The advanced statistics are not too kind to last week’s Cowboys game.
Cowboys fans have seemingly lived out a full season’s worth of narratives in the span of just a week. The season opening win over the Browns had everyone thinking the defense was finally fixed under Mike Zimmer and that this might be the year things are different, only to get picked apart defensively by Derek Carr in Dallas a week later in a performance eerily reminiscent of the Cowboys’ playoff collapse from last season.
It can be difficult to not fall prey to the mood swings that come from watching your team blow someone out and then get blown out, but advanced data can help somewhat. That’s where the weekly analytics roundup comes into play, although all DVOA-related grades do not currently adjust for quality of opponent; that will begin to kick in after a few more games have been played. Nevertheless, let’s see where the Cowboys stand two weeks in.
Woof. How the mighty have fallen, indeed. The offense got a little bit worse this week, though much of that is due to the nature of playing from behind. The defense, however, had a massive dropoff in efficiency. A week ago, we were talking about how unprecedented their -53.6% grade was, and just one week later they’re sitting at 0.4%.
As a team, the Cowboys sit at 14th in total efficiency, just barely in the top half of the league. It should be noted that the Saints sit at the top of the DVOA rankings with a whopping 91.2% grade, while the Seahawks are holding a distant second at 49.9%. Maybe the Saints really are that good?
Speaking of the Saints, they’re in a league of their own according to the EPA-based team tiers as well. The Cowboys, on the other hand, are not in their own league, but they are in some poor company. Namely, a Dolphins team that just lost their quarterback for at least four games.
Dallas is also near the Titans, Raiders, and Browns in these team tiers, which is not where you want to be. If there’s any solace to be had in looking at this chart, it’s that the rest of the NFC East is off to a terrible start as well.
Offense
There’s no way to sugarcoat it: this offense is not very good right now. There’s also no getting around the fact that they’ve faced two of the best defenses in the NFL in the Browns and Saints. That’s a murderer’s row of a start to the season, and very few offenses would look good against that schedule.
The odd thing is that the Cowboys actually scored a lot in the first half, relative to what the Saints defense usually gives up. They were hurt in efficiency metrics for too many drives ending in field goals and, in the second half, too many drives stalling out because they were forced to become one-dimensional with such a large deficit. None of this is to say that there isn’t reason for concern, but these numbers are likely to improve in the coming weeks.
Speaking of numbers that are likely to improve – Dak Prescott threw two picks in this game, but he actually played well. One of those interceptions came as a result of his receiver falling down, while the second one came so late in an already-decided game that it made no discernible impact on the outcome of the game.
Having said all that, Prescott cannot be putting up these numbers in the efficiency categories when he’s making $60 million a year. He was noticeably better against New Orleans than he was in Cleveland, but the quarterback needs to make a much bigger jump starting now.
It was not the best day for the Cowboys offensive line. Their pair of tackles gave up 10 pressures between the two of them, with both Tyler Guyton and Terence Steele allowing a sack. Cooper Beebe also gave up a sack on his lone pressure. All five starting linemen allowed at least one pressure. All in all, it was a really tough day.
The run blocking wasn’t much better. There weren’t many holes being opened up for the running backs in this game, though Dallas went away from the run early on anyway. On paper, this line should be a top 10 run blocking unit, but they haven’t shown it yet.
Defense
How bad was this game for the Dallas defense? If you had a game like this on the College Football 25 video game, you’d smash your controller and proclaim the AI was far too unrealistic. That’s how terrible this week was for Mike Zimmer’s unit.
A week ago, the Cowboys were 10th in run defense DVOA, 18th in EPA/rush, and third in run stop win rate. Now they’re 31st, 32nd, and 19th, respectively. Those are all dramatic drops down the leaderboards. The secondary remains in a solid spot, relatively speaking, but this was a historically awful performance against the run.
As mentioned, the secondary wasn’t terrible in this game. They gave up two big passing plays to Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed that were the result of poor discipline in coverage, as well as a screen pass that perfectly baited Eric Kendricks. Other than those three plays, all of which were big gains, the secondary played relatively well.
Of course, it helps that Carr only dropped back 18 times in the game, and that was because the ground attack never once faced any resistance. Jourdan Lewis led all defensive backs in targets with just three, and he only allowed one reception. The truth is this game didn’t produce much meaningful analysis for the pass coverage because it was so wonky on the run/pass splits. The run defense remains the number one concern in Dallas right now.
