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By Bob Sturm 3h ago
On Monday, I spent quite a few paragraphs analyzing the Cowboys’ biggest failing in 2018: their issues inside the red zone and then inside the 10-yard line. It’s the single biggest issue they need to address in 2019.
Too many drives died in that red zone, and I think this is clearly why the Cowboys moved on from Scott Linehan in pursuit of someone who might have a better idea of how to pull them out of that rut. They finished the 2018 season 32nd in the NFL in 1st-and-goal touchdown efficiency (scoring a touchdown on a drive where you earn a first down inside the opponent’s 10 yard line – not to be confused with scoring on 1st and goal) and 29th in red-zone touchdown efficiency.
Considering the substantial investment Dallas has made in its offense and the amount of assembled talent, they should never come close to ranking down by the Jets, Cardinals, Jaguars and 49ers. If they can win their division and a playoff game with a team this wasteful on offense, it would seem like the sky might be the limit if they consistently add seven points from up close at a league-average rate.
This is the companion piece to that Monday analysis. I hope, if you haven’t read that, you will go back and do so before proceeding here. This is the film piece that will hopefully demonstrate some of the principal points.
The first thing I want to do is offer some perspective about how the league sees the red zone. 2018 was a banner year for NFL red-zone offense, as the league cracked the 59% mark for the first time on record. That persistent upswing in efficiency is certainly not a fluke. The league just understands how to attack the confines of space better than ever.
THE CHIEFS’ RED ZONE CLINIC
Kansas City is at the cutting edge on how to do this. In a year where they utilized Patrick Mahomes, essentially a first-year quarterback, I thought we could use them for a quick example of what we are looking at when we complain about Dallas’ lack of creativity. Yes, Kansas City has weapons that they hand-picked for their offense, but I think we have seen enough of Andy Reid to know he understands offense as well as anyone.
I wanted to show you five plays I pulled from the Chiefs’ September and October contests. By the end of the year, they may have been even more complex, but I looked at games against playoff-caliber defenses — the Chargers, Steelers and Patriots — with every one of them being away from home. These are wise men on the other side of the ball who end up looking rather perplexed by Kansas City’s schemes immediately after training camp broke.
This is from Week 1. Pre-snap motion is hugely important. So is misdirection. The Chargers literally had no idea what was happening. Watch 54-Melvin Ingram, who is one of the best linebackers in the league. And see how scheme makes him look silly.
Surely, though, the Chargers wouldn’t fall for it again, right?
Same game. Same half. Rinse, repeat.
These guys are walking in untouched against a very good NFL defense on the exact same play.
Let’s see it through the air against a team that plays plenty of zone defense in the red zone. Here’s a game against Pittsburgh in Week 3. Pre-snap motion, speed and attacking the same areas with multiple threats all cause confusion and easy scores from the back of the red zone.
Mighty Belichick would have an answer, right? The Patriots run man coverage all day in the red zone. So Reid answers by making everyone fight through traffic to stay with their man, with man-beater concepts all day. Look at all of the horizontal rubs and picks in one play. Mahomes had a great year, but I have just shown you four different touchdown passes which all looked reasonably simple, right?
Here is one more. Same game. Same defense. Here comes more motion and some route combinations that cause traffic issues. Mahomes sees multiple open targets and picks the one he likes the most. Nobody is trying to say Kansas City doesn’t have a good quarterback. I am trying to demonstrate that coaching and scheme matter more than anything else in the red zone. Especially on the road, and especially against good defenses.
In the interest of fairness, I went through the Cowboys’ 2018 season and looked for creativity from Linehan and his staff, which obviously included new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. Certainly, they were looking for answers. Here were a few examples of what they came up with.
Week 3 against the Seahawks:
It appears they watched the Chiefs in Week 1 and loved their plan. There is one big difference here that jumps out. Tavon Austin is actually joined with the offensive line action. Kansas City had its entire offensive line going in the opposite direction to sell the deception. If you are a linebacker, there is a good chance you are reading a guard and he is taking you with Austin. In other words, the Cowboys executed a much less risky version of the Chiefs’ plan. If you want to confuse opponents, you must do the full “sell job,” whereas the Cowboys tried the modified, half-in version. It still worked, though, leaving us to wonder what having Tavon Austin for more than six healthy games would have been like. But this is definitely not what we normally saw.
Then we had two other plays which looked like easy touchdowns based on scheme. This one in Atlanta was a nice, easy out route to Beasley that hit him right in the hands for a frustrating dropped touchdown.
Then this one made everyone lose their minds:
Every story has many versions. I am positive Scott Linehan would point to these three plays as great examples of “creativity” and insist players let him down. This play concept looks like something Andy Reid would offer. It has the Colts all fouled up and left two players wide open in Jamize Olawale and Blake Jarwin (in the back of the end zone). It has Prescott delivering a less-than-perfect pass, but this isn’t Little League; that ball must be caught by Olawale. It should have led to an easy touchdown.
Perhaps on two of the three best schemed-up red-zone plays in 2018, receivers just dropped touchdowns. Is that the margin for firing an offensive coordinator when you win the division and a playoff game?
As you’re about to see, the situation is far more complex than that. [HR][/HR]
There was a very easily identifiable stretch within the season in which the Cowboys were starting to roll, but their red-zone failings were hugely prominent. That stretch, featuring the Saints, Eagles, and Colts games in Weeks 13-15, likely precipitated the decision to part ways with Linehan. There were some extenuating circumstances, the most obvious among them being the offensive line’s health. Here is how that unit lined up for these three games: