Brett's Cowboys Corner

Once again the Cowboys are stunned at home, losing 44-19 in their home opener. The loss was hideous, and it makes you feel like this is the same old Cowboys we see every year. If we take a second to look at this game in the context of this season and try to forget the past few years. This kind of loss happens, the Super Bowl winner will have a bad loss this season, as they do every year.

Take a look around the league this week, I am sure Baltimore is freaking out after losing to the Raiders. How about Sam Darnold out playing the 49ers? Detroit is supposed to be a real contender this year, well they lost to the Bucs and if it weren’t for Butker’s 45-yard field goal, the Chiefs would have fallen to the Bengals. To sweeten it more, the Eagles just lost to the Falcons on Monday Night Football.

The Cowboys are now 0-24 in games where they score less than 20 points, in my keys to victory I mentioned how the offense needed to step up this week and establish the air raid, it didn’t happen and we will get into that…but the weight of the loss should not be anywhere near the shoulders of the offense this week.

What Went Wrong?

The Saints went to the run game early on in this contest and Dallas did not have any answers. The Cowboys have made changes to their coaching staff and personnel, and it seems they haven’t been able to stop the run since Rod Marinelli. In the film analysis, I mentioned the Saint’s ability to utilize motion to supplement their ability to run, which they did but there were plenty of times when the Saints would run basic concepts, like a halfback toss and stretches which they used to run in the ’60s. There was a lack of effort from the defense as they overran assignments and slipped off tackles.

Micah Parsons mentioned on his podcast, “The effort was not there by all 11… You have a standard… I’m determined to get this right.” Which may be a positive outlook that a leader of this defense is taking accountability.

The defensive line was rendered useless by the offensive line play of the Saints. Mazi Smith was swallowed by blocks and shoved to the ground all day. On the QB sneak play, Mazi was the defensive tackle but somehow nowhere near the QB. Jordan Phillips and Linval Joseph, both late free-agent acquisitions in August made little to no impact to the line. The Saints targeted Parsons in the run game and continued to send double teams his way. The rest of the linebackers were nonfactors, Kendricks overran a couple of tackles which led to big Kamara runs. Clark and Overshown missed some holes and took poor angles, and this week there were a lot more snaps for rookie Marist Liufau, and he was swallowed by many pulling guards.

Name	# of Snaps	% of Defensive Plays
Eric Kendricks	56	95
Damone Clark	41	69
Marist Liufau	39	66
DeMarvion Overshown	18	31

Why did they go away from Overshown? The Cowboys played more in their base 4-3 defense this week and played less of their nickel and dime packages which feature more Overshown. Usually, you play more base defense because the offense plays with heavier running back sets, which they did, seemingly on purpose to keep a rookie Liufau on the field over DeMarvion. It is strange as the Cowboys played with Nick Vigil last week when Kendricks exited the game. The Cowboys need to keep their linebackers clean, they can’t let their linebackers continue to fight blocks, it is up to the defensive line to occupy those more.

It also needs to be mentioned that there were times when the secondary looked confused, the deep ball to Shaheed was confusing as I don’t get to know everyone’s assignments, but I don’t understand why Carson didn’t jam him off the line so he didn’t get a full sprinters start toward the safeties. Also on the 50-yard Kamara screen touchdown, there was a lot of confusion from the secondary and somehow once the ball was scored, DLaw was the nearest defender…

In all defensively, I could beat more stats down and go into motion rates and break down the analytics of how the Saints offense dominated. But after a game like this, you don’t need much analytics to recognize this was a beating. This was the first test for the Zimmer era, they played a coordinator that runs an offense Dallas couldn’t beat the last few years and showed they still have issues. The Cowboys failed the first test, but they will have another next week with the dynamic running offense of the Ravens, who are probably more hungry for a win than you are.

Now for the discussion that will fill the national four letter TV networks for the week, because defense doesn’t create views.

What is there to say about Dak Prescott and the offense?

I have some criticism of the playcalling and the overly conservative style we ran early on in this game. But first, it needs to be mentioned that it is completely unfair to put an ounce of blame on Dak or the offense for at the very least the first half of the game. As the defense failed to stop the Saints, the offense continued to answer each drive with points keeping it a one-score game. That was until Jalen Brooks trips on his cut leading to an interception.

I think it’s time to re-evaluate Coach McCarthy as a play caller, the same play calling where it was documented that the team couldn’t figure out their footing until after week 5. We are seeing similar issues to start the year as we did in 2023. But we will be blinded by scoring 40 on the Giants in ten days like last season.

The Cowboys have a problem where they don’t have any offensive identity. They have a playmaker in Ceedee Lamb, who they still refuse to design ‘go to’ plays where they are getting him the ball in creative ways in space. They instead played a conservative game, making short passes to the flats and handing the ball off for a bunch of 2-yard gains. It felt like the Cowboys spent the entire game in 3rd and long situations. The Cowboys still have not figured out their run game or rotations for that matter, we did not see Zeke until under 2 minutes left in the 1st quarter halfway through the second drive. There was a fun formation that is pictured above, Turpin and Deuce in the backfield, they used it three times on the same drive and ran the same concepts out of it, two orbit screens to Turpin (one of which wasn’t blocked at all?) and one handoff to Deuce…and classically, we will never see that again. The Dallas offense loves to get everyone involved, even when that means the best players aren’t getting the ball, even at key times.

Which brings me to one of my BIGGEST pet peeves in football (and really all sports can be applied). If you are in a critical situation, i.e. 4th down, get the ball to your best player and let them make a play. I would rather die 1,000 times with my best player failing to convert or make the game winning shot then putting it in the hands of anyone else.

On this 4th down play, the Cowboys run a spread formation, needing 4 yards they go to Brevyn Spann-Ford, an undrafted rookie. Nothing against Spann-Ford, they put him in a critical situation then threw him his FIRST-EVER target, and expected him to make the double-teamed catch. Look at everyone else…this is what is infuriating, the right side runs real designed routes, Tolbert runs a slot fade to the endzone which had connected on a deep ball earlier, Spann-Ford with the curl at the yard marker, and Brooks on the out route, who is open here. Meanwhile, the left side featuring your best players, Lamb, and Cooks attempt to run slants? Did not seem like the play was designed to go to that side so there wasn’t much effort in Cooks route and Lamb was immediately double-teamed.

In this situation I would like a more bunched formation and have crossing routes, like a mesh concept to get the ball quickly to a receiver on the move, maybe a pre-snap motion of Lamb would mess up their attempt to double, like the Saints did with Shaheed all game.

Another weird play calling quirk, on deep third down plays the Cowboys like to run deep curl routes and try to create an easy pitch and catch from QB to WR, but the defense always sits on those waiting for a pick, the only time this works is when Dak is flushed out of the pocket and it seems the receivers go from sitting on their curl to free movement to get open, like they did with Cooks on a big 3rd down pick up earlier.

Overall, I think the Cowboys need more playmakers on their offense and need to push the ball down field more, they can’t be a conservative offense because of games like this where it quickly becomes a back and forth high scoring contest.