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By Saad Yousuf Oct 6, 2020
Excuses are starting to dwindle for the Cowboys.
The Week 1 loss to the Los Angeles Rams was chalked up to a questionable offensive pass interference penalty late and it being the first game of a new coaching regime that went through the most unorthodox offseason in recent memory and no preseason games. The big Week 2 comeback against the Falcons masked some of the outrage of the team being a turnover machine to start the game. Then came the Week 3 loss to the Seahawks: an MVP-caliber quarterback going against a talent-lacking Cowboys defense in Seattle.
But this was the Cleveland Browns. The Cowboys were playing in the comfort of AT&T Stadium, in a 1-2 hole that should have brought out any extra element of desperation that may have been missing. Yet the Cowboys trailed 41-14 before another late rally fell short.
A number of players stood out on Sunday for the wrong reasosn, especially on defense. Jaylon Smith headlines that list, so he’s the player we’ll examine today. Offensively, it was once again a matter of what point in the game you’re talking about. Amari Cooper epitomizes that, racking up 12 catches for 134 yards and a touchdown while also making a key mistake late that ended any hope for a comeback.
Jaylon Smith
Before we dive into Jaylon Smith’s play on the field, I believe it’s only fair to offer both sides of his story. Smith has been bad by pretty much any grading measure, stat line and, certainly, eye-test. The people who know best as to why that is the case are Smith, the Cowboys coaching staff that helps prepare him weekly and the Dallas front office that gave him a big contract extension last summer.
When I asked defensive coordinator Mike Nolan on Monday about Smith’s struggles on the field, he was dumbfounded by the assertion.
“This is the honest truth: I don’t know why Jaylon takes the criticism he does,” Nolan said. “He’s a good football player. He plays extremely hard. I think he has improved. Look, I’d be the first to say it. I always call it like I see it, but Jaylon — look, nobody has played a perfect game for us thus far, and I don’t think they will. And, naturally, as bad a game as (Sunday) was, certainly no one played a winning-grade performance.
I followed up by asking if the absence of Leighton Vander Esch is contributing to Smith’s struggles because Smith has had to take on unforeseen responsibilities. Nolan dismissed that idea, saying, “It really didn’t affect anyone else from the standpoint of what their particular specific job was to do” and that Joe Thomas filled in seamlessly for Vander Esch in terms of job responsibility and role on the defense.
Meanwhile, owner Jerry Jones not only declined to criticize Smith’s performance during his weekly radio appearance on KRLD 105.3 The Fan — he was downright complimentary.
“Oh, I think Jaylon Smith has been courageous — I’ll use that word right there — in his performance,” Jones said. “He gives you everything that he’s got. I think when you think about how significant the change is on defense and you think about his role in quarterbacking it and making a lot of the calls and doing a lot of the mental aspects that the team needs to have done this position out there, then you can give reasons why we’re sitting here having this conversation.
“We’ve lost some games but he has not had a losing effort … He’ll give you everything he’s got. We’ve got players that will do that for us out there, and he certainly (has) got the talent — I’ll say without question, he has the talent to be the middle linebacker on a winning, championship team.”
Effort seems to be a buzzword from people outside of the organization when it comes to Smith and some other players on the roster. On Monday, Nolan and head coach Mike McCarthy strongly refuted the team had an effort problem, with McCarthy saying, “You’ve got to be really careful when you start challenging professional athletes about effort, especially from a distance. We don’t have an effort issue.”
To a certain extent, I think that is fair. As outsiders, when a player looks to be moving lackadaisically, we don’t know if that’s a lack of effort or whether he just read the play wrong and was confused. After all, the past 48 hours have featured coaches, players and the front office alike mentioning the lack of confidence the Cowboys are playing with. It’s also entirely possible that the coaches refuse to blast players publicly but have a different message behind closed doors. So I won’t question Smith’s effort here, which is also tougher to illustrate anyways in this space without the luxury of using video.
Instead, we’ll look at three first-quarter plays that set the tone for the rest of Smith’s day, in which the fifth-year linebacker’s performance left much to be desired.
(1Q, 13:22) 1st-and-10, CLE 31
This is the Cowboys’ first defensive play of the game. Judging linebackers by their total tackles is usually fool’s gold. A linebacker can have a high number of tackles, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re making extraordinary plays. In fact, it’s usually more of a credit to the defensive line, which fulfills their responsibility and allow linebackers to then shoot the gaps and make plays.
On this play, Smith reads the play off the snap and recognizes that Nick Chubb is going to get the ball on the defensive right side. Trysten Hill is engaged with the right guard, opening up a hole for Smith to fill and make the tackle for a loss or, at worst, a limited gain.
Smith continues to move laterally here and somehow gets caught up in the action with Hill, allowing one offensive lineman to take out both defenders. This leaves Smith in a bad position trying to make an arm tackle on Chubb, which will never work.
The Browns pick up 21 yards.
(1Q, 0:59) 1st-and-20, CLE 38
In a game when there were 75 plays run by the Browns offense, it’s hard to pick just one and say that’s where the game was lost. However, this play is certainly in strong contention as a culprit. The Browns found themselves in a 1st-and-20 on their own side of the field, trialing 14-7. Baker Mayfield flipped a harmless pass to tight end Austin Hooper, who was immediately met by safety Donovan Wilson for a four-yard gain that would have brought up 2nd-and-16. Instead, an unnecessary facemask by Smith negated the situation and gave the Browns a new set of downs.
It would be unfair to criticize Smith’s effort and then ding him for “finishing a play,” but a veteran player can do the latter while still playing smart.
As you can see, Hooper is already well on his way to the ground before Smith has even launched himself. If he wanted to get in on finishing the tackle, Smith could aim differently or even let his momentum carry himself through the sideline there. This is also where Smith’s reputation as somebody who doesn’t always make the plays but tries to get in on them late to make it look like otherwise works against him a little bit. The situation should also be considered: It’s the first quarter, and the Browns are in an unfavorable field position situation. The Browns went on to score a touchdown on that drive, the first of 34 unanswered points.
(1Q, 2:08) 1st-and-10, CLE 25
The Browns ran the wide receiver reverse to Odell Beckham Jr. twice in the game. This was the first time, and it’s also one of the main plays that raised questions about Smith’s effort because his jogging on the backside pursuit was, frankly, embarrassing. But, again, leaving the question of effort behind for now, let’s look at not the speed in which Smith was pursuing Beckham, but the angle. Angle drills are some of the first things taught in amateur football, so this is a very fundamental concept.
After getting caught up in the fake to the running back, Smith turns back to where Beckham, the speedy wide receiver, is headed. What makes Smith look even worse is how his own teammate, who was in a similar position to him — Wilson, the red circle — plays this.
Wilson is a defensive back. If anything, he should be the one taking the tighter angle while Smith, the linebacker, should take the deeper angle. Here is what it ends up looking like as the play progresses.
If Smith takes the proper angle on this play (and runs), he likely isn’t the one making the tackle anyways because Beckham got tackled before it got to that point. However, the Browns ran the same play late in the fourth quarter when they were looking for a dagger, and Smith made the same mistake on both counts: jogging instead of running and taking a horrible angle. On the fourth-quarter play, by the way, Smith basically tells on himself in terms of effort because he’s jogging around in the earlier parts of the play when he thinks his teammates will make the play. But when Beckham breaks out (15-second mark in the clip below), Smith picks it up and nearly stays with him for a short distance, stride for stride. So many Cowboys defenders did so many things wrong on that dagger touchdown run, but Smith was absolutely one of them, and that can’t be the case.
Those are the three primary concepts that stood out from Smith’s poor performance against the Browns. He was either late in reading plays, hesitant to make them when he did finally see them or lacked awareness and failed in one of the most fundamental parts of football. That’s everything before you even get to questioning effort.
I would like to add a bonus situation in which Smith was involved, which is the extra-point attempt by the Browns that was blocked and then turned into an unintentional two-point conversion. Smith was the first person to touch the ball when the kick was blocked and received some criticism about an apparent lack of situational awareness by touching the ball and making it live. You can criticize Smith for not being able to pick up the ball and control it — though to be fair, that can be tricky — but it turns out, playing the ball was part of the Cowboys’ plan all along on that play. Special-teams coordinator John Fassel explained the logic on Monday.
“We were down nine (points), and we had a ball get-off indicator that we were going to take a chance on to try to block the kick, knowing it might cost us a five-yard penalty and being offsides,” Fassel said. “But our thought process, and we were talking about it on the sideline: It’s a nine-point game, we got to block this PAT and return it for a two-point conversion to cut it to seven, and then we’ve made it a one-score game, and we’ll have the ball back on offense. Worst-case scenario, we jump offsides, and we block it. Whatever happens to the ball, they’ll accept the penalty and re-kick the PAT from the 10. But we’re trying to scoop-and-score a blocked kick, taking a chance on a ball get-off that was going to be about a 50-50 success or 50-50 offsides.
“I thought that our aggressive thought process was correct, trying to block it and run it back for two (points), which, you know, that was big dreams, but that was the state we were in, kind of playing some desperation catch up. It just crazily turned out the way it did. I can’t recall a play like that happening, especially on a PAT.”
The result of the play was frustrating, but the reasoning and logic behind it is fair and also explains why Smith didn’t just let the ball die on the field.
Final grade: F
Amari Cooper
Statistically speaking, Cooper had his best game of the season. He was targeted 16 times and caught 12 of those passes for 134 yards and a touchdown, season-highs all across the board. However, he also accepted blame for being involved in the play that sealed the loss.
The Cowboys had one last gasp with under two minutes to go when they had the ball at 1st-and-goal on the Browns’ eight-yard line. Cooper is the far outside receiver on the right and runs a slant. Dak Prescott throws the ball in front of Cooper, but the receiver wasn’t even looking back for the ball. Instead, he was focused on the defender in front of him. Here’s how Cooper explained his thought process after the game.
“That was on me. I overthought the play. I’m supposed to run a quick slant and catch the ball. That’s it,” Cooper said. “It just looked like it wasn’t there, so I tried to race to that second window and the ball was thrown. But that’s not what I’m supposed to do. I’m just supposed to take that one step and look for the ball.”
Looking at the play, it’s actually understandable what Cooper was thinking at the moment.
At this moment, Cooper sees two defenders right in front of him so he’s thinking it’s not there. That second window he’s referring to is all of that open space in the middle of the field, so at this point, it looks like he’s focused on getting to that soft zone and running himself open there. But the ball is already thrown, and Denzel Ward makes a great, Malcolm Butler-esque break on the ball to intercept it.
Cooper’s explanation still makes sense, though. By how Prescott played it and what Cooper said about it, this was a quick-developing play. Prescott didn’t even look elsewhere — for instance, toward CeeDee Lamb, who broke open in the right flat. He took a two-step drop and immediately fired the ball. Cooper should have just played the quick slant because even though he’s not really open, if he’s looking back, he would at least play the ball and prevent the interception, if not catch it for a short gain. But, like Cooper said, he overthought the play and it resulted in an interception.
“That’s more of an anticipation throw. We refer to it as a faith throw,” McCarthy said. “As far as the route and the way it’s coming in there, Dak has to throw that with a lot of anticipation. Those are timing and execution challenges you just continue to work on.”
Overall, Cooper’s day was exactly why you signed him to the big contract extension. Prescott, rightfully so, got most of the glory on Cooper’s touchdown reception for threading the needle, but it was also a great example of concentration by the wide receiver. His route-running prowess was once again clinical as he gave Prescott great windows to fit the ball into. Throughout the game, Coopermade tight catches on the sideline, was a factor underneath and over the top, and had some good yards-after-catch moments. However, that final play marred an otherwise fantastic performance. Cooper’s body of work speaks for itself; he’s a legitimate No. 1 wide receiver. That’s also why the bar is higher for him, and those critical mistakes in key moments of the game must be eliminated.
Final grade: B+
