The Dallas Cowboys won a football game on Monday night. Given that it was a Monday there is very little time to dwell on it before the next one arrives.
Dwelling on anything is hardly wise, but the past can offer help for how to navigate the future. Future opponents will hardly be as depleted as the Philadelphia Eagles were on Monday night, but still some of the things that Dallas did can and should be taken into future contests.
There is one thing specifically that stands out.
The Cowboys offense desperately needs balance
Javonte Williams carried
the ball 25 times for the Cowboys in the City of Brotherly Love. He churned out 155 rushing yards which was good for his career high. It is not hard to see that the commitment to the run game really helped.
Football requires balance in a number of ways and a heavier focus on the ground meant a lesser one on the aerial attack. Dak Prescott is a very talented quarterback, but asking him to throw it a ton of times like he did a week before against the Green Bay Packers is hardly a recipe for success.
All told Prescott threw 27 passes in Philadelphia and as it was south of 30 it made me wonder – how often lately has Dak come in below 30 pass attempts in a game? Stathead to the rescue.
Monday night was Prescott’s 24th game with Brian Schottenheimer as his offensive play-caller, and it was only the third instance in which he did not throw at least 30 passes in a given game.
What’s more is that one of the other two was last season’s finale, a meaningless contest against the New York Giants. This means that there are now only two games of consequence where the Cowboys and Schottenheimer did not have Prescott hit at least 30 attempts in a game.
These are the last 12 games in which Prescott was below 30 attempts per game, that was just where I cut off the screenshot and it was not for any specific reason, and you can see that this phenomenon was quite common in 2022. It was in 2023 when this became less prevalent.
You can almost see where the Cowboys defense stopped being a point of reliability. That required Dak and the offense to have to score more, and the overall domino effect has taken us to our current moment in time.
The point here is that the Cowboys must find a way to be more balanced offensively. As noted it isn’t sustainable for Dak to throw 30 passes a game and have everything work out. Javonte Williams doesn’t have to set a career high every week, but the running game absolutely has to be a factor.
