The Dallas Cowboys are 2-2 after the first month of football. September is gone and we now move on to October when the weather gets colder and spooky creatures decorate our neighborhood. This Cowboys team has been a bit of a mystery. They started with a convincing win, then were steamrolled the next two weeks, only to then squeak out a victory Thursday night against a team that hasn’t seen double-digit wins since 2016.
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Like the creatures walking the streets in October, we don’t truly know who the Cowboys are. We have an idea, but there remains a lot to learn about this football team. After a month of football, let’s look at some things that still give us pause about this football team.
Running back room still leaves something to be desired
Through four games, the Cowboys have 301 rushing yards. That is the worst in the league. The trio of Rico Dowdle, Ezekiel Elliott, and Deuce Vaughn have offered very little in the rushing attack. Collectively, this threesome has run the ball 65 times for 235 yards, for an average of 3.6 yards per rushing attempt. Individually, this is how each of them ranks with expected points added (out of 200 players):
- Rico Dowdle with an EPA of - 0.6 (122nd)
- Deuce Vaughn with an EPA of - 2.1 (153rd)
- Ezekiel Elliott with an EPA of - 4.4 (172nd)
Elliott’s yards per attempt, yards per game, and rushing success rate have all been slowly declining each year of his career, and this year is no different. All his numbers in those categories are new career lows for him.
The front office was not willing to be spenders in free agency. That’s nothing new. But to go super cheap and throw darts at Elliott, Royce Freeman, and Dalvin Cook, who we’ve yet to see, has not provided the answers they are looking for.
Offensive playcalling hasn’t been good
You might not know it by looking at it, but the Cowboys are ranked in the top 10 in scoring with 97 total points. Digging a little deeper, you’ll find that most of the scoring has come from the special teams which consists of Brandon Aubrey’s leg and one punt return touchdown from KaVontae Turpin. The points breakdown is as follows...
- SPECIAL TEAMS = 49 points
- OFFENSE = 48 points
- DEFENSE = 0 points
It’s not good when the offense can’t outscore the special teams group. The offense has talent. Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb are both All-Pro and Jake Ferguson and Brandin Cooks are also good pieces. We’ve already discussed the lack of talent at running back, but overall, Mike McCarthy and Brian Schottenheimer aren’t getting the most out of their offense. Their expected points added (EPA) per play is in the bottom half of the league and is lower than any of the previous five seasons.
| OFFENSE EPA per play | |||||||||
| 2024 | - 0.07 | ||||||||
| 2023 | + 0.06 | ||||||||
| 2022 | 0 | ||||||||
| 2021 | + 0.08 | ||||||||
| 2020 | - 0.06 | ||||||||
| 2019 | + 0.18 | ||||||||
When you consider that in 2020 the Cowboys were without Prescott for most of the year and in 2022 they worked with an incomplete wide receiver room featuring Noah Brown as their WR2, that’s not a flattering data point for McCarthenheimer. The offense just doesn’t feature much creativity and most of the yards have consisted of Prescott threading too many needles.
The good news is it’s just four games. There is plenty of time to fix this and the data can swing fast. In fact, the Cowboys were in a similar boat this time last year and they righted the ship to finish with the second-highest EPA per play in the league. The bad news is why are we going through this again? What is it about the offensive coordinator(s) that has them spinning the wheels early? And what if they can’t pull out of the turbulence this time? The Cowboys offense has to do the heavy lifting and if they’re just so-so, this team isn’t going anywhere. They must get better.
Pass rush has been missing in action
During the Dan Quinn era, the Cowboys pass rush has been a staple of their defense. They’ve led the league in quarterback pressure rate in each of the past two seasons at 42.5% in 2023 and 41.8% in 2022. This season, their pressure rate has dropped to 36.6%. They have gone from 2.71 seconds of time to throw last year (ranked 5th) to 2.86 seconds this season (ranks 25th).
It’s a new defense and we get that. They’re more of a keep things in front of them than a pin their ears back and attack group. However, it's very tough on the secondary if quarterbacks have so much extra time to operate. For whatever reason, the Cowboys' defense isn't applying as much pressure. And it’s certainly not going to get any easier without their two top pass rushers, Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence, missing time with injuries.
