Connor Williams showed up at 2019 training camp bigger and bulkier than he looked as a rookie in 2018. The problem was, he wasn’t all that much better. The second-round pick out of Texas was clearly not strong enough when he entered the league. Anyone looking at him during his draft press conference could tell that he wasn’t yet filled out to where he will eventually end up and that facing the interior linemen of the NFL was going to be a bit of a problem for the Dallas Cowboys latest addition to the second iteration of the Great Wall of Dallas.
After showing up for 2019 noticeably bigger, an ACL tear ended Williams second campaign early, playing just 11 games. Now, with the sudden-to-the-public retirement of Travis Frederick, Williams’ recovery is paramount to the Cowboys continued offensive line success. His improvement is a necessity, too, because he’s the domino that sets in motion Dallas’ ability to still sport one of the leagues’ premiere OL units.
Best Laid Plans
If Williams is healthy, and better, than that allows second-year and redshirt interior OL Connor McGovern to compete at the center position. Drafted in the 2019 third round, McGovern was a center at Penn State for his sophomore season before moving back to guard in 2018. He is likely the heir apparent to Frederick’s throne that is currently on the roster, but if he has to play left guard because Williams isn’t recovered or isn’t very good, than the dominoes start falling.
Joe Looney substituted for Frederick the entire 2018 season. He physically fared ok, but the Cowboys clearly lost a lot of Frederick’s offensive line leadership. The ability of a center to relay what he’s reading from the defensive front and linebackers is paramount and is a great aid to quarterback Dak Prescott. Without it, the fifth-year QB bears more of the responsibility to do so, and although he’s started 64 of 64 games since coming into the league, that’s part of what makes long-time veterans so great.
QBs have a lot to process when at the line of scrimmage and if they know the line will see the same things they do out of a defensive pass rush, that means they can spend more time dissecting what the coverage is going to try to do to stop them. It wasn’t as heralded as the impact of Kellen Moore on the stale offense they’d been running, but having Frederick back to take that responsibility likely had a huge impact on Prescott’s progression in 2019.
Whether it be the veteran Looney or the redshirt rookie McGovern, Prescott will have to be able to manage that aspect better than he did as a third-year starter in 2018 when the Cowboys QB was sacked 58 times.
Sacks taken, fundamentally, is a quarterback stat and a scheme stat. When the play breaks down, quality quarterbacks who can see the rush develop know which direction to step to, up or side to side, whether the play can be salvaged or its best to take off and run. Indecision in this area leads to sacks. Ask David Carr.
But certainly there is an aspect of offensive line play and whether they can keep defenders off for at least 2.5 seconds, the benchmark of the pass block win rate metric. Dropping from 58 to 23 with the same quarterback but a different line general is noteworthy.
McGovern has more raw talent than Looney, but it’s unknown whether any of that will translate into a solid NFL career. Dallas normally hits on their offensive line draft evaluations, so it will be an interesting litmus test whether Will McClay’s picks of Williams and McGovern measure up. It’s a lot to ask for McGovern to mimic what Frederick brought to the table as far as defensive line scheme-and-stunt recognition though, which means even though he didn’t do so on Frederick’s level, Looney might be the best answer, simply from seeing it all before.
Current Depth Guys
Aside from Looney and McGovern, the Cowboys seem to have some faith in center/guard Adam Redmond. The team also has Cody Wichmann and Marcus Henry on the offseason roster.
Redmond (6-foot-6, 300 pounds) was a Colts UDFA in 2016 appearing in four games before spending time in the Bills and and Cowboys practice squads the next two seasons. Last year, he was inactive for 9 games and then placed on IR in November. He was an Exclusive Rights free agent who the team tendered in March.
Wichmann (6-foot-5, 319 pounds) has a year and a half of starting experience at guard, beginning in 2015 with the Rams, but has been on the Titans and Cowboys’ practice squads the next two years before hitting IR coming out of Cowboys camp in 2019. Henry stands 6-foot-2 and weighs 300 pounds. He was a UDFA out of Boise State in 2018 who latched on with Seattle.
Coach’s Decision
Of course, the elephant in the room is whether or not Mike McCarthy and new offensive line coach Joe Philbin want to change anything about how the offensive line is constructed. While Philbin has demonstrated flexibility, he still runs primarily the zone-blocking scheme that has become the staple in Dallas over the last decade. But what about the prototype interior lineman?
Here’s a look at all of the players at guard or center who was drafted during McCarthy’s tenure in Green Bay. The two centers both hovered near 6-foot-3 and 300 pounds, while the guard ranged between 300 and 330 pounds.
Both Williams and McGovern stand 6-foot-5, which is the high-end of players McCarthy have drafted. Looney is a bit heavier than the centers McCarthy has, coming into the league at 315 eight years ago and proudly promoting his girth in his famously funny Ezekiel Elliott impressions.
It will be interesting to see whether or not McCarthy wants to roll with what remains in the cupboard following Frederick’s retirement, or if interior lineman has shot up the needs board of the Cowboys. There are a handful of interesting centers in the draft, though the guard position is generally regarded as one of the weaker in recent years.
It’s highly unlikely that there’s a candidate chosen early enough to be an instant starter, considering the remaining needs elsewhere for the Cowboys.
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