Cowboys needs to find playoff success as a one-dimensional team which demand for perfect replacement
The run game simply has not been working for the Cowboys.
It was very appropriate that CeeDee Lamb had a monster, record-breaking night catching the ball for the Dallas Cowboys in the one-point win over the Detroit Lions. This was a game where the offense was almost completely reliant on Dak Prescott passing the ball. He, Lamb, and the other receivers combined for 323 yards and two touchdowns, while the running game only managed 61 yards. And this was no aberration. Against good defenses this year, the ground attack has generally been held to around 100 yards or less. Like it or not, the Cowboys have become a one-dimensional offense.
The season finale to take the NFC East is against the Washington Commanders, who held them to exactly 100 in the first meeting on Thanksgiving, but the Commanders have yielded the second most yards against the pass in the NFL, and the most touchdowns. The lack of an effective running game is not likely to be much of a hindrance against them, and with the possibility that Washington is going to be largely checked out in this game, Tony Pollard and company could have a good day anyway.
(When looking up the stats, I couldn’t help but notice that the second most passing touchdowns in the league have also been given up by an NFCE team. And it isn’t the New York Giants. I found that both interesting and amusing, and wanted to share it.)
While things may change in the playoffs, there is no clear reason to think they might. Things should get tougher. Complementary football is generally held to be necessary to make a deep run. That is not always the case, and Dallas has to be able to buck the trend in order to avoid another disappointing postseason.
They do have reason to believe they can do so. Prescott is one of the elite quarterbacks in the league. He is fourth in yards and leads the league in touchdowns. While Lamb has been the obvious leader in his receiving corps with 1,651 yards, second only to Tyreek Hill in the NFL, Brandin Cooks, Jake Ferguson, and Michael Gallup have combined for 1,728, so Lamb is far from a one-man show. He’s just the biggest star. Cooks is especially valuable in scoring with seven TDs compared to Lamb’s ten.
The Cowboys have the tools to make this work. The issue is, will Mike McCarthy call the games to lean on the obvious strength of the offense? The evidence does not seem to indicate this. Against the Lions, he insisted on a nearly 50-50 split, calling ten runs and eleven passes on first downs against Detroit in a game where there were so many failed runs to start series.
McCarthy has done some good things, and if his team wins on Sunday as expected, he will have coached them to three consecutive 12-win seasons. That is praiseworthy, but he also has some significant flaws. His game and clock management at the ends of halves is at times maddening, and his stubbornness is another serious irritant. Establishing the run is a concept that has been convincingly discredited by better football minds than mine, yet McCarthy still clings to it. With Prescott, Lamb, and company, he needs to adjust his thinking to better reflect the modern realities of the game. Instead of trying to have balance on first downs, he needs to focus instead on what is the most likely play to find success.
That is throwing the ball. Prescott completes passes at a 68.4% rate, which is what they need to lean on. A lot of the completions on first down would set up second and short, and that is when the run might be more efficient. They even have a nice insurance policy should a first down pass fall incomplete, as Prescott’s completion percentage on third down is 68.8%, making it still very likely they will get another set of downs even if they don’t get anything with a first down throw.
