Last week, I wrote about things “to watch for” during the the Dallas Cowboys home opener against the New York Giants. For a list of the questions posed about Dak Prescott and the offense, please click here. One of the things I was most interested in was whether the Scott Linehan would be able to maintain an offensive balance. Could they execute enough effective runs and passes out of both formations (Prescott in the shotgun/Prescott under center) to keep the defense “honest”, or would Dak’s positioning be sufficient for the defense to commit to the run or pass respectively?

Before we get to the specifics about Dak and the offense, a few general things are noteworthy:

The Dallas Cowboys had eight possessions against the New York Giants. They scored points on 5 of those 8 possessions. They scored points on all 3 of their possessions in the first half. The first three drives were all longer than 10 plays (14, 14, and 11).

The Cowboys offense, with a 4th-round rookie at QB, had only two “3 and out” possessions . Both of them were in the second half.

Dak Prescott still hasn’t thrown an interception, and even the awesome D-line of the Giants couldn’t sack him.

Raw data on shotgun vs under center

By my calculations (including plays that were non-plays because of penalties) the Dallas Cowboys ran 77 offensive plays. The official count was 45 passes and 27 rushes, so I counted 5 plays that were penalties or otherwise nullified and replayed.

Dak Prescott took 50 snaps in the shotgun. He took just 27 under center.

Of the 50 snaps in the shotgun, only 10 of them were runs, the other 40 were passes.

Of the 27 snaps Dak took under center, only 7 of them were passes, while 20 of them were runs.

The Dallas Cowboys rushed the ball 27 times in the entire game; around 20 of the rushes came when Dak was under center. They ran 9 times from the shotgun, but only 1 of those runs came in the 2nd half.

In the 2nd half, Dak took 25 snaps in the shotgun and 24 of them were passes. The one rush out of the shotgun formation came on the 1st possession of the 2nd half after the interception. After that, the Cowboys threw the ball every single time Prescott took the snap in the shotgun.

In the 2nd half, Dak took 14 snaps under center and 11 of them were runs. All three of the passes attempted in the 2nd half after lining up under center were play-action passes. These 2nd half playaction passes resulted in a 2 yard gain to Witten, a 9 yard completion to WR Williams and an incompletion.

There is an obvious disparity between the number of plays Dak took from center versus the shotgun, and there looks to be a pretty strong correlation between the formation and whether the Cowboys want to run or pass (passing from shotgun and running from under center). Those tendencies get even more pronounced if you look at when Scott Linehan chose to have Dak take snaps from under center:

The Cowboys opened the game with 5 plays in which Dak took the snap under center. Then, in the 2nd half, they opened their 3rd possession of the half Dak taking 5 consecutive snaps from under center. Put another way, the Cowboys ran 27 plays with their QB under center, but 10 of those plays came consecutively on two drives. Both of those drives ended with scoring a FG. But, if you eliminate the first 5 plays of 2 drives, then the Cowboys called 50 plays from the shotgun compared to just the 17 from under center (27-10).

Playaction

In total, the Cowboys attempted at least 9 playaction passes: 5 times when Dak was under center, and four times from the shotgun. They tried playaction from the shotgun twice in each half. The Cowboys had the most success using playaction on first down.

The Cowboys used playaction on first down on each of their first 3 drives. The first time was the 4th play of the game (under center) – Prescott hit TE Witten for a 17-yard gain on the right side. On the second drive, on first down from the shotgun, Dak used playaction to hit Bulter for 16 yards. On the 3rd drive, also on first down, from under center, Dak used playaction to complete a 19 yard pass to TE Swaim. Unless I missed one, every time the Cowboys used playaction on 1st down in the 1st half, it resulted in a completion of over 15 yards.

The Cowboys did not fare so well using playaction in the 2nd half. They had two successful completions using playaction in the 2nd half (Beasley short for a first down and Williams once for 9), but most of the attempts were incomplete.

First Down

By my calculations, the Cowboys ran the ball 14 times on 1st down and passed 17 times. That may see like balance until you consider that 12 of the 14 runs on 1st down came when Dak was under center. The Cowboys passed 17 times on first down, but 13 of those pass attempts came after being lined up in the shotgun.

Miscellaneous

The Cowboys didn’t try getting the ball to WR Whitehead. Whitehead was brought in for a handful of plays on offense, but every time I noticed him, he was going in motion on running plays.

More than half of Dak’s throws targeted Jason Witten or Cole Beasley.

After the first half, Prescott was 14/19 for 134 yards. He finished the game 22/45 for 227. In the first half, he threw just 5 incomplete passes, yet he went just 8 of 26 in the 2nd half. Why was Dak so ineffective in the 2nd half? Had the Cowboys offensive play-calling become predictable? Did the Giants make significant adjustments at halftime?

Like in college, Dak struggles when under pressure: he was just 3 of 13 for 28 yards when dealing with pressure from the Giants.

The Cowboys did take a few shots downfield, but they resulted in zero completions on 6 throws of 20+ yards (at least two of those attempts were playaction). However, 27 of Dak’s 45 pass attempts travelled less than 10 yards in the air.

Conclusions:

One game is a small sample. It is too early to come to any definitive conclusions about Dak Prescott or the Cowboys coaching staff. One thing is sure: Dak needs to throw some TD passes or else his pre-season success will soon start to seem like a fluke. The data above probably says as much about the coaches as it does Dak Prescott. As the weeks go on, we will continue to try and answer some of the basic questions about the 2016 Dallas Cowboys offense.

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