The Dallas Cowboys 2019 NFL season ended in disappointment and frustration for the players and fans alike. Big changes are already underway but before the focus completely moves to free agency, the draft, and the rest of the offseason, a look back at the offense in 2019 is in order.
This examination of the Cowboys play calling began as a simple question: would then-new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, the guy being touted as a wunderkind, be less predictable than his predecessor, Scott Linehan?
Linehan was predictable in the most pedestrian of ways: he called running plays on more than 80% of the snaps the quarterback took from under center, and he called passing plays on more than 80% of the shotgun snaps.
This is an ongoing attempt to assess whether Moore is any less predictable than Linehan based on the formation and play calling mentioned above. As he’s been retained as OC by new head coach Mike McCarthy and given the play-calling reins once again, taking a look at how he functioned under Jason Garrett will be ground zero for analysis moving forward.
The stats from each of the 16 previous games can be found here.
The Raw Data from all 16 Games in 2019
Moore called for a run 431 times and had Prescott try to complete a pass 677 times. That is sufficient balance (passing on 61.1% of the plays) to avoid being one dimensional, but it isn’t the kind of stubborn run-heavy play-calling that head coach Jason Garrett was often accused of using.
Where these stats differ from the official game logs, it is because we have intentionally included plays nullified by penalties and/or we included scrambles/sacks as passing attempts.
Moore called 1,108 offensive plays in 2019. He had his quarterback, Dak Prescott, take the snap from under center on 400 of those plays. Prescott was in the shotgun for 708 plays.
Moore utilized the shotgun on 63.9% of the Cowboys offensive snaps.
Of the 400 plays Prescott started under center, Moore called:
- 276 runs;
- 30 passes;
- four play-action runs;
- 90 play-action passes.
Of the 708 plays that Prescott was in the shotgun, Moore called:
- 135 runs;
- 487 passes;
- 16 play-action runs;
- 70 play-action passes.
In total, that was 411 runs, 20 play-action runs, 517 passes, and 160 play-action pass attempts.
A few things stand out.
More than 23% of Prescott’s pass attempts came off play-action (160 of 677).
Dallas used play-action almost as much from the shotgun (70) as they did when Prescott was under center (90).
Perhaps because they tried so many play-action passes from the shotgun, Moore called a lot of running plays from the shotgun (151). More than 35% of the Cowboys total rushing attempts (151 of 431) came from the shotgun.
Moore called running plays on 70% of the snaps when the quarterback took the snap from under center (280 runs on 400 plays).
The one area in which Moore can’t seem to escape the predictability of Linehan is how the Cowboys try to move the ball through the air. More than 82% of Prescott’s pass attempts come from the shotgun (557 of 677 pass attempts were from the shotgun). Similarly, when the Cowboys start in the shotgun, Moore sends in a passing play 78.6% of the time (557 pass attempts on 708 shotgun snaps).
One of the things that stands out the most is that Prescott only threw the ball 30 times after dropping back from under center (he also attempted 90 play-action passes from that formation). A fair number of those 30 passes did not even require an actual drop back from center: some of them were quick screens thrown immediately after the snap.
A mere 17.7% of the passing plays called by Moore came when Prescott started under center (120 of 677), with 90 of those pass attempts coming off play-action.
Prescott attempted to execute a three-step, five-step, or seven-step drop on average of less than twice a game in 2019. That basic ratio has been true for every year that Prescott has been in the NFL.
I took a lot of criticism earlier in the year when I suggested Prescott’s inability to take a snap from under center and then drop back and deliver a well-timed and properly-placed pass was a limitation, but it is hard to avoid the fact he only attempted 30 passes all year when dropping back from under center.
After using the shotgun almost exclusively in high school and college, Prescott was very open as a rookie and sophomore about his ongoing effort to take get better at taking snaps from under center. He has improved dramatically.
Despite Dallas’s success using play-action passes, it is hard to conceive of an offensive coordinator who wouldn’t like the ability to call plays based on a traditional three-step, five-step or seven-step drop. It is also hard to believe Moore would only call 30 of these types of plays out of 677 passes if everyone was comfortable Prescott could effectively execute a traditional three, five, or seven-step drop.
Given the length and vagaries of an NFL season, these aggregate numbers should be viewed more of a baseline or starting point than anything too illuminating. The next look at Moore’s play-calling from 2019 will compare his calls in the first half of game to the calls in the second half.
You can follow C. Joseph Wright on Twitter here.
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