Blogging The Boys
The bye week may have come at the perfect time for the Cowboys. Two straight losses has the season on the brink of being over, but two big trades at the deadline – plus the imminent return of both DeMarvion Overshown and Shavon Revel – offer a chance at a reset, defensively.
And, really, the Cowboys defense only needs to achieve “average” play with the way their offense has been this season. So as we prepare for Monday night’s game against the Raiders, let’s review where Dallas sits right now, and what that means for their chances to make a run.
From a bird’s eye view, the story remains the same. The Cowboys have a really great offense that’s being dragged down by a terrible defense. Dallas is 11th in offensive DVOA, just narrowly outside the top 10. Of the 10 teams ahead of them, all have a winning record and six of them sit in first place in their division. The Cowboys have had no such luck.
Special teams should jump out here, though. Brandon Aubrey and KaVontae Turpin are the best at their respective roles, unquestionably, but everything outside of them has been bad. They’re 27th in hidden points, which effectively measures the advantage gained by the opposing special teams unit, and they also have the fourth-most special teams penalties despite not playing this past week. Nick Sorensen badly needs to clean up his unit.
The EPA-based team tiers reveal an almost comical divide between the upper and lower echelon of the NFL, and the Cowboys are right there in no man’s land. That beautifully reflects the nature of this team, as they have the offense of a contender but the defense of a team that’s only contending for a top five draft pick.
In a way, though, this chart demonstrates why the Cowboys are capable of making a run still. If they can climb upwards on this chart and get level with, say, the Ravens and 49ers, they’d be right in the thick of the playoff conversation. The hope is that the four players who will make their debut this week can facilitate that.
How good has this offense been? Consider this: the Cowboys posted a -0.028 EPA/play in their previous two games and still rank sixth in total EPA/play for the year. Most of that negative figure came from the Broncos game, to be fair, but it still illustrates how good the unit has been.
The flip side of that equation, though, is that the Cowboys have had their two worst offensive performances most recently. Is this offense cooling off? Or did they just run into some bad matchups? They’ll face some more top defenses in just a few weeks, so the answer to this question will be monumental in determining whether a run is possible, regardless of any defensive improvements.
The interesting thing about the Cowboys’ offensive decline these past two weeks is how it’s happened. Against Denver, Dak Prescott just had a...
