Decoding McCarthy - Not Good Enough
When an offense is not sure what it is good at doing, things just never look right.
Tuesdays – since about 2008 – have been my day to evaluate the offense in this space. We have called it “Decoding” over those years and then the name behind the decoding is the man with the play-sheet calling the plays and hopefully putting them in an order to attack that week’s opponent. This is where the football nerd in me gets to figure out the tactical and strategic plot-lines of the game and get a feel for how well it worked out for that side of the ball. For those of you new here, two things: 1) ask questions of anything you don’t quite understand and 2) be aware that we do defense on Wednesdays.
Our Decoding objectives today:
The Offensive Overview from San Francisco
Dak Prescott vs Brock Purdy - a bleak reality.
The Final Drive
Could somebody help this guy? - WR edition
Could somebody help this guy? - OL edition
Let’s get busy:
Last year, the San Francisco game hit in Week 5 and was sort of a line of demarcation with regard to the offense. They left their tail-beating in Northern California and emerged with a different identity. By the time Dallas came out of their bye week with 43 points against the Rams in Week 8.
I just don’t know if this team has another idea right now.
What we see coming out of the bye week is generally the same offense with the same flaws. What are they?
They simply cannot run the football no matter what or who they try.
They are bottom 5 in the league at pass protection.
They have one consistent play-maker on the entire offense.
With these constraints, I am not sure what our advice would be to the scheme or play sequencing because it is all going to look uphill. We have enough evidence to see that they are just not very productive at all and when they do start to find some solutions, they are usually behind by double-digits and must throw caution to the wind (added to that would be that defenses probably soften their coverages which explain the late-game production against Baltimore and San Francisco that cosmetically made things look a bit less brutal).