The Dallas Cowboys have a lot of problems right now. Speaking in a macro sense, they exist on both sides of the ball. The defense has been moribund for a long time now so struggles there are hardly new. We unfortunately know to expect the team to have issues there.
But entering this season it was a foregone conclusion, well beyond an assumption, that the offense would at least take care of business and therefore give the team a chance. They started off this season in a manner that wasn’t quite “GOTI” level, but they at least looked like a group that could somewhat live up to that idea.
That has not been the case over the last two weeks.
We haven’t seen the offense this low in a long time
Combing through the insights from NFL Pro for this week’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles unveiled something that really surprised me, and it really captures how and why it feels like the offense is broken in a way that it hasn’t been in a long time.
Consider that the Cowboys have only scored 29 points over their two-game losing streak. Before we go further, let’s stipulate that going off of ‘points scored’ is casting a very, very, very vague net over things, but this tidbit is still interesting.
The 29 points that the Cowboys have scored in this two-game span are the fewest that they have scored in any two-game span where Dak Prescott started and finished both games in question since Weeks 12 and 13 of the 2019 season.
Dallas barely squeaked out 24 points against the New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills (Thanksgiving) during that span, and a few weeks later Jason Garrett would not be asked to return as the team’s head coach. It is also worth adding context that this was the first year in which Kellen Moore was the team’s offensive coordinator.
But holy cow. Obviously the qualifier of Dak starting and finishing both games in question moves the goalposts of spans a little bit, but that is necessary to fully evaluate what is happening here. Consider that the 2019 span also preceded CeeDee Lamb even being on the Cowboys roster. There is absolutely zero reason for why the offense should be pulling teeth to score right now with Prescott, Lamb, and everyone else healthy and available.
If we are pointing a finger at any one “why” here, it seems that the current book on how to stop the Cowboys is to fluster Prescott specifically with pressure. For so long he was a quarterback who excelled against the blitz, and he has seemingly not been able to thrive at all against them in these last two games.
NFL Pro also noted that Prescott has thrown over 60% of his passes short (so within 0-9 air yards) over the span in question. It was 61.9% against the Buccaneers and 63% against the Packers, if you are curious.
Dak has had a short pass rate of at least 60% a total of five times throughout the Brian Schottenheimer era and all five of those have been losses. If you can get to him quickly and not allow him time to work downfield with Lamb or George Pickens, your odds are pretty good.
Prescott, Lamb, Pickens, and Schottenheimer all have to find a way to counteract this phenomenon and they have to find a way to do that immediately. If they don’t, they are going to keep running into this challenge and so long as it is effective, why would anybody do anything different?