Six weeks into the season, the Dallas Cowboys find themselves in an evil park. They’ve been defeated in all three home games, and the one that didn’t get touched was an absolutely embarrassing 47-9 beating at the hands of the Detroit Lions.
If Dallas has been the only one to suffer on defense – the upcoming release of optical coordinator Dan Quinn for the senior training process in Washington and the loss of starters like Dorance Armstrong, Leighton Vander Esch, Stephon Gilmore, Jayron Kearse and more – the This season’s closest optics manage 4 edge rushers (Micah Parsons, Demarcus Lawrence, Marshawn Kneeland and Sam Williams) getting injured, that could be something. However, the offense has also been suffering.
Last month, Dallas ranked fifth in yards per game, first in play-related problems, first in percentage of drives that led to a touchdown or goal on the field and second in TruMedia’s EPA version of the games. This month, they are 14th in yards per game, 19th in play-related aspects, 12th in percentage of drives that result in a score, and 23rd in EPA per game.
It would be anything if only the running game was suffering, soon losing Tyron Smith, Tyler Biadasz and Tony Pollard to independent agency and replacing them with newcomers (offensive linemen Tyler Guyton and Cooper Beebe) or no one (or worse, Ezekiel Elliott ). ). But cross-play has also had problems. Dak Prescott has long since gone from being an inner circle MVP candidate to a player who has been willing to do everything else with the wind.
Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and Pro Football Hall of Famer Troy Aikman believes he knows the culprit for the passing game’s struggles: the team’s wide receivers. When asked about the Cowboys’ problems during a radio appearance, this is how Aikman responded, via The Athletic:
“I think the routes are terrible. I think they run terrible routes. And I’ve thought about that beyond this year. I think CeeDee (Lamb) has to improve on his route running. As a quarterback, if you’re not sure where guys are going to be consistent, it’s difficult to play the position. That’s what I see, I see lazy guys coming out of the line of scrimmage, usually if they do it, it’s because they anticipate that they are going to do it to put the ball on that play, but. If they don’t do it, they don’t do it. And all that doesn’t impress me.
“I just finished watching the Baltimore Ravens because I have them in this life. You put them on video and watch their receivers run routes and they come out of the football, just like San Francisco and Green Bay and others. However, playing games is the place (QB) for those who are no longer sure how guys are going to run routes or where they are going to be. And I’m not speaking for Dak anymore (Dak could say, “Good morning, I think that). (His routes) are wonderful. “However, as a former quarterback observes, he has to have a bigger buildup.”
That’s a damning indictment of Dallas’ receiving corps, which many outside the Jones crowd knew coming into the season, outside of Lamb, simply were no longer a contending-caliber unit. And the point is that Aikman’s claims are supported by both the film and the data. Anyone who has watched Dallas this month has discovered that the receivers can’t get free at all. But thanks to the player tracking data that exists now, we can actually quantify how much they’ve struggled in that segment.
Here’s how the Cowboys’ wide receivers, some of the 126 wide receivers who have run 50 or more routes this season, rank on various measures of route-running good fortune built into the Fiction Things Information Suite. The simplest of the 5 wide receivers (Lamb) of the majority of the group ranks within the 32 range (i.e. negative 1 receiver caliber) in any of those divisions: Official Moderate Separation Rating (which measures exactly how he feels ), field win rate ( similar ), and yards above expectations.
Because of these issues, Prescott is forced to throw in tight windows at the second-highest rate in the NFL (22.8% of his attempts), according to NFL.com’s NextGen Stats data. He ranked sixth in tight-window pitching rate last season, but made up for it by scoring second overall and first among regular starters in career-high ratio. Performing deadlier relative to expectations this month, the passing game is an absolute disaster.
Neither the receivers nor Prescott received any favors from the training staff. The most efficient offensive minds in the game plan their players in an unmistakable field, making things easier for the quarterback and cross receivers. The Cowboys do nothing of the sort. They trust their wide receivers to win their matchups and their quarterback to pick the right one and throw a snap with perfect accuracy. If any of that goes wrong, you’ll get what you may have discovered so far this season.
