From the moment Kellen Moore was named the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator, the questions started. Who would actually be calling the plays? What plays would they use? Would it be all flea-flickers and Statues of Liberty as Moore reached back into his Boise State bag of tricks? Or would Moore just trot out the same predictably ineffective Scott Linehan/Jason Garrett plays that were already in place?
In the wake of a disheartening loss to the Minnesota Vikings, playcalling is once again the focus. The Cowboys were positioned to pull off a dramatic comeback after being behind for most of the game, with the ball deep in enemy territory and down by four points with under two minutes to play. That’s when the passing game that had found success all night was inexplicably shelved for consecutive runs by Ezekiel Elliott that lost three yards and wasted almost 50 seconds of precious time. The sequence put the Cowboys in a fourth-down situation where a pass was expected by everyone, including Vikings linebacker Eric Kendricks, who tipped the throw away and ended the Dallas drive 14 yards away from the end zone.
So who’s to blame? In a phone interview on Monday morning, coach Jason Garrett made it clear who’s selecting the plays.
“Kellen’s calling the game,” Garrett told 105.3 The Fan, “and in that situation, it’s 2nd-and-2. And he felt like he had a good opportunity against a favorable box to run the ball in those situations. On each of those plays, we had options beyond just the run. And unfortunately, we weren’t able to convert. We got into that 4th-down situation; we didn’t convert that.”
Garrett’s answer was interesting in several ways. First, it confirmed that Moore is the one actually dialing up the plays off the big laminated sheet, or at least the majority of them. Garrett still retains oversight, not just philosophically, but even on the sideline as the game is being played.
“We just try to communicate as an offensive staff throughout the ballgame,” Garrett explained, “and Kellen’s done a great job for us all year long. And I certainly have input throughout the ballgame. Situationally, I have input about how to handle certain situations. That’s how we’ve operated all year long, and that’s how we operated last night, and unfortunately we didn’t get it done.”
But the second part of Garrett’s answer is also telling. Quarterback Dak Prescott “had options beyond just the run,” according to the coach.
He had said as much in his postgame press conference late Sunday night.
“There are a number of different options on that play based on what they play,” Garrett told reporters. “If they heat you up, you have some answers. If they play a certain kind of zone, you have some answers. If they play man-to-man, you have some answers. So we wanted to give Dak some different options, depending on what they were going to play on a critical down situation.”
After the game, Elliott said of the play, “It was just an RPO [run-pass option]. It was a give read. There really wasn’t anywhere to go.”
That was the story all game, as Elliott finished with a mere 47 rushing yards on 20 attempts. With Prescott finding far more success through the air- 397 yards and three touchdowns- the obvious question swirling around Cowboys Nation is: why not just let Prescott continue to lay waste with his military-grade flamethrower instead of continually coming back to a pea-shooter that had been firing blanks all night?
It’s a matter of strategy. Some coaches tend to seek out an opponent’s weakness and then pull out whatever tool from their bag will work best to exploit that weakness. Others seem to want to establish an identity and then hammer it home, whatever it is… and whether it’s working or not. It feels like Garrett is firmly entrenched in the latter category. He wants the Cowboys to be a tough, physical football team who will run it right down anybody’s throat. So he does. Even if the passing game is doing all the damage in a certain matchup. It’s “we’re-going-to-do-this-because-it’s-who-we-are” versus “we’re-going-to-do-that-because-it’s-working.”
Prescott put it up 46 times Sunday night, Garrett explained on The Fan, to just 22 rushing attempts. He clearly wanted more balance, because in his world, balance is just objectively good. Maybe, but most who watched this particular game felt like one or two more throws (and one or two fewer runs) would have actually won it for Dallas.
Prescott was careful on Sunday night when asked if he wished Moore and Garrett had kept the ball in his hands with a pass on every play of the ill-fated second-to-last drive. “It’s safe to say I’ll throw the ball every play of the game,” Prescott smiled. “That’s the obvious part, right? So, for sure.”
But as Garrett explained during his radio interview, Prescott did have at least the option to throw on the run plays in question. So for fans looking to place blame after a difficult defeat, it seems there needs to be some to go around: some for Moore for calling the plays, some for Garrett for not stepping in and suggesting something else based on the situation, and some for Prescott for the option he finally went with as the plays unfolded.
“That’s the way we evaluate everything,” Garrett said Monday. “We’ll go in today- win, lose, or draw- and we say, ‘Okay, what was good about the game? Okay, let’s continue to build on that. What were areas that we as coaches need to do a better job? Maybe we didn’t communicate it well enough, maybe we didn’t practice it well enough, maybe it just wasn’t executed. I’m not talking about those specific plays, but that’s generally how you approach it.”
How to divvy up the blame for the Vikings loss may be up for debate, but one thing that was unanimous was the players’ reactions to any queries casting aspersions on the team’s playcalling or the coaches responsible.
“I’m not going to question the playcalling,” Prescott said. “There were opportunities; we’ve just got to do better and execute those plays, simple as that. And every guy in that locker room would say that.”
Wide receiver Randall Cobb did in his postgame comments. “I don’t call the plays. That’s not my job. My job is to make the plays and execute the plays that are called. The play that’s called is the play that we go out there and run, and we’ve got to make it happen on the field.”
“We would never question Kellen’s calls,” tight end Jason Witten said at his locker Sunday night. “That’s been a good run for us in third-and-short, kind of spreading them out this season, and kind of find[ing] the soft spot. Zeke does such a good job, Dak, they’re kind of used to running that type of play… That’s been a good play for us. I’m not surprised that he went back to that.”
Deep down, Cowboys fans weren’t surprised either. It’s just that they wanted to be. Because for all the early questions about the new-look Dallas offense and the glimpses of brilliance that peek through now and again, when the team had a do-or-die shot at punching it in, the answers they got were the same ones they’d been hearing for years.
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