Blogging The Boys
Over this past weekend, the Los Angeles Rams, Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos, and New England Patriots advanced to championship weekend, by beating the Chicago Bears, San Francisco 49ers, Buffalo Bills, and Houston Texans respectively. Obviously, this means that the winning teams did something that the Cowboys have not done in three decades, and even the losing sides that reached the Divisional playoffs achieved something the Cowboys have failed to do since 2022 – losing in the Wild Card round in their last playoff appearance in 2023.
It will be up to Brian Schottenheimer and his staff that’s remained in tact despite the coaching carousel being in full swing around the league to look at the trends and tendencies of the teams finding playoff success this winter, and apply it to year two under Schotty’s leadership. On offense, the Cowboys are picking up the pieces from their 7-9-1 season from a familiar place. A healthy Dak Prescott and the duo of CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens put up impressive numbers in the passing game to lead a highly-ranked Cowboys offense statistically. This is nothing new for the Cowboys, and is a point of contention within the fanbase as different coordinators and offensive play-callers have come and gone. The results have remained impressive on offense, but no playoff success to speak of has followed – and now another top-ranked offense was left out of the playoffs entirely, mainly to the fault of the defense.
Sticking with areas the Cowboys passing offense can improve even further to be more like the offenses that were playing this past weekend, or will be with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, there is one very noticeable one. With the amount of work that is needed for the Cowboys to field a more game-ready defense in 2026, including with a new defensive coordinator, the personnel on offense may remain mostly the same going into 2026. This is why adjustments within Schottenheimer’s scheme will be even more critical to find improvements, and luckily this noticeable difference from the Cowboys offense to the best of the rest is in fact scheme based.
Going in order of the games played on Divisional weekend, the usage of running backs in the passing game paints an interesting story when compared to the Cowboys. James Cook caught two of his three targets for the Bills, with one of them going for an explosive play of 24 yards. On the winning side of that game, R.J. Harvey caught five of his six targets for 46 total yards, also with one explosive of 24 yards.
In the Seahawks blowout win over the 49ers, Kenneth Walker caught all three of his targets for 29 yards. On the losing side, Christian McCaffrey tied for the 49ers lead in targets with six, catching five for 39 yards. On Sunday, the Patriots beat the Texans with another perfect targets/receptions...
