In no way was the Cowboys’ 20-17 escape from L.A. perfect. The Chargers are currently a beleaguered opponent with a head coach very much on the hot seat. They’re in the midst of a horrible NFL conundrum, where they briefly thought they had “the guy” and “the guy to coach the guy” for many years, and now they’re uncertain on at least one of those fronts. But in any case, Dallas is 4-2, and one of the losses, deflating as it was, came at the hands of one of the league’s elites.
There were still too many brain-dead run plays straight up the gut and too little clock savvy. Too many busts in pass protection and too few chances downfield. The Mike McCarthy offense, by whatever name you prefer to call it, remains limited and unimaginative, especially relative to some of the looks deposed offensive coordinator Kellen Moore ginned up to get the Chargers’ playmakers open.
But there is one great victory Dallas can take into the bye, and it’s even bigger than the rebound after last week’s annihilation by San Francisco. The Cowboys have stumbled onto a workable blueprint for winning games beyond Dan Quinn’s defense dragging them to the finish line.
It starts with Dak Prescott, because it has always started with Dak Prescott. Games like last night could be viewed through a lens of frustration, because there are those of us who still believe that Prescott still has some of his early-career Houdini in him, but for whatever reason, Dallas simply refuses to go there. Going into last night, Prescott had kept the ball on eight designed runs all season, including quarterback sneaks. I’m not asking for him to be Jalen Hurts, who leads the NFL with 45, or Lamar Jackson, placing second with 32. But I just don’t understand a situation where Prescott has fewer designed runs than Mac Jones.
Last night, however, he looked closer to the Prescott of old. He kept the ball on an 18-yard zone read for the team’s first touchdown, he was a magician on the 60-yard improvised play to Tony Pollard early in the fourth quarter, and generally kept his eyes downfield while manipulating the pocket all evening. Prescott is still capable of playing this game, and the possibilities on offense expand significantly when he does.
If it starts with Prescott being able to keep a run/pass option a few times a game, or extend a play like the throw-and-catch to Tony Pollard, it continues with CeeDee Lamb not only playing an alpha receiver but being depended on as one, too. All seven targets to Lamb were completed; all seven resulted in first downs. The best version of Lamb is the one we saw at the collegiate level at Oklahoma, where he runs the deep over or dig from one side of the field to the other and is in stride when the ball is placed on him. His premier skill is his dynamic movement after the catch, and far too often, no matter who is calling the plays, it has seemed like this has been schematically minimized.
Thankfully for Dallas, last night was not one of those occasions. Lamb’s skill set was maximized, and this was the result:
Add in a pinch of big plays by Brandin Cooks, who performed like a second receiver in terms of moments, if not raw production, and the big splash play from Pollard–we could have been talking about a second, too, had Prescott not overthrown him in the end zone–and this can work.
No one is going to write glowing articles about how the Cowboys’ offense is changing this year, or probably ever. It can be frustrating to think about the fact the front office would never dare hire someone like the Dolphins’ brilliant head coach Mike McDaniel, but that’s fruitless. They’ve assembled a solid amount of talent, and they’re going to deploy that talent in a boring way that, when executed properly, will work.
It is unideal, but at full strength, Dallas has enough to do thanks to that devastating defense. It was interesting to hear the broadcast booth comment that Micah Parsons hadn’t been much of a factor right before he effectively ended the game last night; he had 11 total pressures. On the Chargers’ side, Khalil Mack had two. I’d wager that in about 80 percent of the games the Dallas defense plays, it will apply more pocket pressure than the opposing quarterback has seen all season. That affords the offense the luxury of being boring, I suppose.
But nights like Monday make you wonder whether McCarthy and Brian Schottenheimer are unnecessarily limiting Prescott. We had this discussion on my podcast last week: right now, as far as effective athleticism, where would you rank Prescott among the league’s quarterbacks? Regardless of your answer, I have a tough time coming up with more than five or six signal-callers who are more limited by their playcalling than Dak.
Because this season, the Cowboys have turned Prescott into a super-charged bus driver on first and second down, then expect him to turn into an All-Pro caliber player on third down. At times, like last night, he has been able to do just that. I’m just not sure how sustainable this is in the long term. It would stand to reason that if Prescott still has the ability to bail this offense out on third down, and he still has the ability to make a few plays with his legs, then there is an alternate universe available where the club could make life a lot easier for themselves throughout games.
Right now, it appears we aren’t going to find out. We are left with these fleeting moments of Prescott’s playmaking brilliance and these efforts from Lamb that will simply dot the season rather than become the norm. And, again, if the defense can harass the opposing quarterback on 50 percent of his dropbacks, that will usually be enough.
But it is hard not to look at a handful of plays from last night and think this team could be in the hands of more innovative minds. The Cowboys have so much talent that they almost don’t need to push the envelope on most days. What if, though, they didn’t do the bare minimum to beat teams? I’m reminded of when Texas Tech first started to run the Air Raid offense under Mike Leach as an answer to having a deficient roster, which worked pretty well until other, better teams lapped the Red Raiders once they realized they could pair that scheme with superior talent. The Cowboys deserve credit for building a roster that could credibly put itself in the latter camp, but they refuse to take the necessary steps to let them succeed consistently.
And until they are able to bottle up the sort of plays we saw last night from their quarterback and skill position talent and make that their normal mode of operation, they’ll periodically find themselves in these sorts of unnecessary dogfights.
This seems like the sort of philosophical change that is made in July, not October, but there is still so much time left to figure this out. Perhaps they recalibrate during the bye week, and we see this more often over the latter two-thirds of the season. It’s unlikely, of course, but the discussion is worth having. Because nights like last night are this functional, flawed team’s best hope of playing football deep into January.
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