Decoding Linehan, Week 1: How the offense crumbled against Carolina

The following is our weekly in-depth look at the Cowboys offense from just about every perspective imaginable. The first indicators were in yesterday’s piece where we see the Cowboys offense has basically picked up where they left off in 2017 – and that is not good news at all. QB at Snap Rush Att Rush Yds Rush Avg Rush TD Rush Long Shotgun 12 68 5.67 1 17 Under Center 5 7 1.4 0 3 So, we have established the pass protection was poor and the Cowboys could not run the ball when they wanted to – in fact, Ezekiel Elliott had two big runs all day. DAK PRESCOTT THROW CHART For years, we made our own version of this, but now with NFL’s NEXT GEN Stats, it would be foolish to not just use their version: The rap on Dak Prescott was expressed here by Inside Edge last week: Dak Prescott has thrown deep balls on just 8.6% of pass attempts since the start of the 2016 season — lowest of 29 Qualified QBs in NFL; League Avg: 11.8% via @InsideEdgeScout — Bob Sturm September 8, 2018 Deep balls are 20 yards in the air or more. SUMMARIES AND CONCLUSIONS I know nobody wants to hear this sort of thing, but I would say that the blame for Sunday’s performance is well-balanced between the QB being poor, the game plan being really predictable, the offensive line looking like they are not as good as hoped after missing a top center, and the opponent being excellent.