with McCarthy is that risk-averse mentality in the passing game. Efficiency, but almost to the point of being a prisoner to it because you’re never making the wrong decision, but you’re not doing enough to stress out a defense. That’s a really big thing that I think we need to sort out in that offense as well as — can you unlock Dak and really free him up to take more chances, like the way that the Bengals did?
One of the things that was really impressive to me in Cincinnati was just, that there was a certain mentality of, if we get the look that we want, we’re going to take the chance no matter what and trust our receivers to go out and make the play. I think that they probably need to lean more into that. I just have concerns about whether or not that’s Mike McCarthy’s ethos as the old-school West Coast offense. That’s just never really been his deal anywhere he’s coached.
Sturm: Do you think Dak can thrive in that type of atmosphere? I’ve always thought — especially as a young quarterback — one of his best attributes was his ability to not make decisions that get you beat. But at a certain point, that becomes Alex Smith, I suppose.
Lee: Right. I think the thing that concerns me most about Dak is what he is long-term post-ankle injury. You could definitely tell as he got nicked up as the season went on last year that he was just less and less comfortable having to work off-platform or moving outside the pocket. When he does not have that level of mobility to extend plays long enough to find guys down the field, that kind of informs some of the decision-making that he has as a quarterback now. I can see that he probably felt like he cannot afford to take a bunch of contact from pressure, so defenses can affect their pocket. As good as the Dallas offensive line has been over the last half decade or so, if you can affect their pocket enough to make that quarterback uncomfortable then I think maybe some of the shadows and bad memories from that ankle injury will do the rest. If he’s always looking to get the ball out quickly and not be contacted, then it does make it difficult to transition that offense to where I think it needs to get to going forward.
Dak Prescott (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
Sturm: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned that Dallas needs to stop trying to find perfect plays and perfect looks. Simplify for your quarterback and generate easy and explosive offense. I know it’s somewhat redundant with what we’ve been doing, but I’d like to hash out specifically what that means, especially the part about generating easy, explosive offense. I’ve always thought those are opposing terms — it’s difficult to do both. How do you do that?
Lee: I did kind of touch on it a little bit, like things the Cowboys were doing on the outside with the talented receivers they had in terms of route conversion. A lot of that is they’re reading off what the corners are doing so if they bail out and are playing a deep quarter or a deep third, instead of running vertical, the receivers are just gonna sit down, maybe seven, eight yards deep and present themselves to the quarterback because you’re going to be in a vacated area.
But using the Bengals and the Rams as examples of teams that created easy, explosive offense, you got to do things like keeping seven guys in pass protection, that was something that the Rams did a bunch. The Bengals in the opposite extreme are getting you spread out and that’s what we saw a lot from them was releasing five guys out into their route patterns, trying to create as many one-on-ones as possible and then taking chances vertically on the outside with a Ja’Marr Chase and with Tee Higgins. I think the Dallas wide receiver corps, especially in 2021, when they were healthy could have rivaled that. It’s really just about taking chances out on the perimeter, especially now that defenses are more in this split safety world. You’ve got to give defenses the threat of attacking out on the perimeter, trying to take advantage of corners in one-on-one coverage and make those safeties feel like they have to get wider, or they have to make decisions earlier. They can’t get as deep and as far away from receivers, or else you are going to be punished by a big offense in that way.
You’ve got to be able to take 50/50 chances in order to get defenses to honor you enough to try to adjust, especially if they’re not blitzing you in the first place.
Sturm: They are 3 x 1 with Schultz isolated by himself, which is not that uncommon in the league for a tight end, but obviously with Travis Kelce or Darren Waller or Kyle Pitts — those guys, you’re going to that all day if he’s just got one guy out there with him. It felt like Schultz would have those opportunities and Dak would immediately kind of get off him and go to the overloaded side even if the 49ers had everybody over there. I wonder what that should tell us about Schultz. I just don’t see him nearly as dynamic as those guys. Maybe that’s why the Cowboys didn’t try to do a long-term deal and instead gave him the franchise tag. I’m curious what you thought of their general way of attacking zones — it definitely seems elementary compared to the teams that are really good at it.
Lee: I think it’s a great formation to put your tight end as the “X” or the No. 1 wide receiver when it is that tier of guy you were discussing in Kyle Pitts or Travis Kelce or Darren Waller and I think that Schultz is probably the tier behind them but that tier difference matters, you know? When it’s those guys that you mentioned earlier — a Tre’Davious White or AJ Terrell, that top tier of corner does actually have to go guard that guy. You have to invest your best coverage guys on those players, especially with a guy like Kelce, who can look like the best wide receiver in the NFL — not just a good tight end.
I think when you don’t have that — to your point of being able to load up coverage the opposite direction — that is exactly what happens if the safety does not feel like he has to provide help and especially when the quarterback confirms that by not trying to attack that one-on-one matchup. Anytime he gets it that makes it that much harder to get guys open. You know on the trips side the more you can load up in coverage the more you’re really squeezing away the space on those intermediate throws, which is where the NFL is trying to get to at all times. If you can get to that type of formation, I think that there are other ways to get into trips so that you can manipulate defenses. And maybe you just need to use guys like CeeDee instead or when they have Michael Gallup — that was him often because he’s good enough to win one-on-one coverage.
Sturm: I’ll wrap up with this: As it pertains to the Cowboys offseason as they let Amari Cooper go, which didn’t make much sense to me, especially with the return. With the offensive line moves, it looks like they’re leaning into the running game. La’el Collins for Terence Steele. There’s no way that’s a comparable switch unless you’re just saying we want zone running and Steele is pretty good at that. The Tyler Smith pick sure looks like we’re trying to get some road graders inside. I tend to lean toward your answers — “explosiveness is more important than efficiency.” It looks like the Cowboys have the opposite view, that they want to be a team that can run on first and second down even when you know they’re gonna run and they can still move the chains a little bit.
Lee: I think that’s kind of how it’s coming across to me as well. It is that they feel like their plan of attack with more of the split safety, two-deep stuff that we’re seeing is that if you lighten the box, then we are just going to run the ball. That doesn’t concern me if we are in 2014. I don’t know that that’s not a problem. Again, this comes back to what we were just talking about earlier in the passing game. It’s not that it’s a problem philosophically — the X’s and O’s on a chalkboard make sense. If a team is light in the box, then we want to run theoretically, but are you going to be able to keep up with the best offense in the NFL living that way? I think that puts a lot of strain on defenses. I was already living in as high of a variance world as you possibly could with all the turnovers they had last year. I think there’s some regression coming even if you get the best versions of all these guys again in 2022. So now we’re talking about making the margin of error really slim in terms of what this offense is going to need to do to stay competitive or remain contenders long term.
Sturm: Sounds like a great place to pick it up next time we visit! Thanks so much for your insight and your time.
I hope a lot of this makes sense and I also realize that some of it might be confusing. Please use the comments below and perhaps we can do an X’s and O’s video and photo tutorial of any concepts that might need elaboration so that we leave no football fan behind.
Next up, I board a plane for California and training camp.
Jul 28, 2022
One important thing I attempt to do in the offseason is my annual quest to expand my knowledge of the game and how the X’s and O’s are vital to this job. Following the ball is no way to understand why things are happening or not happening for a given offense or defense. We must try to consume expertise to keep up with a rapidly changing league that is comprised of brilliant architects who scheme to deceive each other.
There are many ways to do this and I try to do as many as possible. And with video and audio outlets having the expert explain things more and more, there has never been a better time to teach yourself this wonderful game on a deeper level. The great news is that you never actually graduate. The game keeps evolving, so you have to run just to keep up — but it is great to evolve our thinking with it.
Today, I visit with one of the best acquisitions of The Athletic’s NFL department in 2022, the great Diante Lee. I have enjoyed Lee at ProFootballFocus for a long while, but am so excited we have added him to our team so I can bother him frequently. Lee was honored this week in the Guardian as one of the top 10 NFL analysts in the game today.
No. 6: Diante Lee
Football is a complex game, but the best X’s & O’s analysts find ways to navigate the audience through the maze by making things seem simple. No one does that better than Lee.
Lee is still a coach, and his analysis of the game is designed to teach rather than to flash his own credentials. Now a mainstay of The Athletic Football Show, Lee strips away as much of the football-ese as possible while still providing the insight that hits the erogenous zones of every football nerd.
Anyway, Lee joined The Athletic Football Show podcast with Robert Mays and Nate Tice (two other valuable football brains) to discuss lessons learned from 2021 and I thought it was great. I recommend listening to it when you get the chance.
Well, in there, Lee had some specific thoughts about where the Cowboys went wrong tactically in the wild-card loss to the 49ers and the autopsy to that game will never be satisfying for sure. I have told you about the Kurt Warner masterpiece video to help show you the shortcomings of the coaching staff and quarterback in that disappointing home loss that may alter the course of this franchise for a bit. I think it should be required viewing.
Lee was kind enough to visit with me about his comments and further elaboration. This one might end up being called a #longread, but that’s OK. It’s July.
Sturm: What we saw in the second half of 2021 was a real problem for the Dallas offense. Their final rankings and final stats were great. But, their effectiveness dropped considerably after, let’s say, Week 9. It started with Denver, the trip to Kansas City, all of December, the Cowboys were winning games, but they were playing bad divisional teams and their offense was ineffective. Then that Arizona loss in Week 17 and the wild-card game — it all looked like the offense was just off. Before we dig a little deeper, I’m curious what your observations were on that second half of the season and where it went.
Lee: I think a lot of this kind of started with losing Michael Gallup to injury. I definitely think that was a major factor for them offensively, because just from a personnel standpoint, it allowed them to do a whole bunch with CeeDee Lamb, and, you know, kind of moving guys around and losing one of the tight ends (Blake Jarwin), as well. Those two events stacked on top of one another — I do think took away a little bit of the versatility that they would have had otherwise. So from a personnel standpoint, that was kind of the first thing that I noticed.
No. 2, and I think this is obviously a conversation that Dallas fans have been having basically since he’s been in Dallas — he kind of started stacking up touches — it’s the viability of Ezekiel Elliott as a runner. I thought that he looked pretty good in the first half of the season. Obviously, the combination of him with Tony Pollard works really, really well when Zeke is the best version of himself. As all of those nicks and bruises continue to kind of load up, I think that over the course of the season we kind of have to treat him, not necessarily to the same extreme as Leonard Fournette, but in the same conversation, right? It’s just hard to count on a guy who has taken on that kind of mileage between his college and pro career and think that he can go 17 games plus the postseason and be the same level of productive.
Ezekiel Elliott (Matthew Emmons / USA Today)
Schematically, a lot of these things are tied together, like what made them so good in the first half of the season is probably part of the problem in the second half. That offense is really just kind of built to take whatever the defense gives them regardless of the situation. Something I wrote about when I was at PFF was things like routes converting on the outside based on the coverage shell. And Dak Prescott really only working certain ways in his passing progression based on single-high safety versus split safety and things like that. It’s really effective in terms of solving problems. I think in the abstract on a down-by-down basis is a really safe way to run an offense. What they lost though was actually going out and chasing those explosive plays. When you think about what the Rams were by the end of the season. And some of that’s getting Odell Beckham Jr., but they were aggressively looking for explosive offense, basically at any opportunity. That was part of the reason why you go out and trade for Matthew Stafford, right? That was kind of the evolution of their whole deal was that they felt they needed to generate more explosive offense through the air on early downs.
As the year went on for Dallas, I think that they were a little bit more focused on turning first-and-10 into second-and-3 or second-and-5, and just keeping it manageable. By the time we got to that 49ers game, I think ultimately kind of what undid them is that they met a defense that was comfortable living in that world. Playing a bunch of soft coverage, forcing Dak to take the underneath stuff and making them work 11-, 12-, or 13-play drives and it’s just hard to live in that world offensively in today’s NFL.
Sturm: That rings true on so many levels. If I tried to quantify what that means, according to what the data seems to show, is that a team like the 49ers might just be a horrible matchup for this is that you’re facing far more zone defense and far more four-man rushes. The 49ers don’t really need blitzes, they might sprinkle one in to cross you up, but once they’re dropping seven and playing zones, it just felt like the Cowboys were out of answers.
Lee: Right! I mean, that’s what that offense is really built to punish. So it’s archaic. Well, that is probably too strong of a word, but I definitely think they get better results in an older era of defensive football. We saw a little bit more investment being made in the sending pressure and playing a lot more one-on-one coverage across the board. When that was the era of football we were in, then an offense like Dallas is exactly what the rest of the NFL was doing — trying to attack teams on the inside up the seams or taking one-on-one matchups out on the perimeter, which is another big reason why I feel like Amari Cooper’s production was so up and down. Throughout the years, when he was in Dallas, it’s kind of based on that. You know, it’s hard to find those opportunities where you get press coverage on the outside and one-on-one, and you know that there’s no safety help coming and you’ve got talented matchups across the board and they might be sending guys in pressure. There’s even less help underneath there. That’s just not the way that a lot of teams are playing defense now.
We talked about the Niners, because they have the defensive line that they do, and then have maybe the best linebacker in football right now in Fred Warner. They don’t need to invest that same degree of sending pressure or trying to generate pressure with non-traditional pass-rush guys. That is a big thing. That’s a big story of it. When you look at what the Eagles did this offseason, I think that they’re trying to build that in a similar manner — trying to address the defensive interior. Also that way, you don’t have to send as much pressure to get home. A lot of NFL teams are copying that Vic Fangio/Brandon Staley-type of approach to defense, too, which is a lot of the same. Try to keep seven in zone coverage, force an offense to check down and to not take chances when it is not necessary. That is going to be the story for the Dallas offense this year — whether or not it can generate explosive offense when it really needs to.
Sturm: There are a couple directions I’d like to pursue. The first one is going back to that 49ers game — you hit on this already, but elaborate on that it felt like the 49ers were almost asking the Cowboys to dump the ball down to Dalton Schultz and Cedrick Wilson, and making sure Cooper and Lamb are almost decoys. Their two leading receivers that day were essentially their third- and fourth-best targets, right?
Lee: Yeah, looking at the All-22 It’s important. You’ll see a lot of plays where outside receivers and Lamb and Cooper are running slants or hitches or something underneath. And you can see their depth corners are just dropping forever deep. You know, their safeties are dropping way over the top and their linebackers are just handling everything underneath and forcing them to work down the field in small chunks.
Dalton Schultz had seven receptions for 89 yards in the wild-card loss to the 49ers. (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
That is what NFL defenses are trying to get to nowadays. The data supports the fact that it’s hard to generate explosive offense on the ground in a way that it was in a prior era. So now you don’t need to load up the box that often to take away the threat of explosive offensive on the ground, You can play more deep safeties, and that lends itself a little bit to getting corners help on the outside if you don’t feel threatened by what teams are doing in between the seams and that’s just not what Dallas had after Gallup was hurt. It just did not have a guy in between the seams that can really stress out safeties or pick on linebackers. Gallup can be an imitation version of Cooper Kupp, the best version of him on the inside. And CeeDee can do that as well, working inside because he’s so good right after the catch. If you have a guy like Gallup, who you can move around, then you can put your best receiver, in my opinion, in Lamb on the inside to work against their third-best corner or their slot defender in zone coverage. The Cowboys just did not have that ability. When you don’t have the personnel and it forces you to play a little bit more of a mellowed offense against a defense that talented, you’re gonna see a lot of Cover 4, a lot of Cover 6 or Quarter-Quarter-Half stuff or guys who are just getting a bunch of depth and forcing you to work underneath to tight ends and slot receivers or checking the ball down to running backs. That was really what did it for them in the second half of that game.
Sturm: I’m kind of confused why they didn’t leave Lamb in the slot for that game and even use Pollard in some respects because those are their two real explosive players.
Lee: I don’t know if that’s a Kellen Moore thing or a Mike McCarthy thing, and there may be more similar to complaints from back with Green Bay at the end of his tenure there which is just personnel usage. Guys not moving around as much or being a little headstrong in your play-calling tendencies, not attacking what the defense is giving you as much and I think that also affects Dak Prescott. One thing that is really similar between Dak with McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers with McCarthy is that risk-averse mentality in the passing game. Efficiency, but almost to the point of being a prisoner to it because you’re never making the wrong decision, but you’re not doing enough to stress out a defense. That’s a really big thing that I think we need to sort out in that offense as well as — can you unlock Dak and really free him up to take more chances, like the way that the Bengals did?
One of the things that was really impressive to me in Cincinnati was just, that there was a certain mentality of, if we get the look that we want, we’re going to take the chance no matter what and trust our receivers to go out and make the play. I think that they probably need to lean more into that. I just have concerns about whether or not that’s Mike McCarthy’s ethos as the old-school West Coast offense. That’s just never really been his deal anywhere he’s coached.
Sturm: Do you think Dak can thrive in that type of atmosphere? I’ve always thought — especially as a young quarterback — one of his best attributes was his ability to not make decisions that get you beat. But at a certain point, that becomes Alex Smith, I suppose.
Lee: Right. I think the thing that concerns me most about Dak is what he is long-term post-ankle injury. You could definitely tell as he got nicked up as the season went on last year that he was just less and less comfortable having to work off-platform or moving outside the pocket. When he does not have that level of mobility to extend plays long enough to find guys down the field, that kind of informs some of the decision-making that he has as a quarterback now. I can see that he probably felt like he cannot afford to take a bunch of contact from pressure, so defenses can affect their pocket. As good as the Dallas offensive line has been over the last half decade or so, if you can affect their pocket enough to make that quarterback uncomfortable then I think maybe some of the shadows and bad memories from that ankle injury will do the rest. If he’s always looking to get the ball out quickly and not be contacted, then it does make it difficult to transition that offense to where I think it needs to get to going forward.
Dak Prescott (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
Sturm: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned that Dallas needs to stop trying to find perfect plays and perfect looks. Simplify for your quarterback and generate easy and explosive offense. I know it’s somewhat redundant with what we’ve been doing, but I’d like to hash out specifically what that means, especially the part about generating easy, explosive offense. I’ve always thought those are opposing terms — it’s difficult to do both. How do you do that?
Lee: I did kind of touch on it a little bit, like things the Cowboys were doing on the outside with the talented receivers they had in terms of route conversion. A lot of that is they’re reading off what the corners are doing so if they bail out and are playing a deep quarter or a deep third, instead of running vertical, the receivers are just gonna sit down, maybe seven, eight yards deep and present themselves to the quarterback because you’re going to be in a vacated area.
But using the Bengals and the Rams as examples of teams that created easy, explosive offense, you got to do things like keeping seven guys in pass protection, that was something that the Rams did a bunch. The Bengals in the opposite extreme are getting you spread out and that’s what we saw a lot from them was releasing five guys out into their route patterns, trying to create as many one-on-ones as possible and then taking chances vertically on the outside with a Ja’Marr Chase and with Tee Higgins. I think the Dallas wide receiver corps, especially in 2021, when they were healthy could have rivaled that. It’s really just about taking chances out on the perimeter, especially now that defenses are more in this split safety world. You’ve got to give defenses the threat of attacking out on the perimeter, trying to take advantage of corners in one-on-one coverage and make those safeties feel like they have to get wider, or they have to make decisions earlier. They can’t get as deep and as far away from receivers, or else you are going to be punished by a big offense in that way.
You’ve got to be able to take 50/50 chances in order to get defenses to honor you enough to try to adjust, especially if they’re not blitzing you in the first place.
Sturm: They are 3 x 1 with Schultz isolated by himself, which is not that uncommon in the league for a tight end, but obviously with Travis Kelce or Darren Waller or Kyle Pitts — those guys, you’re going to that all day if he’s just got one guy out there with him. It felt like Schultz would have those opportunities and Dak would immediately kind of get off him and go to the overloaded side even if the 49ers had everybody over there. I wonder what that should tell us about Schultz. I just don’t see him nearly as dynamic as those guys. Maybe that’s why the Cowboys didn’t try to do a long-term deal and instead gave him the franchise tag. I’m curious what you thought of their general way of attacking zones — it definitely seems elementary compared to the teams that are really good at it.
Lee: I think it’s a great formation to put your tight end as the “X” or the No. 1 wide receiver when it is that tier of guy you were discussing in Kyle Pitts or Travis Kelce or Darren Waller and I think that Schultz is probably the tier behind them but that tier difference matters, you know? When it’s those guys that you mentioned earlier — a Tre’Davious White or AJ Terrell, that top tier of corner does actually have to go guard that guy. You have to invest your best coverage guys on those players, especially with a guy like Kelce, who can look like the best wide receiver in the NFL — not just a good tight end.
I think when you don’t have that — to your point of being able to load up coverage the opposite direction — that is exactly what happens if the safety does not feel like he has to provide help and especially when the quarterback confirms that by not trying to attack that one-on-one matchup. Anytime he gets it that makes it that much harder to get guys open. You know on the trips side the more you can load up in coverage the more you’re really squeezing away the space on those intermediate throws, which is where the NFL is trying to get to at all times. If you can get to that type of formation, I think that there are other ways to get into trips so that you can manipulate defenses. And maybe you just need to use guys like CeeDee instead or when they have Michael Gallup — that was him often because he’s good enough to win one-on-one coverage.
Sturm: I’ll wrap up with this: As it pertains to the Cowboys offseason as they let Amari Cooper go, which didn’t make much sense to me, especially with the return. With the offensive line moves, it looks like they’re leaning into the running game. La’el Collins for Terence Steele. There’s no way that’s a comparable switch unless you’re just saying we want zone running and Steele is pretty good at that. The Tyler Smith pick sure looks like we’re trying to get some road graders inside. I tend to lean toward your answers — “explosiveness is more important than efficiency.” It looks like the Cowboys have the opposite view, that they want to be a team that can run on first and second down even when you know they’re gonna run and they can still move the chains a little bit.
Lee: I think that’s kind of how it’s coming across to me as well. It is that they feel like their plan of attack with more of the split safety, two-deep stuff that we’re seeing is that if you lighten the box, then we are just going to run the ball. That doesn’t concern me if we are in 2014. I don’t know that that’s not a problem. Again, this comes back to what we were just talking about earlier in the passing game. It’s not that it’s a problem philosophically — the X’s and O’s on a chalkboard make sense. If a team is light in the box, then we want to run theoretically, but are you going to be able to keep up with the best offense in the NFL living that way? I think that puts a lot of strain on defenses. I was already living in as high of a variance world as you possibly could with all the turnovers they had last year. I think there’s some regression coming even if you get the best versions of all these guys again in 2022. So now we’re talking about making the margin of error really slim in terms of what this offense is going to need to do to stay competitive or remain contenders long term.
Sturm: Sounds like a great place to pick it up next time we visit! Thanks so much for your insight and your time.
I hope a lot of this makes sense and I also realize that some of it might be confusing. Please use the comments below and perhaps we can do an X’s and O’s video and photo tutorial of any concepts that might need elaboration so that we leave no football fan behind.
Next up, I board a plane for California and training camp.
