The Dallas Cowboys had no answer for the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, as the latter arrived at AT&T Stadium looking like an NFL juggernaut, scoring a touchdown on six consecutive drives.
Naturally, such offensive production led to the Cowboys defense being pointed to as the unit to blame for the home trashing received by America's Team but make no mistake about it: The offense showed its fair share of flaws, too. One of which had everything to do with the running game.
The Cowboys offense averaged 3.2 yards per attempt as a group and no running back recorded an explosive run. Ezekiel Elliott and Deuce Vaughn both averaged under three yards per attempt. It was ugly.
Cowboys running back Rico Dowdle, who led the Cowboys on Sunday with 30 rushing yards, was asked a simple question postgame: What is the identity of the running back group? His response was an underwhelming one.
“I wouldn’t say, right now... I wouldn’t really have an answer for that question," Dowdle responded. "We haven't had a lot of at bats at the plate."
Listen, I understand Dowdle is responding to the question from the point of view that it's only Week 2. There's time to figure things out. But I'm not sure many of the contenders around the NFL would have a similar answer as many offenses know exactly what they want to do when running the rock.
The interaction reminded me of CeeDee Lamb after the San Francisco 49ers loss last year, when he replied to questions about the identity of the offense with a blunt "I don't know." Shortly after that, the Cowboys completely revamped their approach on offense.
For Dowdle, arguably the starting running back on the team, to not have even a typical "we want to be physical" type answer to describe the identity of the team's position group is disappointing at best. Paired with the fact that the Mike McCarthy Cowboys don't seem to have changed how they do things in the ground after a poor running season in 2023, it's even more so.
"It's September, we've got a lot of football to play, as the season goes along, we'll define what our identity is more," Dowdle added.
Ideally, the Cowboys would've figured out their identity in the offseason. But I guess September will have to do. One thing is for certain though, they better hurry up figuring it out.
