Decoding McCarthy/Zimmer Report, Wk 11
Consolidating the Xs and Os from the Week 11 Texans Game as the season slips away.
Tuesdays (or Wednesday on a Monday Night Game week) – since about 2008 – have been my day to evaluate the offense in this space. However, due to circumstances beyond the Cowboys control, evidently, we have modified this space from now through the end of the regular season as the games themselves have become less compelling. Therefore, we will attempt to combine the offensive and defensive reviews as best we can and that will leave us room for an additional piece in days to come. This week, that will be looking closer at Texas QB Quinn Ewers in a few days.
Our objectives today:
The Offensive Overview vs the Texans
The Defensive Overview vs the Texans
Looking close at young players for 2025
10 plays that defined this game - Xs and Os breakdown
Let’s get busy:
The offense was functional on Monday Night, if we are comparing it to what the Eagles game demonstrated for us as a bar of expectation.
Cooper Rush was better. The offense was better.
They actually found some solutions and ended up with 388 yards and 24 first downs. I realize that the score is the only stat that truly matters for offensive evaluation, but 388 yards is more than nothing.
388 is the 3rd-best yardage output of the year. Only Baltimore (garbage time stats) and Pittsburgh exceed that number. The same is true for 24 first downs—again, 3rd-best in 2024 behind the Baltimore and Pittsburgh games.
But, as is often the case, the running game was a mess, and the efficiency was unacceptable. If you are struggling as an offense, we almost always boil it down to efficiency on 3rd downs and in the red zone. And then we find that boiling that down is about staying out of bad 3rd-down situations—average yards to go on 3rd down on Monday night was 10 (which is so bad!)—and that usually comes back to a team that cannot run the ball at all.
Here we are. This team tried to run the ball in the first half and ended up with 10 runs for 33 yards. But if you take out the CeeDee Lamb gadget run, then it’s nine runs for 20 yards. And your top RB had eight runs for 18 yards.
If you want to know the biggest Achilles Heel of this offense right now, it is that they cannot run the rock. Yes, Rico Dowdle is your best choice and no, he is probably not a starter in the NFL – which means Dallas does not have one. But, when I am asked why they didn’t “stick with the run” and had Cooper Rush throwing the ball on 61 drop backs, here is your answer. They were trying to win a game.
And right now, in 2024, after an offseason of emphasizing how they have two objectives – run the ball and stop the run – we see that they might be worse than ever before. Houston sat in 2-high all day and knew you couldn’t run on them. They weren’t wrong.
Here are Rico’s eight attempts before halftime:
R.Dowdle left guard to DAL 21 for 3 yards
R.Dowdle left tackle to DAL 33 for 1 yard
R.Dowdle up the middle to HST 45 for -2 yards
R.Dowdle up the middle to HST 41 for 4 yards
R.Dowdle left guard to DAL 41 for 2 yards
R.Dowdle right guard to DAL 47 for -2 yards
R.Dowdle right tackle to DAL 29 for 9 yards
R.Dowdle left guard to DAL 32 for 3 yards
Because I know you love to grind the tape, please take a look in slow motion and see what went wrong on almost every run. But this is a morale drain, and they quickly and properly modified things to get the ball out quickly, calling the short passes their new running game. It is a crutch and unsustainable, but also probably their best option among many bad ones.