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The Morning After: Cowboys have too many problems with few solutions in sight
By Bob Sturm 20m ago
The beauty of a 16-game NFL schedule is found in the repeatable patterns that are revealed.
In some ways, it is a such a short season that one play can and will affect everything, becoming the lasting memory of how close a team was to reaching its goals. This is the foundation behind the “game of inches” cliche that is used so often.
But in other ways, the season is long enough to identify shortcomings that reveal themselves over and over, independent of a given opponent or setting. In other words, a team may struggle clearly enough in a few departments that every single opponent seems to know how to find those pressure points. This is not emblematic of a bad matchup against one opponent. It makes up the identity of what the team really is.
Repeatable and sustainable patterns are wonderful when they are describing positive attributes. However, that same “repeatable and sustainable” phrase can be the worst thing you could say about a team when it is describing the same issues that crop up week after week.
Unfortunately, the only things being repeated right now when this team is on the road relate to the consistent attributes of losing football — especially from an offense that can’t score points very often and a coach that doesn’t seem to be aware of how badly his team could use a boost from him at the moments of truth.
First, a review of why this new problem for the Jason Garrett administration is simply a case of “if it isn’t one thing, it is several others” that conspire to take a mediocre team down.
For the entirety of Jason Garrett’s era, best judged by his seven full seasons as coach from 2011-2017, the Dallas Cowboys were a force of nature on the road. You may be chuckling to yourself, but you can look this up and confirm it. From 2011-17, they won more games on the road (33) than any other franchise in this league besides the Patriots.
Before you go on and on about how Saint Tony won all of those games away from home, I will tell you that isn’t the whole truth at all. From 2016-2017, the first two seasons of the “21-4” era, they were second in the NFL in road wins (again, trailing that machine in New England). One thing Jason Garrett teams have consistently done is play well and win on the road. It will surprise many to know this, but it is as true as it gets.
Given that we have established that the Cowboys’ earliest road win in 2018 will have to wait until at least November (they play Philadelphia on November 11th), this season’s status quo is befuddling. The Cowboys are playing a very similar road game over and over again. It is sustainable and repeatable, but running into the same brick wall repeatedly is not anyone’s idea of a positive outcome.
There are just two teams in the NFL who are now 0-4 on the road, and one of them lost their starting QB for the season very early on when Jimmy Garoppolo was lost to an ACL injury. The Cowboys have lost all four games outside of Arlington this year, and given that they have yet to break the elusive 17-point barrier in any of those contests, we are left to look at the offense and ask for an explanation.
The explanation may shock people, as Cowboys running backs are 24th in the NFL at running the ball on the road, averaging 74.5 yards per game. Yesterday in Washington, they totaled 33 yards unless we call Jourdan Lewis a running back for a day, in which case we can kick it up to 40 yards on 16 carries (2.5 per).
There was a time when we talked about how physical football tends to travel. That was the trademark of the 2014 and 2016 seasons. The Cowboys had brute force up front and would walk into your stadium and grind you down into a fine powder. By the time they left Seattle, Green Bay, or Philadelphia, you were tapping out and happy they were going to leave you alone for a year.
The only thing that is traveling right now from that group appears to be their reputation. Because on top of not being able to run the ball on the road is another more disconcerting issue; this offensive line is allowing the second-most sacks on the road this season, with 17 so far (behind only Buffalo). Now, not everyone has played four road games, so obviously this is just a math issue, right? Wrong. If you calculate the carnage by sacks allowed per game on the road, the Cowboys remain second-worst in the league with 4.25 allowed per game (behind only Atlanta).
I realize that nothing is as fun as debating whether a QB is “elite” or not and whether quarterbacks from Cowboys teams past could have won this game (as we see highlights of Troy Aikman ’92 and Tony Romo ’12 having similarly sad endings in Washington in their days), but the reality in ’18 seems to be hitting home: This elite offensive line is only elite right now in terms of weekly paychecks. They cannot open up huge holes to run the ball, they cannot pass-protect well, and they sprinkle in key penalties that nullify positive plays, as well.
This is probably logical based on losing one of the best centers in the game to an unexpected illness. Make no mistake, seeing Travis Frederick walk through that door would be a gust of wind this team would pay any price for at the moment. But Joe Looney has seldom been the issue for this offensive line. Rather, when you start to name names, it appears that Tyron Smith is dealing with a decline due to health himself. The league can throw different elite athletes at left tackle every week and during that streak of Garrett-era wins on the road, very seldom did the Cowboys become undone because of their left tackle =- a spot that sabotages teams across this league every week. Instead, that blindside was secure more often than not since 2011. But now, in consecutive weeks, we are wondering if Tyron is ok. He has been so good for so long that seeing any cracks in his foundation is frightening.
The young man next to him is having his “welcome to the NFL season,” as Connor Williams is struggling noticeably. The Coppell product and Longhorn came to the Cowboys a likable hometown kid whose dream was coming true, but he also came with a tiny wingspan and a lack of overall size. Now, this is not a deal-breaker by any respect and fans should still expect him to have a very successful future in Dallas. But right now, we see a guy who has been poor on a regular basis with his worst experiences coming away from home. In Carolina, Seattle, Houston, and now Washington, Williams has been isolated against some of the biggest and meanest players in the league on the interior and is often hanging on for dear life. This is not what he saw in Austin last season. The guys at this level often weigh 320 pounds and have catlike quickness. At the moment, Williams is outclassed. Again, we will likely someday look back at his baptism by fire fondly, but there is a reason those elite defensive tackles are getting all of the money. They can literally destroy an entire game plan.
Martin and Looney have looked pretty solid in these games, but then over at the right tackle is La’el Collins. Collins is probably a better guard than a tackle and Williams is probably a better tackle than a guard. That said, I am not sure either of them is going to shut down Ryan Kerrigan. Kerrigan was great again yesterday and has beaten Collins game after game from that LDE spot. The Washington pass-rusher had a huge moment basically pushing La’el back into Prescott in the third quarter and then seized the moment on the sack and strip of Prescott on the biggest play of the game in the fourth quarter.
That occasion, which came right after Prescott’s huge 16-yard throw to Cole Beasley in a tight window on third down was nullified because Williams took a holding penalty on a bear hug of Jonathan Allen. This marched the Cowboys back, and then the third-and-long required Prescott to hold the ball longer near his own end zone, which required Williams and friends to hold up on protection with Kerrigan in a delayed blitz position. Kerrigan waited for the Cowboys’ rookie guard to end up on the ground, holding on to Preston Smith, leaving nobody to stop him from chasing down Prescott in the end zone. Looney might have assisted but he turned to help Martin (who didn’t need help) rather than moving in the other direction to help the rookie. The Redskins were relentlessly attacking that left side of the Cowboys line and at the moment of truth — just as Michael Gallup flashed open down the left sideline — Prescott saw #91 in his face again. The ball came loose on the strip as Smith picked it up and walked into the end zone.
With that, the game was likely over.
Yet, through it all, the Cowboys kept fighting. The defense hung in there and so did the QB. There was no running game and almost no pass protection, but Prescott and the offense showed some real battle.
And that brings us back to the coach who can either serve as a secret weapon or as a detriment.
Garrett is apparently used to his team playing well on the road, so I guess we must forgive him if he acts like he has the better hand in Houston and Washington. But this memo is important. They are not good enough at the moment — without Frederick, Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, and even a healthy Tyron Smith — to do it the old way. At times like these, you need a coach who understands which cards he is holding at which cards he is not.
And that serves as yet another frustration. Here we sit. Just 14 days since Houston, where Garrett inexplicably punted the ball from the Texans’ 41 in overtime instead of showing some aggression on 4th and 1. That night he did not realize he needed to go all-in and try to win the game.
Two weeks later, he is in Washington playing a team that has tossed his offense around pretty easily all day. But, somehow, your QB and receivers have made a few plays as Cole Beasley is finding cracks in the game’s final minute. Beasley for 18. Beasley again for 9 to the edge of field goal range. The clock sits at 0:48 when Beasley is tackled. The Cowboys operate rather casually and by the time Prescott finds Beasley again for six more yards to the 31, it is clear what is happening. Jason Garrett is playing for overtime.
The Cowboys had a timeout and 48 seconds to go and they decided to get conservative again. Evidently, they didn’t want to kick the field goal too fast, leaving Washington time, but they certainly never considered that Washington’s defensive backs are a mess and that they have time to think touchdown.
Just like in Houston, in the final moments of a winnable road game that could turn the season around, the head coach decided to play conservatively and go for the tie. To use his terminology, he decided to lay-up at the Masters again. He wanted to play the odds rather than trusting his offense to win the game or die trying.
Instead, with plenty of time to go for the victory, he conservatively bleeds the rest of the clock and bets that a 47-yard field goal is plenty secure. Of course, the bizarre, controversial penalty marches them back five yards to make it 52 yards. And of course, the field goal attempt hits the upright.
Of course. This is 2018 in a nutshell. A team that can’t score 20 points on the road gives away rare and precious chances to play in the opponent’s end by turning conservative when they cannot afford that approach in their final offensive moments.
This, unfortunately, is Jason Garrett football in his make-or-break season. I had hoped the gravity of the situation would have revealed a new, aggressive version of the coach. If not that, maybe seeing Doug Pederson win a Super Bowl in his division might make him roll the dice once in a while with the game on the line.
My hopes were unfounded. He is still the same guy who doesn’t realize when his team needs him to be the difference between winning and losing. And he is that guy far too often.
Yesterday is just the latest example.
_______________________________________
Moar, please.
By Bob Sturm 20m ago
The beauty of a 16-game NFL schedule is found in the repeatable patterns that are revealed.
In some ways, it is a such a short season that one play can and will affect everything, becoming the lasting memory of how close a team was to reaching its goals. This is the foundation behind the “game of inches” cliche that is used so often.
But in other ways, the season is long enough to identify shortcomings that reveal themselves over and over, independent of a given opponent or setting. In other words, a team may struggle clearly enough in a few departments that every single opponent seems to know how to find those pressure points. This is not emblematic of a bad matchup against one opponent. It makes up the identity of what the team really is.
Repeatable and sustainable patterns are wonderful when they are describing positive attributes. However, that same “repeatable and sustainable” phrase can be the worst thing you could say about a team when it is describing the same issues that crop up week after week.
Unfortunately, the only things being repeated right now when this team is on the road relate to the consistent attributes of losing football — especially from an offense that can’t score points very often and a coach that doesn’t seem to be aware of how badly his team could use a boost from him at the moments of truth.
First, a review of why this new problem for the Jason Garrett administration is simply a case of “if it isn’t one thing, it is several others” that conspire to take a mediocre team down.
For the entirety of Jason Garrett’s era, best judged by his seven full seasons as coach from 2011-2017, the Dallas Cowboys were a force of nature on the road. You may be chuckling to yourself, but you can look this up and confirm it. From 2011-17, they won more games on the road (33) than any other franchise in this league besides the Patriots.
Before you go on and on about how Saint Tony won all of those games away from home, I will tell you that isn’t the whole truth at all. From 2016-2017, the first two seasons of the “21-4” era, they were second in the NFL in road wins (again, trailing that machine in New England). One thing Jason Garrett teams have consistently done is play well and win on the road. It will surprise many to know this, but it is as true as it gets.
Given that we have established that the Cowboys’ earliest road win in 2018 will have to wait until at least November (they play Philadelphia on November 11th), this season’s status quo is befuddling. The Cowboys are playing a very similar road game over and over again. It is sustainable and repeatable, but running into the same brick wall repeatedly is not anyone’s idea of a positive outcome.
There are just two teams in the NFL who are now 0-4 on the road, and one of them lost their starting QB for the season very early on when Jimmy Garoppolo was lost to an ACL injury. The Cowboys have lost all four games outside of Arlington this year, and given that they have yet to break the elusive 17-point barrier in any of those contests, we are left to look at the offense and ask for an explanation.
The explanation may shock people, as Cowboys running backs are 24th in the NFL at running the ball on the road, averaging 74.5 yards per game. Yesterday in Washington, they totaled 33 yards unless we call Jourdan Lewis a running back for a day, in which case we can kick it up to 40 yards on 16 carries (2.5 per).
There was a time when we talked about how physical football tends to travel. That was the trademark of the 2014 and 2016 seasons. The Cowboys had brute force up front and would walk into your stadium and grind you down into a fine powder. By the time they left Seattle, Green Bay, or Philadelphia, you were tapping out and happy they were going to leave you alone for a year.
The only thing that is traveling right now from that group appears to be their reputation. Because on top of not being able to run the ball on the road is another more disconcerting issue; this offensive line is allowing the second-most sacks on the road this season, with 17 so far (behind only Buffalo). Now, not everyone has played four road games, so obviously this is just a math issue, right? Wrong. If you calculate the carnage by sacks allowed per game on the road, the Cowboys remain second-worst in the league with 4.25 allowed per game (behind only Atlanta).
I realize that nothing is as fun as debating whether a QB is “elite” or not and whether quarterbacks from Cowboys teams past could have won this game (as we see highlights of Troy Aikman ’92 and Tony Romo ’12 having similarly sad endings in Washington in their days), but the reality in ’18 seems to be hitting home: This elite offensive line is only elite right now in terms of weekly paychecks. They cannot open up huge holes to run the ball, they cannot pass-protect well, and they sprinkle in key penalties that nullify positive plays, as well.
This is probably logical based on losing one of the best centers in the game to an unexpected illness. Make no mistake, seeing Travis Frederick walk through that door would be a gust of wind this team would pay any price for at the moment. But Joe Looney has seldom been the issue for this offensive line. Rather, when you start to name names, it appears that Tyron Smith is dealing with a decline due to health himself. The league can throw different elite athletes at left tackle every week and during that streak of Garrett-era wins on the road, very seldom did the Cowboys become undone because of their left tackle =- a spot that sabotages teams across this league every week. Instead, that blindside was secure more often than not since 2011. But now, in consecutive weeks, we are wondering if Tyron is ok. He has been so good for so long that seeing any cracks in his foundation is frightening.
The young man next to him is having his “welcome to the NFL season,” as Connor Williams is struggling noticeably. The Coppell product and Longhorn came to the Cowboys a likable hometown kid whose dream was coming true, but he also came with a tiny wingspan and a lack of overall size. Now, this is not a deal-breaker by any respect and fans should still expect him to have a very successful future in Dallas. But right now, we see a guy who has been poor on a regular basis with his worst experiences coming away from home. In Carolina, Seattle, Houston, and now Washington, Williams has been isolated against some of the biggest and meanest players in the league on the interior and is often hanging on for dear life. This is not what he saw in Austin last season. The guys at this level often weigh 320 pounds and have catlike quickness. At the moment, Williams is outclassed. Again, we will likely someday look back at his baptism by fire fondly, but there is a reason those elite defensive tackles are getting all of the money. They can literally destroy an entire game plan.
Martin and Looney have looked pretty solid in these games, but then over at the right tackle is La’el Collins. Collins is probably a better guard than a tackle and Williams is probably a better tackle than a guard. That said, I am not sure either of them is going to shut down Ryan Kerrigan. Kerrigan was great again yesterday and has beaten Collins game after game from that LDE spot. The Washington pass-rusher had a huge moment basically pushing La’el back into Prescott in the third quarter and then seized the moment on the sack and strip of Prescott on the biggest play of the game in the fourth quarter.
That occasion, which came right after Prescott’s huge 16-yard throw to Cole Beasley in a tight window on third down was nullified because Williams took a holding penalty on a bear hug of Jonathan Allen. This marched the Cowboys back, and then the third-and-long required Prescott to hold the ball longer near his own end zone, which required Williams and friends to hold up on protection with Kerrigan in a delayed blitz position. Kerrigan waited for the Cowboys’ rookie guard to end up on the ground, holding on to Preston Smith, leaving nobody to stop him from chasing down Prescott in the end zone. Looney might have assisted but he turned to help Martin (who didn’t need help) rather than moving in the other direction to help the rookie. The Redskins were relentlessly attacking that left side of the Cowboys line and at the moment of truth — just as Michael Gallup flashed open down the left sideline — Prescott saw #91 in his face again. The ball came loose on the strip as Smith picked it up and walked into the end zone.
With that, the game was likely over.
Yet, through it all, the Cowboys kept fighting. The defense hung in there and so did the QB. There was no running game and almost no pass protection, but Prescott and the offense showed some real battle.
And that brings us back to the coach who can either serve as a secret weapon or as a detriment.
Garrett is apparently used to his team playing well on the road, so I guess we must forgive him if he acts like he has the better hand in Houston and Washington. But this memo is important. They are not good enough at the moment — without Frederick, Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, and even a healthy Tyron Smith — to do it the old way. At times like these, you need a coach who understands which cards he is holding at which cards he is not.
And that serves as yet another frustration. Here we sit. Just 14 days since Houston, where Garrett inexplicably punted the ball from the Texans’ 41 in overtime instead of showing some aggression on 4th and 1. That night he did not realize he needed to go all-in and try to win the game.
Two weeks later, he is in Washington playing a team that has tossed his offense around pretty easily all day. But, somehow, your QB and receivers have made a few plays as Cole Beasley is finding cracks in the game’s final minute. Beasley for 18. Beasley again for 9 to the edge of field goal range. The clock sits at 0:48 when Beasley is tackled. The Cowboys operate rather casually and by the time Prescott finds Beasley again for six more yards to the 31, it is clear what is happening. Jason Garrett is playing for overtime.
The Cowboys had a timeout and 48 seconds to go and they decided to get conservative again. Evidently, they didn’t want to kick the field goal too fast, leaving Washington time, but they certainly never considered that Washington’s defensive backs are a mess and that they have time to think touchdown.
Just like in Houston, in the final moments of a winnable road game that could turn the season around, the head coach decided to play conservatively and go for the tie. To use his terminology, he decided to lay-up at the Masters again. He wanted to play the odds rather than trusting his offense to win the game or die trying.
Instead, with plenty of time to go for the victory, he conservatively bleeds the rest of the clock and bets that a 47-yard field goal is plenty secure. Of course, the bizarre, controversial penalty marches them back five yards to make it 52 yards. And of course, the field goal attempt hits the upright.
Of course. This is 2018 in a nutshell. A team that can’t score 20 points on the road gives away rare and precious chances to play in the opponent’s end by turning conservative when they cannot afford that approach in their final offensive moments.
This, unfortunately, is Jason Garrett football in his make-or-break season. I had hoped the gravity of the situation would have revealed a new, aggressive version of the coach. If not that, maybe seeing Doug Pederson win a Super Bowl in his division might make him roll the dice once in a while with the game on the line.
My hopes were unfounded. He is still the same guy who doesn’t realize when his team needs him to be the difference between winning and losing. And he is that guy far too often.
Yesterday is just the latest example.
_______________________________________
Moar, please.
