The Dallas Cowboys have three wins this season, but in a sense it feels difficult to find anything positive going on with the team right now. It is possible that this is the result of a rather intense week with idle hands with the team on bye.
As the dust was sort of starting to settle over last week’s loss to the Detroit Lions, the worst one in the Jerry Jones era of ownership, Mr. Jones took to the radio airwaves of 105.3 The Fan and went on an all-time tirade that involved threatening the abilities of the hosts to continue to interview him. Later in the day Amari Cooper was traded to the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns netted more for him than they originally gave to the Cowboys when they first acquired him. It was one of those days.
Maybe it is one of those seasons, though. As noted the Cowboys have had three happy Sundays so far this season, but all of their wins have felt difficult and like pulling teeth.
It is a tough time and that seems agreed upon by many. Franchise legend DeMarcus Ware spoke to us here at Blogging The Boys on Wednesday and discussed a lack of effort that he is seeing from the current group. One of the greatest players in franchise history in Troy Aikman made his weekly appearance on 1310 The Ticket and questioned effort as well, but he was more specific in where he is not seeing it from.
Aikman has a problem with the wide receivers. As transcribed by The Athletic’s Jon Machota:
“I think the routes are terrible. I think they run terrible routes. And I’ve thought that beyond this year. I think CeeDee (Lamb) has got to improve in his route running. As a quarterback, if you’re not certain where guys are going to be consistently, it’s hard to play the position. That’s what I see. I see guys lazy coming off the line of scrimmage. Sometimes they run, usually if they do, it’s because they’re anticipating they’re going to get the football on that play, but if they’re not, they don’t. And it all ties together. I’m not impressed with that part of it.
“I just finished watching the Baltimore Ravens because I have them this week. You put on film of theirs and watch their receivers run routes and they come off the football, so does San Francisco’s and Green Bay’s and others. But it’s hard to play the (QB) position if you’re not certain how guys are going to run routes or where they’re going to be. And I’m not speaking for Dak (Prescott). Dak may say, ‘Hey, I think (their routes) are amazing.’ But as a former quarterback watching it, it’s gotta get a lot better.”
It is important to note that Aikman specified that he was offering his own individual opinion and that Dak Prescott may not share it. Obviously though, it goes without saying that Aikman’s opinion on this matter is well-founded given his on-field accomplishments and longstanding broadcasting career that involves an enormous amount of studying.
From a feel standpoint it is hard to disagree with Aikman given that the offense “feels” broken and that there appears to be an issue with the connection between Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb. It is important to make sure that we don’t go simply off of that feel so let’s look at other sources.
NFL Pro has a statistic that they track called average separation. This is defined as the average distance between the receiver and the nearest defender at pass arrival (not the moment the ball leaves the quarterback’s hand). This should be an interesting way to look at things given that we are talking about route running specifically.
There are three teams who have multiple players in the bottom 20 in this area. Obviously the Cowboys are among them, but so are the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos and their offenses (especially San Francisco’s) are thought to be manned by elite minds. The former even has three different players on the list.
NFL Pro
It is difficult to draw a proper conclusion off of this alone, but if we look at the data set a bit more closely then we can see that CeeDee Lamb is sticking out like a sore thumb in certain ways.
Lamb has a catch rate over expected of -5.6% which is clearly not good, and certainly is a reflection of being involved in attempted catches with not a ton of separation all the more difficult. As you can see though, other players are making lemonade when given the same lemons if not worse ones, so to speak. Of the players on this list, only Denver’s Courtland Sutton has a worse CROE.
Looking one column over, Lamb has a -2.2 receiving EPA. Once again Sutton has Lamb beat in this sense, but the only other player more worse off is Indianapolis’ Michael Pittman.
These are tough numbers in general, but that they are coming from the Cowboys’ number one wide receiver and somebody who commands (rightfully so) a bulk of the targets is certainly part of what has the offense in such a funk right now which proves Aikman’s point. Lamb is responsible for his share of the blame in this entire sense and that should be noted, but Mike McCarthy needs to do a better job of scheming players like Lamb into positions where he and they can win more frequently.
Of course this is a bit of a chicken and the egg sort of discussion as this may in fact be an effort issue from Lamb and Co. as Aikman sort of said and Ware did (although Ware wasn’t talking about any one specific player). Needless to say there are problems in a number of areas right now and the Cowboys have to figure out solutions to them quickly.
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