By and large, the Cowboys coaching staff is tired of looking backward, done with comparisons between this promising season and the complete debacle that was 2020. But sitting at 5-1 coming out of the self-reflection period that is the bye week, it’s hard to not hold up the current numbers to last season’s stats as a way to quantify just how far this Dallas team has come.
For all the justifiable attention placed on the revamped defense and quarterback Dak Prescott’s maturation to an elite level of play thus far this season, for tangible proof of exponential improvement, one needs to look no further than the big guys up front.
Offensive line coach Joe Philbin likes where his unit is, likes how they’re performing. But despite their quantum leap forward from 2020, the best is still yet to come, says the longtime coach.
“I think they’re playing well together,” the 60-year-old Philbin said last week. “They’re doing a good job at the line of scrimmage communicating, number one: everybody getting on the same page. And really, I’ve always told those guys, really, they have two main job responsibilities. In the run game, their job is really to create space for the running back. And in pass protection, it’s to keep their defender as far away from the quarterback as possible so he can make a good decision and throw the ball accurately. We’ve got a long way to go, but overall, for six weeks in, I think we’re making progress in both those areas.”
Indeed they are. The Cowboys finished 2020 with 111.8 rushing yards per game, in the bottom half of the league. Through the first six games of 2021, they’re averaging 164.3. That’s good for second.
It’s a team-effort statistic, to be sure. Much depends on the ball carriers themselves, and no one can argue that Ezekiel Elliott doesn’t look more like a former two-time rushing champ than whatever he was last year. Tony Pollard is being used more effectively this season as well. And Prescott’s formidable presence behind center prohibits defenses from stacking against the run.
Nevertheless, the O-line is doing a much better job of plowing the road. And Philbin thinks the group is still trending upward.
“There’s always more – we use that term, there’s meat on the bone, so to speak- in the running game. Particularly last week up in New England, I thought there was more opportunities there. There’s always room to finish better, get to our aiming points a little bit more consistently, and then just the coordination of all of it with the running backs, with the receivers, with everybody in the run game, specifically.”
As for the second responsibility Philbin preaches to his line, the Cowboys are better in pass protection, too. 2020 saw the team allow 44 sacks, an average clip of 2.8 per game. This year? Nine sacks given up through six games, equating to just 1.5 per game.
“Overall, it was good on Sunday,” Philbin said of the line’s pass protection, “but there’s still pictures where we can always get better, whether it’s twist communication on third down, whether it’s handling pressure and blitzes that ultimately come typically in third down. There’s a lot of little things, but generally we’re off to a good start. Certainly a lot of things we can do better.”
It’s easy to chalk up much of that good start to having the veterans back. Tackles Tyron Smith and La’el Collins were sorely missed last season, triggering a chain reaction of shuffling along the line in an attempt to cover for the combined 30 games they missed in 2020.
But this season hasn’t been without its challenges. Guard Zack Martin missed the season opener on the Reserve/COVID list, and Collins was suspended prior to Week 2. The generally-agreed-upon “best five” haven’t played a single game snap together this season, so it’s not a stretch to think that Philbin could actually see that improvement he referenced.
But it’s also no surprise that the veteran coach is perhaps overachieving under less-than-ideal circumstances. An offensive line guru at the college level, Philbin began coaching in the mid-1980s, with stops like Ohio, Harvard, and Iowa on his resume. He moved to the pro ranks in 2003 with a job in Green Bay; he was already on-staff when Mike McCarthy was named the Packers’ head coach in 2006.
Philbin then took over as Dolphins head coach in 2012. His sub-.500 tenure over three-plus seasons in Miami may, unfairly, be what fans know most about Philbin. But after his firing and a follow-up assistant stint in Indianapolis, he returned to the Packers staff, and was even named the interim head coach there when McCarthy was dismissed in late 2018. Philbin, too, was axed upon season’s end, and went into exile with McCarthy during the 2019 season.
McCarthy made Philbin one of his first hires upon getting the top job in Dallas. The Cowboys’ new staff suffered a serious setback when COVID-19 all but wiped out the offseason, making it difficult to put much of an imprint on the team before the season began.
Now having spent full spring and summer sessions with his players, having proper time to install his blocking schemes and do face-to-face instruction, with the luxury of not having to regard his corps like a MASH unit, Philbin is starting to finally turn the Dallas offensive line around. Even the bye week was spent doing normal coaching things; the focus wasn’t on emergency triage, but making improvements on a healthy and productive body.
“We just came out of meetings,” Philbin explained. “We’re looking at how we’re running the ball in normal down and distance, how we’re protecting, how we’re doing in the red zone. You always think about what is the best combination, who are the best players. You talk about continuity, how important is that. All of those factors are in play, absolutely. Those are things that we discuss, really, on a weekly basis, not just during the bye week. You’re as good as a coach as your last game, and you’re as good as a player as your last game.”
Given the past few games, then, Philbin is a much better coach than he’s gotten credit for. Maybe the Cowboys’ offensive line of 2021 will become the thing that Joe Philbin is best known for.
But the coach himself will probably just keep looking forward instead of back.
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