This past weekend Dallas lost a nail-biter at home to the Minnesota Vikings. Dalvin Cook continued his sensational season, rushing for 97 yards with 64 yards coming after contact. He also added another 86 through the air on 7 catches. On the flip side, Ezekiel Elliott struggled to find running room, as he finished with 47 yards on 20 carries.
With less than two minutes to go and down by four, Dallas faced a 2nd-and-2 at the Minnesota 11 yard-line. The next two plays were handed off to Elliott, with a net result of negative three yards. This was the defining moment of the game as those two plays combined to decrease Dallas’s win probability by almost 25%. It was certainly gut-wrenching to see the ball taken out of Dak Prescott’s hands, given the MVP campaign he’s produced thus far.
The Cowboys still sit atop the NFC East, but they share the same record as the Philadelphia Eagles. With the NFC showcasing a number of competitive teams, each game becomes even more crucial to Dallas’s playoffs hopes. Now the Cowboys must travel to Detroit to face a team that is perhaps better than their 3-5-1 record would indicate.
In a division where the discussion is dominated by Aaron Rodgers and Kirk Cousins’s contract, Matt Stafford is often an afterthought. While Cousins can be a roller-coaster that may win or lose you the game, Stafford may be the model of consistency. Since his second year, the Lions have finished with less than 6 wins just once, but have reached double-digit victories just twice, generally finishing around .500. But with this as the backdrop, it can be easy to miss that Stafford may be having the best statistical year of his career.
When this chart generated I had to double-check my numbers because I didn’t think it was correct.
But according to NFL NextGen Stats, Stafford is averaging over 10 air yards per attempt, a mark well above his previous career-high. Detroit is also averaging nearly .25 EPA per dropback, a result nearly .1 EPA higher than their 2011 season when Stafford was throwing to Calvin-freaking-Johnson.
So what exactly led to this new success for Stafford? Similar to last week, we can use NextGen Stats to take a look.
In 2018, Stafford threw most of his downfield targets to the perimeter, with limited success overall. This season, however, Stafford and the Lions have attacked the deep middle more frequently, and found great success in doing so.
Attacking such a wide surface-area of the field can make their passing game quite dangerous, especially when it comes to their talented receiving corps.
With a Big 3 of Marvin Jones, Kenny Golladay (Babytron) and Danny Amendola, one could argue Detroit has one of the best receiving corps in the NFL. And from a statistical perspective, that’s certainly the case.
Unsurprisingly, a large portion of Stafford’s success has come when throwing to these receivers, as they rank near the top of the league in both average depth of target, and EPA per Target (but don’t miss the fact that Dallas receivers are in the same vicinity). Managing this group will undoubtedly rise to the top of Dallas’s priority list. And when we look at how teams have chosen to attack the Dallas Defense, we can see that it will be an intriguing matchup.
Thus far, Dallas’s pass chart looks a lot closer to 2018 Stafford than 2019 Stafford. Opposing offenses have not attacked the deep middle with any frequency, instead choosing to take their deep shots down the right side, which Dallas has defended well to this point. Hopefully this fares well for Dallas this weekend.
With Stafford missing last week’s game, it becomes difficult to predict this week whether he’ll be rusty and still recovering, or fresh and ready to deliver, if he plays at all. Passing trends to this point would indicate that the Cowboys are well-equipped to handle the Detroit attack, but they’ll need better coaching decisions on the offensive-end to realize their potential in the long-run.
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