The Dallas Cowboys are 6-5 and leading the NFC East division but Jerry Jones is not impressed with how his team has performed thus far this season. Jerry Jones flat out said that “I shouldn’t be this frustrated” and I believe he speaks for all Dallas Cowboys fans when he says that. Simply put, a team as talented as this group is should have a better record than they do. The frustration shared by Jerry Jones and Dallas Cowboys fans can be summed up with three disturbing trends. 1. The Dallas Cowboys have yet to beat a team with a winning record. 2. The Dallas Cowboys have lost all of their close games, with all 5 losses amounting to a 22 point differential. 3. The Dallas Cowboys have started slow and had to play from behind in almost all of their games this season. Dallas Cowboys fans are now left wondering if Jason Garrett and the rest of his coaching staff are capable of righting the ship and curbing these current Dallas Cowboys trends.
What is the reason for these disturbing Dallas Cowboys trends? Is it poor coaching decisions that are deciding these close games? It is lack of preparation that makes this team fall flat against superior opponents? Is this team not as talented as it is believed to be or can this be attributed to psychology? More importantly, can the Dallas Cowboys reverse these trends and a make a playoff run? “Rome was not built in a day” and “you can’t conquer the world all at once” are clichés that come to mind here. Simply put, the team cannot address all of these issues all at once so it would better off to focus on one thing. A single issue that is correctable, within their control, and will hopefully lead to improvements in all three areas of concern. The simplest solution then would be to address the slow starts.
It is difficult to determine what the cause is for the slow starts, and often in sports such things can get into the mindset of the team and become a psychological issue more than anything else. In order to overcome this type problem, there are generally two approaches. The first approach is the ‘stay calm’ approach. Address the issue but do not drastically alter anything. Focus on the basics, focus on execution, tweak one or two things and hope that eventually the law of averages will correct the problem. This is the classic Jason Garrett approach. The alternative is the ‘back to the drawing board’ approach. This involves admitting that something is not working, panicking a little bit, and completely altering the plan by incorporating new and bold ideas. This approach is much riskier but often high risk leads to high reward. At this point in the season, with Jason Garrett’s job on the line, I believe the time to roll the dice is now.
So what can Jason Garrett and the Dallas Cowboys do to address the slow starts? First of all, what is the common denominator (if there is one) that might point to a solution? The Cowboys have scored points on their first possession only twice this season and only once have they scored a touchdown. Both times they have scored points, the Dallas Cowboys kicked to the opposing team. Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys have not scored any points when they received the opening kickoff. In fact the last four games, the opposing teams have won the toss and yet deferred to kick to the Cowboys. The Dallas Cowboys for their part, have deferred every single time they have had an opportunity. Psychology is a huge factor here. The opening drive struggles are real so teams want the give the Cowboys the ball to start the game and the Cowboys seem reluctant to receive it. The Cowboys need to be more aggressive and show their opponents that they want the ball. They should expect their opponent to defer by now and therefore choose to take the ball the next time they win the coin toss. This simple act could give the offense confidence by showing faith in them and simultaneously throw off the expectation of the opposition.
Getting the ball to start the game is one thing, but clearly scoring points is another. The Dallas Cowboys have failed to score on their first possession in all but 2 of their 11 games thus far. Those games were against the Miami Dolphins where they jumped out to a 10-0 lead and against the Philadelphia Eagles where they led 14-0. What sticks out about those games is that in each of those games the Cowboys benefitted from big plays. Against the Dolphins, the Dallas Cowboys first play call was a deep play action pass to Amari Cooper that gained 37 yards and led to a field goal on their first possession. Against Philadelphia, the Dallas Cowboys started out with great field position after the defense forced a fumble on the Eagles first possession. In every other game the Dallas Cowboys have played this season, the first play call on their opening drive was either a run play or a short pass play and the Cowboys have failed to score points on any of those drives. It is obvious that big plays are going to correlate to scoring points so how can the Dallas Cowboys create more big plays to start of ball games? They can do this by taking chances. They can take shots down the field on the first play of the game. They can call a trick play, a flea flicker, a deep play action pass, or a double reverse instead of trying to methodically plod down the field when they have been unsuccessful doing that on the opening drive all season long. On defense, it is much more difficult to create big plays but the Cowboys have had some success generating pressure with blitzes this season. I would love to see the defense come out super aggressive, attacking the opposing offense with creative blitzes and try to create turnovers. The lack of turnovers has been the most rudimentary of all the deficient Dallas Cowboys trends of the last few years. Perhaps a little more risk on both sides of the ball is the solution to issue of the slow starts. Perhaps addressing the slow starts leads to winning in close games and beating teams with winning records. Maybe the Dallas Cowboys can conquer the world all at once by addressing the most obvious and pressing issue that has led to their disappointing 6-5 record.
A little bit more aggressive risk taking is what I would love to see from Jason Garrett. I think most Dallas Cowboys fans would agree with me on that. The problem is that Jason Garrett is not typically that type of coach. He does not like to press the panic button and will stick to his guns with stubborn ferocity. In fairness this approach has served him relatively well and has even saved him in the past but it also may be his undoing. Jason Garrett may not like to take risks but we saw last year that he does have it in him. When things looked bleak for Garrett last season he started doing uncharacteristic things like going for it on 4th down in his own half. He probably did that to save his job after being publicly criticized by Jerry Jones last season for not going for it on fourth down in an OT loss to the Texans. Once again his job is in jeopardy and once again Jerry Jones has called him out. Time will tell if Jason Garrett can once again save his job and save the season by being more aggressive in a desperate situation.
*Photo by Kieth Allison https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode
*All data and statistics obtained and verified from https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/dal/2019.htm