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By Bob Sturm 21m ago
I absolutely love doing this series of analysis on the Cowboys offense and find myself getting more and more into it every season. The fact that so many of you speak highly of it inspires me to search even harder for answers, especially in weeks like these where so many people are looking for them.
Let’s be honest: This was an awful Cowboys performance by almost any measure. After seeing them exceed 30 points and 470 yards in each of the first three weeks, this Sunday featured 10 points and 257 yards of lousy offense. Nothing went right, and people want to know who to hang the blame on.
We are not here to find sacrificial lambs. We are here to seek explanations and reasons for what goes right or wrong. We try to be fair and allow for the fact that sometimes we are offering our best, semi-educated guesses. No, we are not in the huddle or the meeting rooms. I have a laptop, two eyes and a willingness to search and learn. I am not infallible.
With that being said, why did the night in New Orleans go so wrong?
I think the answer is both simple and complicated this week. Every single offensive player seemed to hold part of the rope of this stinker. It is difficult to go through the wreckage and find anyone who was just awesome amidst the issues. There were some nice plays, but overall, this was one of those days. Nothing looked good, and nothing went smoothly.
The late, great Joe Avezzano would always remind me that “the other team pays their players, too,” when the Cowboys played poorly. He knew from his decades in the game that it isn’t always as simple as what we did. Sometimes, they made us play poorly. Sometimes, we run into a freight train.
As I examined this offensive performance, I saw some issues, but it starts with the basic premise that the Cowboys got their butts handed to them by a Saints defense that was fired up and ready to roll. Dallas did not match New Orleans’ physicality and lost far too many one-on-one battles. The Cowboys were simply never able to work their way out of the mess.
Full marks should go to the Saints for a masterful effort at making the Cowboys struggle to follow their preferred gameplan.
Let’s show you some of that: [h=3]
[/h]
The picture above shows a normal pre-snap look on 1st-and-10 for the Cowboys offense. They want to look at the Saints safeties — you can see both are 15 yards off the line — and decide if they would rather run or pass into this look. If you have played Madden or football at any level, you know that the Saints are sitting on the pass. They essentially have four defensive backs assigned to the Cowboys’ two wide receivers. That means, by our arithmetic, the line of scrimmage provides Dallas a 9-on-7 edge. This is a mathematical advantage that tells us even with the ball carrier and the QB subtracted, the Cowboys have a hat for a hat in a 7-vs.-7 blocking situation. This screams run.
If the defense moves a safety down in this exact situation, the math changes. You then see seven blockers for eight men in the box, and you see one safety over two corners vs two wide receivers. You cannot help both corners, and this math tells an offense that they should pass.
These fundamental truths are as old as the game. Sunday night, the Saints elected to sit on the pass in running situations and dare the Cowboys to run, even feeding them mathematical advantages to make it more desirable. And that was the challenge. Could the Cowboys make New Orleans bring that safety down by dominating the numerical advantage? If they could win that 9-on-7 with enough regularity early, New Orleans would have to adjust, and that is when you kill them with the pass downfield – where the explosive plays and touchdowns are found.
But if the Saints could win even while giving up numbers against the run, Dallas would be in for a very long night.
I think you know which way that went on Sunday. Even though they were playing against the league’s highest-paid running back, who ran behind the league’s highest-paid offensive line, the Saints plugged up Dallas’ ground game all night long to the tune of 2.3 yards per carry. 20 times, the Cowboys ran the football, and they found a mere 45 yards. It was ugly.
Here is how Ezekiel Elliott’s 18 carries looked according to Next Gen Stats: [h=3]
[/h]
Yuck. Basically, he did nothing on the ground. It wasn’t just his fault, of course; his friends up front were defeated too often and too easily. But the numbers went on his ledger, and he was not able to change the math.
The Cowboys usually do very well when they have a numerical advantage, but credit the Saints front and maybe even the crowd noise for making sure they held that advantage in the secondary and still won at the line of scrimmage to take all appealing options from the Cowboys.
Dallas, meanwhile, embraced the unappealing idea of running over and over into a brick wall.
Here are the many first-down runs the Cowboys attempted against the Saints. We will look at many of them below in Film Study, but here they all are. As you can see, there are 11 in all, and just three were what we would call “Successful Plays” which require four yards or more: [h=3]
[/h]
Elliott has played 44 games with the Cowboys and won 31 of them. 31-13 is a fantastic mark, so their recipe normally ends in smiles, but when it doesn’t work, they look very poor.
The magic numbers seem to be 70 yards and 3.6 yards a carry for Elliott to correlate with winning. When Elliott reaches 70 yards, the Cowboys are 30-6. When he is held below 70, they are 1-7.
When he has a day of 3.6 yards per carry or more, they are 29-7. When he is below that mark, Dallas is just 2-6.
On Sunday, he had 35 yards and 1.9 yards a carry.
When you can’t run even into a six-man box, they do not react to your play-action. (I swear, analytical friends, the Saints safeties did not budge.). And that leaves nobody open down the field.
So, you can’t run the ball, the play-action dries up and you face third-and-long. And, yes, Dennis Allen and the Saints had a plan for that, too.
They would rush just three men and drop eight. They were hardly trying for sacks, instead making Dak fit the ball into tiny windows. He did sometimes, but just missed at others.
It was that kind of night – an overall disaster.
There are many things to look at in the above data box, but you can simply go with 257 yards and 10 points. The Cowboys are 5-69 all time when they put those two numbers together. It is somewhat shocking they have managed to win five times with that production, including four times between 1969-1976, when the NFL really had some wild games. Additionally, there was the 2003 game vs. Buffalo at Texas Stadium, when the Cowboys managed to take down the Bills, 10-6, in a game where Bill Parcells picked up one of his first wins and Dan Campbell caught the lone touchdown from Quincy Carter.
Regardless of what the defense does, you generally aren’t going to win games in which your offense accomplishes next to nothing. [h=3]PERSONNEL GROUPINGS[/h]
As we look at the Personnel Groupings, we can see that nearly everything that was accomplished happened out of Shotgun 11, meaning that just about everything else was just lousy. Add to that an overall mark on the ground, and you can see that the 2019 Cowboys offenses has involved three feasts and a famine. Nothing close to inside the normal range of 300 to 400 yards. The Cowboys have been over 470 yards. This time, they were under 260.
DAK PRESCOTT NEXT-GEN THROW CHART [h=3]
[/h]
You will see in Film Study that the Saints were determined not to get beaten deep. They had safeties playing back so nothing got over their heads. The idea that Prescott should not force the action and take what was given meant plenty of underneath throws and passes under 10 yards. He actually made several very difficult throws work on Sunday, so I think we should be careful how carried away we get about his game. The big miss was to Randall Cobb in the end zone, and a few other times he could have made a better throw. But I still thought he was mostly decent. [h=3]SUCCESS RATES BY DOWN[/h]
Here is a reminder of what we are looking for: “A play is successful when it gains at least 40% of yards-to-go on first down, 60% of yards-to-go on second down and 100% of yards-to-go on third or fourth down.”
My friend James Brantley assists us with a chart depicting success rate by down. If you study this chart, you will see that Sunday featured the worst day on first down, the worst day on second down and the worst day on third down. As you might imagine, that is both an indicator of how good they have been through three weeks and how poor they were on Sunday. You simply cannot have that many holes in your production and expect to win. Yet they almost did.
PLAY-ACTION LOG
COMP ATT YDS YPA Passer Rate
There are two things to consider here. First, you can see the diminishing use of play-action passing as teams begin to play further and further back and decide what they want to defend against the most. Second, the Cowboys somewhat stopped using it on Sunday Night. Are these two factors related? Of course.
What frustrates fans so much, of course, is that most do not want to hear that they are not running it as much because defenses are waiting for it. Should Dallas be stubborn and run play-action into the teeth of defenses that seem ready for it? Well, they were stubborn enough about running Zeke into the teeth of the Saints defensive line, so I guess we are often just talking about degrees of obstinance.
But, things that have worked — like play-action passing and asking Dak to use his legs to help a struggling offense — were in short supply on Sunday Night.
Let’s look at 10 plays or so from this game and try to discover what the coaches were seeing. [h=3]FILM STUDY[/h]
1Q – 13:17 – 1st-and-10
The Cowboys’ first three plays moved the ball to their 47. These next three set the tone for the evening, and I wanted to show you all three of them here in succession to get this film study going. Here is a 1st-and-10 run that went nowhere because 56-Davis ran right through the A-Gap untouched and jumped Zeke in the backfield. This looks like Travis Frederick’s responsibility, and I will tell you that was a bit of a theme on Sunday. Frederick is a fan favorite and a great story as he returns in 2019, but this game was a telling example that he is not yet right. While he is probably playing his way back up to speed, it isn’t very close to what he was. I would say that I believe in the player, but this league is merciless, and if you want to know how the Cowboys looked so poor on Sunday, I would start with their pillars inside. Frederick and the great Zack Martin both looked very poor by their lofty standards. As you can see, Zeke never had a prayer.
1Q – 12:45 – 2nd-and-10
Here’s the next play, and what I believe is the first play-action attempt of the night. Watch the safeties. They are not going to give any concern to the running game. This is a clear game-plan initiative to not fall for play-action and so when the fake happens, the Cowboys are running into a secondary that is sitting on their two-man route. Is there a throw? Possibly to Cooper up top on the corner, but by then, Cameron Jordan is breaking through a Jason Witten block, and the play is breaking down. Once Prescott spins away, he can just throw it into the bench area. 3rd-and-10.
1Q – 12:37 – 3rd-and-10
The Cowboys have been great at converting third downs, so the Dolphins and now the Saints have done the same thing on 3rd-and-long: Use a three-man pass rush and drop eight into coverage at the sticks. There is nothing deep and nothing terribly attractive for Prescott. So he has time, but probably not enough space to run and no targets that will get the first down. Teams can convert these with precise and somewhat risky throws, but you will not see many QBs taking chances on the first drive of the game. The best way to deal with this is to stay out of 3rd-and-long, but you just saw how poorly first and second down went. The drive stalls, and the punt team runs on.
1Q – 5:20 – 3rd-and-9
Drive No. 2 is going better, but in the red zone, the Cowboys have another poor sequence: Bad run, incomplete pass and another third-and-long. Again, the Saints see empty, so they show a big blitz and then back off, leaving eight in coverage and three rushing. The Saints show him that he can try to run, but won’t get there, so he stays alive and finally Cobb pops sort of free. This, by the way, is one of Cobb’s greatest gifts. He has helped Aaron Rodgers late in downs by figuring out a way to get open, and this has already made him a Prescott favorite, too. The throw, however, is just off. It is about a 25-yard throw on the run and across the body, but Dak would like another shot at that one. The Cowboys settle for three points, which will prove quite costly.
2Q – 7:13 – 3rd-and-4
Drive No. 4 starts well, and the Cowboys are in a 3rd-and-4. When the yardage is manageable, you see that Dak has a few more options (including a run) and finally sees a window for a throw to Witten. This is a big play — until Witten is stripped of the ball, and it turns into a very costly turnover. Good work from AJ Klein to rally back in this spot, and we see that 82 can still get open. I know this isn’t the time or place to suggest he has been pretty good so far, but he really looks fresher. His numbers are on pace to return where they were in 2014, when he was 32 years old. We shall see if he can sustain this pace and, of course, never fumble.
2Q – 4:39 – 1st-and-10
Drive No. 5. This is pretty rough to see, but another example of why the Cowboys aren’t running the football against the New Orleans interior. First, you can see that the whole line (except for maybe Tyron) all look pretty poor on this snap. Malcom Brown destroyed plenty in this game, and here he blows through the line (across from Martin on his inside shoulder, which makes Collins have to really work to reach him), and Connor Williams cannot get the edge on his guy. This causes all sorts of chaos. 92-Davenport blows up Frederick right in the path of the traffic and bodies start hitting the floor in concert. Again, if Connor can get his guy, I think Zeke is out the gate to the left, but since he can’t, 21 is cornered. It is a real mess, and as you can see, running plays are almost always a product of an offensive line — which is why so many teams don’t want to pay a running back. There is only so much he can do.
3Q – 9:18 – 1st-and-10
This cannot happen. You simply have to crush your opponent if they are only putting six in the box on 1st-and-10 to match your 11 personnel. But watch 90-Brown beat Martin and Frederick inside to kill the play. It looks like Martin believes Frederick has him and is off to go get his linebacker after the combo block, but Frederick simply doesn’t have him and may have been stepped on by Williams. Once the A-Gap is lost on the front side of the play, Elliott has no chance, and the Cowboys are losing confidence in their ability to block even a six-man box. I feel I need to emphasize this fact: This is not a play-calling problem. They called the right play here. If you cannot find success with the highest-paid offensive line and running back in the league running a simple inside run on 1st-and-10, your play sheet is pretty useless. This is a personnel problem. They lost these plays all night, and it is simply unacceptable. This running game is their foundation, and Malcom Brown and friends were not having it on this occasion.
3Q – 8:49 – 2nd-and-12
On the very next play, the Cowboys get back into play-action and find their biggest gain of the evening. Prescott makes a nice fake and you can see they have Cobb and Jarwin both running down the middle. (Spacing?) The throw to Jarwin is beautifully placed between the triangle of coverage with two deep safeties. Here, we see how much trouble Davenport was giving Tyron Smith up top, as he gets pushed right into Dak. Jarwin is certainly an example of the Cowboys developing a player who can provide them with something they didn’t have elsewhere. I am sure they wanted this for Rico Gathers, but it never happened. Instead, Jarwin looks like a guy who can do this fairly often. Get down the seams and find an explosive play from a tight end.
4Q – 6:16 – 2nd-and-1
Just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, here is another run into a six-man box where both guards lose, and there is no chance for Elliott to do much. David Onyemata absolutely is too much for Connor Williams frontside, while Malcom Brown beats Zack Martin on the backside. I am not sure if this play had much to work with either way, but if both of your guards lose to penetration, you can’t even get a 2nd-and-1 into a six-man box. Yeesh. Again, what play can you call if this one is not available to your coaches?
4Q – 1:39 – 1st-and-10
I don’t know what to say about this play, where the Saints came up with their only sack and Tyron Smith was injured. The Cowboys have a 1st-and-10 and plenty of time. All they need is a field goal. The three interior linemen have two guys to deal with, and they are in a good spot, but on the exchange after a twist, Frederick loses badly to Onyemata and gives up pressure when it seemed there were no problems at all. After watching this game tape, I am starting to grow concerned about 72. He is not near his normal level. This is a sack you cannot afford to take, but it is a lot to ask Prescott to anticipate his three linemen losing to those two that quickly. Poor protection for sure. And it might cost them Tyron for a bit.
4Q – 0:17 – 3rd-and-20
Through all of this, you still had a real chance to win the game. Do you know how close this was to a 84-yard touchdown? First, they have now converted a 3rd-and-20 on consecutive weeks after going 80 games without converting one before Miami. But here is Prescott’s amazing find of Cobb that perhaps beats three deep safeties if he can just avoid Marcus Williams. Williams, as you may recall, was the victim of the Minneapolis Miracle, so he knew he had to make this play and did so quite well. But how close was Cobb to breaking it?
One more angle and maybe the best throw of his career – with Frederick in his lap. That, my friends, is a dime, and Cobb almost wriggled free. Heck of a pass and catch, but too little and too late. [HR][/HR]
We didn’t even mention that Amari Cooper and Devin Smith were locked down almost the entire night because there was so much to study. As you can probably surmise, however, I think the issues that most held them back probably go back to the offensive line’s failure to beat favorable defensive formations. Yes, we will extend plenty of credit to the New Orleans front and plenty of understanding to Frederick and Martin, who are both recovering from different ailments on the fly. The youthful left guard, too, is continuing to improve, but this is the NFL and this was a showdown game against a team that might be the NFC’s best Super Bowl contender. You had a chance to grab the steering wheel in that race and any tiebreaker, too, while facing them without their best player. But despite those advantages, there was not enough quality from the Cowboys. Blaming Kellen Moore and Jason Garrett for those problems is not fair to anyone.
Yes, more play-action and different concepts might have narrowly won this battle. Sure. But this team built an offense with players of top quality up front and they entered the Superdome with the plan of sending a message of physicality and dominance. Instead, they saw some pretty big issues where their running game was shut completely down at just the wrong time.
They are better than this, and I anticipate very few defensive fronts can do what New Orleans did, but this one has to rest on the individual players who lost too many battles. They must be better to win a road game like this one.
By Bob Sturm 21m ago
I absolutely love doing this series of analysis on the Cowboys offense and find myself getting more and more into it every season. The fact that so many of you speak highly of it inspires me to search even harder for answers, especially in weeks like these where so many people are looking for them.
Let’s be honest: This was an awful Cowboys performance by almost any measure. After seeing them exceed 30 points and 470 yards in each of the first three weeks, this Sunday featured 10 points and 257 yards of lousy offense. Nothing went right, and people want to know who to hang the blame on.
We are not here to find sacrificial lambs. We are here to seek explanations and reasons for what goes right or wrong. We try to be fair and allow for the fact that sometimes we are offering our best, semi-educated guesses. No, we are not in the huddle or the meeting rooms. I have a laptop, two eyes and a willingness to search and learn. I am not infallible.
With that being said, why did the night in New Orleans go so wrong?
I think the answer is both simple and complicated this week. Every single offensive player seemed to hold part of the rope of this stinker. It is difficult to go through the wreckage and find anyone who was just awesome amidst the issues. There were some nice plays, but overall, this was one of those days. Nothing looked good, and nothing went smoothly.
The late, great Joe Avezzano would always remind me that “the other team pays their players, too,” when the Cowboys played poorly. He knew from his decades in the game that it isn’t always as simple as what we did. Sometimes, they made us play poorly. Sometimes, we run into a freight train.
As I examined this offensive performance, I saw some issues, but it starts with the basic premise that the Cowboys got their butts handed to them by a Saints defense that was fired up and ready to roll. Dallas did not match New Orleans’ physicality and lost far too many one-on-one battles. The Cowboys were simply never able to work their way out of the mess.
Full marks should go to the Saints for a masterful effort at making the Cowboys struggle to follow their preferred gameplan.
Let’s show you some of that: [h=3]
The picture above shows a normal pre-snap look on 1st-and-10 for the Cowboys offense. They want to look at the Saints safeties — you can see both are 15 yards off the line — and decide if they would rather run or pass into this look. If you have played Madden or football at any level, you know that the Saints are sitting on the pass. They essentially have four defensive backs assigned to the Cowboys’ two wide receivers. That means, by our arithmetic, the line of scrimmage provides Dallas a 9-on-7 edge. This is a mathematical advantage that tells us even with the ball carrier and the QB subtracted, the Cowboys have a hat for a hat in a 7-vs.-7 blocking situation. This screams run.
If the defense moves a safety down in this exact situation, the math changes. You then see seven blockers for eight men in the box, and you see one safety over two corners vs two wide receivers. You cannot help both corners, and this math tells an offense that they should pass.
These fundamental truths are as old as the game. Sunday night, the Saints elected to sit on the pass in running situations and dare the Cowboys to run, even feeding them mathematical advantages to make it more desirable. And that was the challenge. Could the Cowboys make New Orleans bring that safety down by dominating the numerical advantage? If they could win that 9-on-7 with enough regularity early, New Orleans would have to adjust, and that is when you kill them with the pass downfield – where the explosive plays and touchdowns are found.
But if the Saints could win even while giving up numbers against the run, Dallas would be in for a very long night.
I think you know which way that went on Sunday. Even though they were playing against the league’s highest-paid running back, who ran behind the league’s highest-paid offensive line, the Saints plugged up Dallas’ ground game all night long to the tune of 2.3 yards per carry. 20 times, the Cowboys ran the football, and they found a mere 45 yards. It was ugly.
Here is how Ezekiel Elliott’s 18 carries looked according to Next Gen Stats: [h=3]
Yuck. Basically, he did nothing on the ground. It wasn’t just his fault, of course; his friends up front were defeated too often and too easily. But the numbers went on his ledger, and he was not able to change the math.
The Cowboys usually do very well when they have a numerical advantage, but credit the Saints front and maybe even the crowd noise for making sure they held that advantage in the secondary and still won at the line of scrimmage to take all appealing options from the Cowboys.
Dallas, meanwhile, embraced the unappealing idea of running over and over into a brick wall.
Here are the many first-down runs the Cowboys attempted against the Saints. We will look at many of them below in Film Study, but here they all are. As you can see, there are 11 in all, and just three were what we would call “Successful Plays” which require four yards or more: [h=3]
Elliott has played 44 games with the Cowboys and won 31 of them. 31-13 is a fantastic mark, so their recipe normally ends in smiles, but when it doesn’t work, they look very poor.
The magic numbers seem to be 70 yards and 3.6 yards a carry for Elliott to correlate with winning. When Elliott reaches 70 yards, the Cowboys are 30-6. When he is held below 70, they are 1-7.
When he has a day of 3.6 yards per carry or more, they are 29-7. When he is below that mark, Dallas is just 2-6.
On Sunday, he had 35 yards and 1.9 yards a carry.
When you can’t run even into a six-man box, they do not react to your play-action. (I swear, analytical friends, the Saints safeties did not budge.). And that leaves nobody open down the field.
So, you can’t run the ball, the play-action dries up and you face third-and-long. And, yes, Dennis Allen and the Saints had a plan for that, too.
They would rush just three men and drop eight. They were hardly trying for sacks, instead making Dak fit the ball into tiny windows. He did sometimes, but just missed at others.
It was that kind of night – an overall disaster.
There are many things to look at in the above data box, but you can simply go with 257 yards and 10 points. The Cowboys are 5-69 all time when they put those two numbers together. It is somewhat shocking they have managed to win five times with that production, including four times between 1969-1976, when the NFL really had some wild games. Additionally, there was the 2003 game vs. Buffalo at Texas Stadium, when the Cowboys managed to take down the Bills, 10-6, in a game where Bill Parcells picked up one of his first wins and Dan Campbell caught the lone touchdown from Quincy Carter.
Regardless of what the defense does, you generally aren’t going to win games in which your offense accomplishes next to nothing. [h=3]PERSONNEL GROUPINGS[/h]
As we look at the Personnel Groupings, we can see that nearly everything that was accomplished happened out of Shotgun 11, meaning that just about everything else was just lousy. Add to that an overall mark on the ground, and you can see that the 2019 Cowboys offenses has involved three feasts and a famine. Nothing close to inside the normal range of 300 to 400 yards. The Cowboys have been over 470 yards. This time, they were under 260.
DAK PRESCOTT NEXT-GEN THROW CHART [h=3]
You will see in Film Study that the Saints were determined not to get beaten deep. They had safeties playing back so nothing got over their heads. The idea that Prescott should not force the action and take what was given meant plenty of underneath throws and passes under 10 yards. He actually made several very difficult throws work on Sunday, so I think we should be careful how carried away we get about his game. The big miss was to Randall Cobb in the end zone, and a few other times he could have made a better throw. But I still thought he was mostly decent. [h=3]SUCCESS RATES BY DOWN[/h]
Here is a reminder of what we are looking for: “A play is successful when it gains at least 40% of yards-to-go on first down, 60% of yards-to-go on second down and 100% of yards-to-go on third or fourth down.”
My friend James Brantley assists us with a chart depicting success rate by down. If you study this chart, you will see that Sunday featured the worst day on first down, the worst day on second down and the worst day on third down. As you might imagine, that is both an indicator of how good they have been through three weeks and how poor they were on Sunday. You simply cannot have that many holes in your production and expect to win. Yet they almost did.
PLAY-ACTION LOG
| Wk 1 – NYG | 14 | 15 | 207 | 13.8 | 158.3 |
| WK 2 – WAS | 11 | 12 | 126 | 10.5 | 138.2 |
| Wk 3 – MIA | 5 | 10 | 76 | 7.6 | 35.8 |
| Wk 4 – NO | 6 | 7 | 65 | 9.3 | 105.4 |
| TOTALS | 36 | 44 | 474 | 10.8 | 132.4 |
There are two things to consider here. First, you can see the diminishing use of play-action passing as teams begin to play further and further back and decide what they want to defend against the most. Second, the Cowboys somewhat stopped using it on Sunday Night. Are these two factors related? Of course.
What frustrates fans so much, of course, is that most do not want to hear that they are not running it as much because defenses are waiting for it. Should Dallas be stubborn and run play-action into the teeth of defenses that seem ready for it? Well, they were stubborn enough about running Zeke into the teeth of the Saints defensive line, so I guess we are often just talking about degrees of obstinance.
But, things that have worked — like play-action passing and asking Dak to use his legs to help a struggling offense — were in short supply on Sunday Night.
Let’s look at 10 plays or so from this game and try to discover what the coaches were seeing. [h=3]FILM STUDY[/h]
1Q – 13:17 – 1st-and-10
The Cowboys’ first three plays moved the ball to their 47. These next three set the tone for the evening, and I wanted to show you all three of them here in succession to get this film study going. Here is a 1st-and-10 run that went nowhere because 56-Davis ran right through the A-Gap untouched and jumped Zeke in the backfield. This looks like Travis Frederick’s responsibility, and I will tell you that was a bit of a theme on Sunday. Frederick is a fan favorite and a great story as he returns in 2019, but this game was a telling example that he is not yet right. While he is probably playing his way back up to speed, it isn’t very close to what he was. I would say that I believe in the player, but this league is merciless, and if you want to know how the Cowboys looked so poor on Sunday, I would start with their pillars inside. Frederick and the great Zack Martin both looked very poor by their lofty standards. As you can see, Zeke never had a prayer.
1Q – 12:45 – 2nd-and-10
Here’s the next play, and what I believe is the first play-action attempt of the night. Watch the safeties. They are not going to give any concern to the running game. This is a clear game-plan initiative to not fall for play-action and so when the fake happens, the Cowboys are running into a secondary that is sitting on their two-man route. Is there a throw? Possibly to Cooper up top on the corner, but by then, Cameron Jordan is breaking through a Jason Witten block, and the play is breaking down. Once Prescott spins away, he can just throw it into the bench area. 3rd-and-10.
1Q – 12:37 – 3rd-and-10
The Cowboys have been great at converting third downs, so the Dolphins and now the Saints have done the same thing on 3rd-and-long: Use a three-man pass rush and drop eight into coverage at the sticks. There is nothing deep and nothing terribly attractive for Prescott. So he has time, but probably not enough space to run and no targets that will get the first down. Teams can convert these with precise and somewhat risky throws, but you will not see many QBs taking chances on the first drive of the game. The best way to deal with this is to stay out of 3rd-and-long, but you just saw how poorly first and second down went. The drive stalls, and the punt team runs on.
1Q – 5:20 – 3rd-and-9
Drive No. 2 is going better, but in the red zone, the Cowboys have another poor sequence: Bad run, incomplete pass and another third-and-long. Again, the Saints see empty, so they show a big blitz and then back off, leaving eight in coverage and three rushing. The Saints show him that he can try to run, but won’t get there, so he stays alive and finally Cobb pops sort of free. This, by the way, is one of Cobb’s greatest gifts. He has helped Aaron Rodgers late in downs by figuring out a way to get open, and this has already made him a Prescott favorite, too. The throw, however, is just off. It is about a 25-yard throw on the run and across the body, but Dak would like another shot at that one. The Cowboys settle for three points, which will prove quite costly.
2Q – 7:13 – 3rd-and-4
Drive No. 4 starts well, and the Cowboys are in a 3rd-and-4. When the yardage is manageable, you see that Dak has a few more options (including a run) and finally sees a window for a throw to Witten. This is a big play — until Witten is stripped of the ball, and it turns into a very costly turnover. Good work from AJ Klein to rally back in this spot, and we see that 82 can still get open. I know this isn’t the time or place to suggest he has been pretty good so far, but he really looks fresher. His numbers are on pace to return where they were in 2014, when he was 32 years old. We shall see if he can sustain this pace and, of course, never fumble.
2Q – 4:39 – 1st-and-10
Drive No. 5. This is pretty rough to see, but another example of why the Cowboys aren’t running the football against the New Orleans interior. First, you can see that the whole line (except for maybe Tyron) all look pretty poor on this snap. Malcom Brown destroyed plenty in this game, and here he blows through the line (across from Martin on his inside shoulder, which makes Collins have to really work to reach him), and Connor Williams cannot get the edge on his guy. This causes all sorts of chaos. 92-Davenport blows up Frederick right in the path of the traffic and bodies start hitting the floor in concert. Again, if Connor can get his guy, I think Zeke is out the gate to the left, but since he can’t, 21 is cornered. It is a real mess, and as you can see, running plays are almost always a product of an offensive line — which is why so many teams don’t want to pay a running back. There is only so much he can do.
3Q – 9:18 – 1st-and-10
This cannot happen. You simply have to crush your opponent if they are only putting six in the box on 1st-and-10 to match your 11 personnel. But watch 90-Brown beat Martin and Frederick inside to kill the play. It looks like Martin believes Frederick has him and is off to go get his linebacker after the combo block, but Frederick simply doesn’t have him and may have been stepped on by Williams. Once the A-Gap is lost on the front side of the play, Elliott has no chance, and the Cowboys are losing confidence in their ability to block even a six-man box. I feel I need to emphasize this fact: This is not a play-calling problem. They called the right play here. If you cannot find success with the highest-paid offensive line and running back in the league running a simple inside run on 1st-and-10, your play sheet is pretty useless. This is a personnel problem. They lost these plays all night, and it is simply unacceptable. This running game is their foundation, and Malcom Brown and friends were not having it on this occasion.
3Q – 8:49 – 2nd-and-12
On the very next play, the Cowboys get back into play-action and find their biggest gain of the evening. Prescott makes a nice fake and you can see they have Cobb and Jarwin both running down the middle. (Spacing?) The throw to Jarwin is beautifully placed between the triangle of coverage with two deep safeties. Here, we see how much trouble Davenport was giving Tyron Smith up top, as he gets pushed right into Dak. Jarwin is certainly an example of the Cowboys developing a player who can provide them with something they didn’t have elsewhere. I am sure they wanted this for Rico Gathers, but it never happened. Instead, Jarwin looks like a guy who can do this fairly often. Get down the seams and find an explosive play from a tight end.
4Q – 6:16 – 2nd-and-1
Just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, here is another run into a six-man box where both guards lose, and there is no chance for Elliott to do much. David Onyemata absolutely is too much for Connor Williams frontside, while Malcom Brown beats Zack Martin on the backside. I am not sure if this play had much to work with either way, but if both of your guards lose to penetration, you can’t even get a 2nd-and-1 into a six-man box. Yeesh. Again, what play can you call if this one is not available to your coaches?
4Q – 1:39 – 1st-and-10
I don’t know what to say about this play, where the Saints came up with their only sack and Tyron Smith was injured. The Cowboys have a 1st-and-10 and plenty of time. All they need is a field goal. The three interior linemen have two guys to deal with, and they are in a good spot, but on the exchange after a twist, Frederick loses badly to Onyemata and gives up pressure when it seemed there were no problems at all. After watching this game tape, I am starting to grow concerned about 72. He is not near his normal level. This is a sack you cannot afford to take, but it is a lot to ask Prescott to anticipate his three linemen losing to those two that quickly. Poor protection for sure. And it might cost them Tyron for a bit.
4Q – 0:17 – 3rd-and-20
Through all of this, you still had a real chance to win the game. Do you know how close this was to a 84-yard touchdown? First, they have now converted a 3rd-and-20 on consecutive weeks after going 80 games without converting one before Miami. But here is Prescott’s amazing find of Cobb that perhaps beats three deep safeties if he can just avoid Marcus Williams. Williams, as you may recall, was the victim of the Minneapolis Miracle, so he knew he had to make this play and did so quite well. But how close was Cobb to breaking it?
One more angle and maybe the best throw of his career – with Frederick in his lap. That, my friends, is a dime, and Cobb almost wriggled free. Heck of a pass and catch, but too little and too late. [HR][/HR]
We didn’t even mention that Amari Cooper and Devin Smith were locked down almost the entire night because there was so much to study. As you can probably surmise, however, I think the issues that most held them back probably go back to the offensive line’s failure to beat favorable defensive formations. Yes, we will extend plenty of credit to the New Orleans front and plenty of understanding to Frederick and Martin, who are both recovering from different ailments on the fly. The youthful left guard, too, is continuing to improve, but this is the NFL and this was a showdown game against a team that might be the NFC’s best Super Bowl contender. You had a chance to grab the steering wheel in that race and any tiebreaker, too, while facing them without their best player. But despite those advantages, there was not enough quality from the Cowboys. Blaming Kellen Moore and Jason Garrett for those problems is not fair to anyone.
Yes, more play-action and different concepts might have narrowly won this battle. Sure. But this team built an offense with players of top quality up front and they entered the Superdome with the plan of sending a message of physicality and dominance. Instead, they saw some pretty big issues where their running game was shut completely down at just the wrong time.
They are better than this, and I anticipate very few defensive fronts can do what New Orleans did, but this one has to rest on the individual players who lost too many battles. They must be better to win a road game like this one.
