The Dallas Cowboys’ 2019 season came to an inglorious end, as has every season since 1995.
As a result of their lackluster performance in key moments and the team’s ongoing mediocrity, the owner of the franchise has made sweeping changes to the coaching staff. Before things get too focused on the events of the offseason, a look back at the Cowboys offense in 2019 is in order.
The Context
This examination of the Dallas Cowboys play-calling began as a simple question: would the new offensive coordinator, Kellen Moore, the inexperienced guy being touted as a whiz kid, be any less predictable than the previous coordinator, Scott Linehan?
Linehan was predictable in the most obvious of ways: he called running plays more than 80% of the time that the quarterback started under center, and he called passing plays on more than 80% of the plays the quarterback was in the shotgun.
This is an ongoing attempt to discern whether Moore is any less predictable than Linehan based on the formation and play-calling tendencies mentioned above.
Read the stats from each of the 16 games in 2019.
Read the aggregate stats from all 16 games in 2019.
This post will focus on the play-calling in the first half versus the second.
Where these statistics differ from the official game logs, it is because we have included plays nullified by penalties and/or counted sacks and/or scrambles as pass attempts.
Kellen Moore sent in 1108 plays in 2019. The Cowboys ran more plays (570) in the first half than they did in the second half (538).
First Half
It may come as a surprise to some that Moore, even in the first half, used the shotgun so frequently. He had his quarterback, Dak Prescott, in the shotgun for considerably more first-half plays than under center.
Of the 570 plays in the first half, the Cowboys ran 220 plays with Prescott under center. On those 220 plays, Moore called:
- 147 runs;
- 19 passing plays;
- two runs off play-action;
- 52 play-action passing plays.
Of the 350 times Prescott was in the shotgun in the first half, Moore called:
- 73 runs;
- 226 passing plays;
- 12 play-action runs;
- 39 play-action passing plays.
In the first half of games in 2019, Moore called 220 runs, 14 runs off play-action, 245 passes, and 91 passes off play-action (234 runs, 336 passes).
It may shock some people to find out Moore only called runs on 41% of their first-half snaps. There were 10 teams that ran the ball more frequently in the first half than Dallas in 2019.
It is also a bit surprising that Moore only called for play-action on 18.4% of the first-half plays (105 of 570). Prescott used play-action on 27% of his pass attempts (91 of 336).
It is also noteworthy that 36.3% of the runs (85 of 234) came on snaps that the quarterback started in the shotgun.
Moore used the shotgun on just over 61% of the Cowboys first-half plays.
He called a passing play on 75.7% of the first-half plays from the shotgun (265 of 350).
The Cowboys ran the ball on 67.7% of the first-half plays that Prescott was under center (149 of 220).
Moore did an excellent job of avoiding the 80% “Linehan” ratio when Prescott starts under center, but he was less able to distance himself from the 80% line when they used the shotgun.
Second Half
Kellen Moore’s unit was on the field for 538 snaps in the second half of games in 2019. Prescott was under center for 178 of those snaps and in the shotgun for 360.
Of the 178 snaps from under center in the second half, Moore called:
- 129 runs;
- 11 passes;
- two runs of play-action;
- 36 passing plays off play-action.
Of the 360 snaps with Prescott in the shotgun, Moore called:
- 62 runs;
- 261 passes;
- four runs off play-action;
- 33 passing plays off play-action.
In the second half of games, Moore called 191 runs, six runs off play-action, 272 passing plays, and 69 passing plays based off play-action (197 runs, 341 pass attempts).
Dallas ran the ball on 36.6% of the second-half plays (197 of 538) and tried to pass on 63.3% of the plays (341 of 538).
Moore had Prescott use play-action on just 13.9% of the second half plays (75 of 538), which is 4.6% less than the first half. Prescott utilized play-action on 20.2% of his pass attempts (69 of 341), which is an almost 7% decrease.
Moore continued to call a lot of runs (33.5%) from the shotgun even in the second half.
Moore had Prescott in the shotgun for 67% of the second-half snaps, which is only a 6% increase compared to the first half.
He called a passing play on 81.7% of the second-half snaps from the shotgun (294 of 360), which is also a 6% increase from the first half.
On second-half plays when Prescott was under center, Moore called running plays 74% of the time (131 of 178), which is another 6% increase.
Moore’s play-calling came much closer to the 80% threshold so common under Linehan in the second half of games in 2019.
Conclusions
Moore calls less plays off play-action in the second half, and did a much better job of avoiding the 80% “Linehan tendency” in the first halves of games. He called a higher percentage of running plays when Prescott is under center, and more passing plays when he is the shotgun, in the second half.
The next look at the plays called by Moore in 2019 will compare the games the Cowboys won with the games they lost.