How the Cowboys offense all fits together

Today is one of those blogs where many who have played football for any length of time might not learn anything they haven't heard in high school or college from their coaches in the film room. But, for those of us who have little or no actual playing experience, it is a topic worth discussing during the offseason to try and explain why coaching and play-calling is a very delicate dance that must be performed with circumstances each Sunday.

Since 2008, on my personal blog, I have been logging every play-call, down and distance, and personnel grouping from every snap of every game. During this time, with well over 4,500 play calls, we have a really interesting profile of how Jason Garrett runs his offense. There have been many variations and personnel situations that have caused him to morph his philosophy as the offensive coordinator and then the head coach, but it is all sitting there in the data base and logged for analyzation.

We have the data available to see what the Cowboys are good at offensively, bad at offensively, and a third category that is  inconsistent enough to say that we just don't know what the performance is going to be sometimes.

But, what is interesting to me is that when you examine this data, or even just as you keep up with our weekly "Decoding Garrett" studies that are linked here if you are so inclined to kill off the rest of your day, we come up with many reasons why the offense is not as good as the other heavyweights in the NFL. Personnel-wise, when you stack up the Cowboys offensive skill position personnel with those teams that win Super Bowls or consistently play deep into January (Saints, Patriots, Packers, Giants, Colts), you feel pretty good, usually.

So, why, then, do the results suggest that the Cowboys are not a team that fits into January very often?

And the answer to that is different, depending on who you ask. I consume a lot of NFL programming on television and on the radio. I would be more than happy if the NFL was to the USA as soccer is to Europe. What that means is if the season went from August to May and there were really no other major sports, I would be fine with that.  I love the NFL that much.

But, I don't love how the NFL is critically covered. I think we "dumb down" the conversations and simplify all issues to the most ridiculous standards. And therefore, nationally especially, when the conversation comes up about why the Cowboys don't win more in the postseason, invariably, the answer from people who either don't study the team or don't know how to study the team always arrives at 2 places:  Tony Romo (The QB) and Jason Garrett (The Coach).

It would be one thing if it was just callers who would ignore data and 900 snaps to focus on 5-10 snaps that were poor, but it is not. It is a wide array of media and many on the set of NFL Network or ESPN which can certainly cause your average fan to take notice.  Wow, if Jamie Dukes thinks this, and if he played in the league as long as he did, surely he is right.  Meanwhile, when talking about him and his golf and his wife and baby, we must also roll highlights behind him of the Revis interception, the Bobby Carpenter interception, and the missed FG hold in Seattle in 2006

Because clearly, if you have a QB who throws 31 TDs and 10 interceptions, has a QB Rating of 102.5, and has his best season of his career by almost all individual metrics - including the 2007 season when his team was 13-3 - we should all look at the QB as the reason the season went bad. Why? Because! It is easy and simple! Blame the most famous football player on the team who plays the position that we can all see easily.  Never-mind the other positions.  They are just there to keep him company. The defense?  That doesn't matter either if you listen to the radio or watch the television.  It is Romo.  The Cowboys are never going to win with Romo.  This is a critical year for Romo.  Romo...Romo...Romo...Romo.

It is enough to make you try to avoid the noise. If they are not going to explain why the Cowboys function as they do without digging deeper than the very top, most simple layer, then why even bother? Nobody is saying that Tony Romo is perfect, or even elite all of the time, but to suggest that QB is holding this franchise back over the last 7 seasons is insane on almost every level. But, it is way easier to answer shortly and confidently that Romo is the problem.  To explain a more complex disfunction in the organization is boring and laborious.

So, now, I am sure you are asking: "So, if it isn't what they say it is, what is the problem?" And if you read my works on a regular basis, this is going to be repetitive.   But, here is the really abbreviated version.

The line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball have not been a strength of the team since the dynasty days of the 1990s. This decay during the Romo era has led to issues in the running game, pass protection, and play-calling. Our data seems to suggest that in 2011, just like 2008-2010, the Cowboys would enter games with a game-plan not to attack and to win, but to protect their under-manned offensive line - which is most certainly not a recipe for dominance.

Here is part of our study after the debacle in Arizona in early December:

Those last several paragraphs are why people like me constantly beg Jerry Jones to properly address his offensive and defensive lines. Once you can protect and fortify your pass protection and run game, then you can actually get back to the objectives of football. To grind out a win by forcing your will on your opponent, rather than trying to keep Vince Wilfork or Jason Pierre Paul from injuring your QB. And, what would be so bad about having a few players on defense that put the fear of Randy White in the minds of your opponents?

Football is a game that is won up front. And it always has been. Despite the evolutions in the game, it still comes back to the line of scrimmage.  Which is why I will always argue for David DeCastro or Fletcher Cox on draft day and I will always cringe when some talking head brings up the idea that Tony Romo is on the hot seat after putting up a 31/10 season.

Which brings us to a piece of video from the current series on the NFL Network, Top 100.  It profiles and ranks players from 100 to 1, and gives us 10 hours of football content during the heart of the offseason.  During Jason Witten's profile, he had a brief reference to this point that validates the issues in the New England game from last October:

Witten is talking to the receivers at the 2:45 mark of that video in Foxboro on the bench:  "Listen, here's the game.  Stops, seam stops, drags. That's what we have to do.  If we can't hold up the protection, we have to get the ball out and do something with it."

What he was talking about were the extremely short routes that are a counter to your offensive line falling apart (again).  They were reduced to 3 and 5 step drops in this game and many others because the line was getting destroyed.  And when you don't have protection, you can't hold the ball (or run the ball).  So you have to throw quick routes into tight confines (because the defense knows you can't protect and they are jumping the short routes, too).

So, we can talk Dez or DeMarco or Romo all we want.  It is fun to do and they are important pieces.  But, you can see, that the game plan is different when the Cowboys know they are outclassed at the line of scrimmage.  We don't see the "Jason Garrett Offense".  Instead, we see "the offense that they think they can run without getting Romo killed" offense.  If you can't block Vince Wilfork and friends - or the Giants in New York or the Eagles in Philadelphia - then you cannot get your run game going.  You also seldom can throw the ball deep.  And on and on it goes.

Before long, you are getting mad at Romo and Garrett for play calling and not putting points on the board.  And in both cases, they are partly to blame. But, the real blame goes to the fact that even when everyone is healthy, in 2011, the offensive line was nowhere near the level of a contender.  Nowhere near, in fact.  And you cannot look at sacks allowed to validate this fact. Because, the Cowboys were avoiding sacks by not calling plays where there was any chance of sacks. But, that was limiting their offense in these key "showdown" games to 20 percent of their playbook. Vanilla, quick hitting passes and shotgun draws.  It is easy to defend and difficult to put points on the board.  And we really shouldn't blame the players on that offensive line, but rather the architects of the roster who put them in that position that they were not ready for. The decision makers who shape the roster are the ultimate stop for the credit or blame of any franchise.

We hope that in 2012, the problems have been fixed, but we will definitely have to see that interior hold up against live action before we are willing to go out on that limb.

But, until that time, we will continue to hear people tell us that Romo is just not a great leader and needs to be more clutch from those that shape opinions.

Or, we can watch baseball.