Football teams always talk about wanting to “start fast” and dictate the pace of a game to their opponent. On Sunday night, the Cowboys not only started fast, they stayed fast. And in doing so, they found a gear that Washington simply couldn’t keep up with.
At times, it seemed like quarterback Dak Prescott and the offense were playing a different sport. So perhaps it’s fitting that for their Week 16 gameplan, America’s Team borrowed terminology from America’s Pastime.
The Cowboys call it “fastball.”
“It’s just an up-tempo offense,” wideout Amari Cooper explained to reporters after the 56-14 stomping. “You’re not huddling up after every play. The receivers [line up] wherever they are after their previous route. In fastball, I play the Z and if [Prescott] calls double routes, I’m supposed to be on the right side. But if I just ran an over-route, I have to go and play the X. So everybody has to know different positions. We practice it so much that we all know the different positions, so after one play we can line up and get on the ball real fast. You have to be in a lot of shape for that; defenses aren’t always ready for it.”
In the Cowboys coaches’ current parlance, fastball is essentially the code word for “no-huddle.”
“You can go as fast as you want, you can go as slow as you want,” offensive coordinator Kellen Moore explained in a conference call Monday. “I think that’s our biggest point: we dictate the tempo within that…. It’s different from a two-minute huddle. In two-minute, you’re trying to go as fast as possible, save as much time as you can. This thing is about executing football plays. If we can go fast, we go fast. After a few plays, if we need to slow it down a little bit, we’ll slow it down.”
Moore didn’t slow it down much Sunday night.
The Dallas offense ran an astonishing 52 plays in the first half alone. By way of comparison, Seattle this season is averaging 55 offensive plays per game. More plays, more chances at hitting the jackpot. And the Cowboys did, scoring five offensive touchdowns before the break, all on drives of at least eight plays and all spanning over 70 yards. They doubled up Washington in time of possession and had amassed a ridiculous 389 net yards, all before taking an insurmountable 42-7 lead into halftime.
“I think our guys excel at the up-tempo, the pace operation,” head coach Mike McCarthy explained Monday after the dust had settled some. “It definitely fits the way they train, and it definitely was very beneficial for us yesterday.”
“I love no-huddle,” Moore said. “I think it’s obviously one of our strengths as an offense. I think we did a tremendous job and our guys are really comfortable with it. Shoot, that’s how they’re wired coming from college because they’re kind of used to being in no-huddle formats.”
Fastball demands that the opposing defensive unit stay on the field because there’s generally no time for substitutions. That often leads to defenders playing out of position, playing winded, or being susceptible to cadence variations. And that results in mistakes.
Prescott exploited two Washington offside jumps during the first half Sunday, taking advantage of the free plays for 24- and 22-yard gains. In both cases, Dallas declined the penalties and continued their quick-step marches right into the end zone.
“I think that’s just something that, if you just look over the course of the season,” Prescott said in his postgame comments, “when we’re in tempo, we’re playing some of our best ball: keeping it simple, executing. And obviously, you’re putting the pressure on the defense and forcing them to play the defense that you want them to and play more simple. You get them out of all their gameplans and their schemes. It works for us well.”
Running back Ezekiel Elliott agreed, pinpointing it as the main reason the offense looked so much more explosive than in previous weeks.
“We were playing with tempo,” Elliott explained. “When we do that, it tires those guys down so much and it takes a lot of the thinking out of the game for us. Getting on the ball, playing with tempo, that’s our easiest way to wear a defense down.”
It certainly helped that Washington was playing numerous backups due to COVID absences and was coming off a short turnaround. But the Cowboys also had an inkling that the fastball would be particularly effective against WFT, after an on-the-field exchange Cooper had with a defender in their previous meeting.
“They were really tired,” Cooper confirmed. “Just two weeks ago when we played them, one of the D-lineman on their team was like, ‘Man, y’all, slow this thing down.’ That’s what he told me. I think it really affected them, and I noticed when we got into our fastball, we were moving the ball much more effectively.”
It certainly seemed to help the Cowboys spread the ball around against a secondary whose heads were spinning. Nine different offensive players caught a pass on the night; five of them (Cooper, CeeDee Lamb, Michael Gallup, Malik Turner, and Dalton Schultz) ended with over 50 receiving yards.
“I definitely think it was the fastball,” Cooper offered. “We practice it so much, and I think finally it just started to click. The defense was tired, like I said. We practice it so much that we can actually run the fastball effectively because we know exactly where we need to be.”
And like an ace pitcher relying on the gas in October, the Cowboys may find themselves going back to their fastball more often as the higher-caliber competition of the postseason draws near.
“It’s part of the gameplan. It’s part of: can the other team handle it, too? I think just like anything in this game, you need to be able to be diverse in your approaches. I’m talking about the different type of huddles,” McCarthy said. “You need all of that. We’re going to see more and more of it, and we’ll see more this week and especially getting into the playoffs with these veteran quarterbacks.”
[vertical-gallery id=689080]
[listicle id=689131]
[listicle id=688969]
[lawrence-newsletter]