Back To The Future? How The Cowboys May Be Exploiting NFL Trends With The Running Game

[JoeBoBBY]

I agree, but all too often when we bring up the linebackers and safeties they just blitz the A gaps and if it is a play action pass, they kill Romo. We really need to develop some blitz beater screen passes or Tony is going to find himself flat on his back again.

The Steelers use the WR screen so effectivly that teams are scared to death to try that defensive strategy on them. We absolutely need to make teams pay for their aggressive blitz strategies that have hurt our QB in the past.

Yeah... I would like to see more of that style too...... The attempt at something like what Pittsburgh does.... We need to significantly reduce the amount of times Romo gets touched. Combination of play -calling, blocking, schemes, etc etc..... We have to do it.

 

[Alexander]

Tldr version; Combine good QB with good run game to increase manageable down and distances and lead to overall more efficient passer rating. Profit.

Well stated. And that is what gets lost in the weeds during these kind of discussions.

Romo clearly had one of his better seasons, if not the best one of his career, when he had a strong running game to create better situational opportunities.

Much easier to pass efficiently when you cut the down and distance on 2nd down, if even by a yard or two. There is not the pressure to get a deeper downfield gain when you realize that a 3rd and a couple is not an insurmountable task, which it had been over much of his career.

 

[CowboyRoy]

It was a subject of much debate before the draft and continues to be so. Why spend a fourth-round pick on Ezekiel Elliott when the running back position is so devalued in the pass-addicted NFL? Since the Dallas Cowboys were able to mount a successful running game with Darren McFadden, whose skill set is not a good fit for what the team prefers to do, couldn't they have gotten a good running back later in the draft and better spent the draft capital elsewhere? Why would they buck the trend and go against the flow of the league?

While of course the staff of the Cowboys don't share all the innermost details of their strategy, all this does raise another question: What if going in the opposite direction of the league is the whole idea?


Some of these thoughts have been circulating around sort of half-formed for a time (at least in my often chaotic brain), but they were really crystallized by an article on offensive linemen and the challenges they face in today's NFL written by Pete Prisco at CBSSports.com. (Hat tip to Landon McCool who saw this first and drew my attention to it with a tweet.) It was a missing piece of the puzzle that speaks to some significant differences in the way the Cowboys are doing things as opposed to what seems to be happening with many other teams.

The basic logic is something that is common in business: Find something that no one else is doing and exploit it. It also has a military counterpart: Figure out where a significant weakness is and hit it as hard as you can.

link/http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2016...iting-nfl-trends-running-game-ezekiel-elliott

There is no "going in another direction" about what we are doing. Teams have been winning with running the ball and defense for years. Look no further than Seattle and the most recent example. Denver was no pass happy team either. Carolina like to run the ball with Cam and their backs.

 

[CowboyRoy]

And The way Defenses GAMEPLANNED to stop Emmitt have a direct EFFECT on our passing game. No matter how many yards you gain.

You think every team GAMEPLANNED the same?

The Cowboys were something like 20-0 for a while in games where Murray rushed for 100 yards were we not? Dont bother arguing with these pass happy people. We threw the ball all over the place with Romo for how many years and where did it get us?

 

[TheDude]

Emmitt's Playoff Record
in 6 seasons with top 12-rated passer: 12-3
in 9 seasons without top 12-rated passer: 0-2

I like a demoralizing 10 min smash mouth drive as much as anyone, but if you have no passing attack you are done.

On hold, on false start, one illegal motion, on TFL, etc and you have to pass.

As good as this line is, they aren't winning every battle, even if they did, defenses send a run blitz.

No threat of passing ..... you are 2-14

 

[plasticman]

Your ability to pass well is directly related to the running game. If you cannot run then they can key on the pass.

D-linemen can take more risks in their pass rush if they dont have to respect the run. They can approach the pocket more aggressively

This is what destroyed the 2010 season. It's not that they coudn't run the ball. There were three occasions in which the RB's averaged over 5 yards a carry. However, the team still passed twice as much as they ran the ball.

Whenever the Cowboys were ahead in the first three quarters of a game, they passed twice as much as they ran the ball so it is a fallacy to say that they only passed a lot when they were down in the 4th quarter by multiple scores. There were times last year, including the last two games. in which the scoring margin going into the 4th quarter was 6 points or less. The Cowboys still preferred to pass even when they were ahead going into the 4th quarter.

The Cowboys were able to run the ball better towards the end of last season in a very general sense. They could not run the ball when they had to, especially in the 4th quarter.

Bottom line? The Cowboys running game was not feared in 2015, opponents let them run and concentrated on destroying the crippled passing game.

The importance of the running game in 2014 was most evident when comparing 2014 to the rest of Tony Romo's history showing a breakdown of passing circumstances:

2014 Season
1st & 10 108 26.2%
1st & <10 5 1.2%
1st & >10 11 2.7%
2nd & 4-6 40 13.7%
2nd & 7-9 54 16.0%
2nd & 10+ 66 10.2%
3rd & 4-6 36 8.7%
3rd & 7-9 27 5.6%
3rd & 10+ 31 7.5%
3rd/4th & short 34
8.3%
Own 1-20 65 14.9%
Own 21-50 184 42.2%
Opp 49-20 137 31.4%
Red Zone 50 11.5%

Rest of Career
1st & 10 970 30.0%
1st & <10 19 0.6%
1st & >10 47 1.5%
2nd & 4-6 253 7.8%
2nd & 7-9 517 16.0%
2nd & 10+ 394 12.2%
3rd & 4-6 311 9.6%
3rd & 7-9 241 7.5%
3rd & 10+ 295 9.1%
3rd/4th & short 186 5.8%

Own 1-20 441 13.1%
Own 21-50 1588 47.2%
Opp 49-20 1115 33.2%
Red Zone 219 6.5%

The percentages to the right refers to the percentage of all total passing plays where Romo was placed under those specific circumstances.

For example, in 2014, 11.5% of his total passes where thrown in the Red Zone. During the rest of his career only 6.5% of his total passes where thrown in the Red zone.

Note the percentages in his career for the high risk situations like 3nd and long. 16.6% of his passes were during 3rd and 7 or more. Compare that to the 2014 season where only 14.1% of his passes where under those circumstances.

On the other hand, his high percentage situations like 3rd/4th and short are increased in 2014 to 8.3% from the rest of his career at 5.8%.

The point is that, obviously, you want Tony Romo throwing in 3rd and short situations as opposed to 3rd and long. There is difference of more than 25 rating points.

When you have a good running game then you can pass on 1st down with far more confidence because the opponent must anticipate a run which opens up the receivers. His career rating for 1st and ten is 96.1, impressive enough. However, in 2014, it was 114.0

Tony Romo's career rating for 2nd/3rd down and 6 or less is 104.5. In 2014 it was 122.0.

This is the precise argument I used 14 months earlier when claiming that the team would be devastated if they did not resign Murray.

If you attempt to convince me that it was due to Romo and Bryant's injuries than all you have done is reinforce my analysis of the above statistics.

"High risk" isn't all about INT's and sacks. It can also be about the pass rush as it relates to QB injuries. Tony Romo was injured on 2nd and 11 in the Eagles game, following a 1st and ten run by Randle for -1 yards. He was injured again on 2nd and 10 in the Panther game. Throwing under such circumstances was far less frequent in 2014.

 

[BlindFaith]

Let me break this down for you.

I've said all along that how well you run the ball -- your per-play efficiency, such as YPC -- doesn't really affect whether you win or lose the game. It doesn't really matter if you average 2.0 yards per carry or 4.0 yards per carry or 6.0 yards per carry. It barely increases your chance of winning by having a higher YPC. It doesn't really matter if you hold the opponent to 2.0 YPC or allow 6.0 YPC. What DOES matter, and what DOES affect your chance of winning to a much greater degree, is your per-play efficiency when you pass and your pass defense. If you pass more efficiently than your opponent does, you will almost always win the game, no matter how poorly you ran the ball or how poorly you stopped the run. If you don't pass better than your opponent, you will almost always lose, no matter how well you ran or stopped the run.

I noted that we went 20-1 in our 21 games with our LOWEST YPC from 1992-95. That is an indisputable fact. Averaging less than 3.0 yards per carry did not stop us from winning. And our opponents' ability to stuff our running game did not help them win.

In other words, exactly what I have been saying is exactly what happened. That's not surprising, though, because it's almost always what happens in the NFL -- every week, every season, for every team, for the past 30-plus years.

Here is another attempt to explain why the running game is important.
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=482

I think the issue most have, at least me, with how you state things in a manner where you say that running the ball has no impact on winning. That all you need to do is pass. Most don't agree with this, even those that think passing is more important, they still acknowledge that running is important. You just dismiss it as a novelty.

If running has no impact on winning, then tell me what team has ever won a game without running the ball at least one time. And if you can't, then statistically speaking, you HAVE to run the ball to win. Just as you have to pass the ball to win. So they are both important.

Now it's just a matter of degree and efficiency.

Running efficiently eliminates comp%, interceptions and sacks that are all factors that need to be considered in the passing game. Running also keeps the clock moving. It wears down a defense. It's not as impacted by weather. It is slow, methodical and not real exciting.

Passing is exciting and there are more big plays. You can score faster. You can put up big points. But you also risk killing drives with incompletions, sacks, interceptions.

Excelling at both prevents a defense to focus on one or the other.

It's really that simple.

 

[AdamJT13]

To suggest that stats cannot be misinterpreted because they are facts is ludicrous. And that's the point. Erroneous conclusions can be drawn from factual evidence. A study is conducted, showing that ice cream consumption and road rage are positively correlated, when ice cream consumption goes up, so do incidences of road rage. So do we conclude that eating ice cream causes road rage? Of course not. It's a third, latent factor that causes both, hot weather. Conclusions have been drawn from fact throughout history...and by some very smart people, and many of those conclusions have turned out to be flat wrong because the facts have either been misinterpreted or there are additional factors that haven't been considered.

The correlation between ice cream consumption and road rage could be easily proved or disproved as a causal relationship. The fact that both occur at the same time is irrelevant unless the people who engaged in road rage had eaten ice cream before that. So you'd have to look at people who ate ice cream and THEIR occurrences of road rage (did it go up?), as well as whether people who engaged in road rage had eaten ice cream at a rate higher than people who didn't.

Regarding passing, running and winning, all of this has been thoroughly studied. It is not merely coincidental -- by and large, teams get a lead by passing more efficiently than their opponent, they maintain the lead by preventing the opponent from passing more efficiently than they do, and they win when they pass more efficiently than their opponent over the course of the game. On the other hand, running well and stopping the run does not correlate to winning on the scoreboard at any point in the game. For example, if there was cause-and-effect, the relationship between passing well and winning -- and the lack thereof between rushing well and winning -- should exist if one looked only at the halftime stats and score, before teams change their strategy and get either desperate or overly conservative, depending on the score. Those studies have been done, and the same results have been found -- winning the pass efficiency battle in the first half correlates highly with being ahead at halftime, while losing the rushing efficiency battle in the first half doesn't correlate with being ahead at halftime.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is nothing coincidental about passing better than your opponent and winning.

 

[AdamJT13]

How about the dallas cowboys and Tony Romo pass better the fewer times Romo throws the ball?

How many times does it need to be explained? Romo averages MORE passes in the first half of wins and MORE passes in the first three quarters of wins than he does in losses. If Romo is passing well, that usually puts us ahead in the fourth quarter, and Romo doesn't need to pass at the end of the game, so he ends up with fewer attempts overall. If he's not passing well or the other team is passing better, then we usually are losing, and he needs to throw more in the fourth quarter, which means more total attempts for the game -- even though he passed fewer times in the first three quarters, on average.

 

[JBS]

How many times does it need to be explained? Romo averages MORE passes in the first half of wins and MORE passes in the first three quarters of wins than he does in losses. If Romo is passing well, that usually puts us ahead in the fourth quarter, and Romo doesn't need to pass at the end of the game, so he ends up with fewer attempts overall. If he's not passing well or the other team is passing better, then we usually are losing, and he needs to throw more in the fourth quarter, which means more total attempts for the game -- even though he passed fewer times in the first three quarters, on average.

Romo threw 100 fewer times in 14 than 13...yet, he threw the ball more times in the first 3Qs in 14 than 13? Seems unlikely

 

[AdamJT13]

Your ability to pass well is directly related to the running game.

If that was true, there would be a correlation. There isn't one. You can't have a causal relationship without a correlation existing.

 

[AdamJT13]

Romo threw 100 fewer times in 14 than 13...yet, he threw the ball more times in the first 3Qs in 14 than 13? Seems unlikely

Romo averaged more passes in the first half in 2014 than he did in the first halves of games from 2011-2013. He averaged more passes in the first three quarters in 2014 than he did in the first three quarters of games from 2011-2013.

 

[Nightman]

So let's try to recap

We have found a stat that says if a team:
Passes well when they pass
Doesn't get sacked
Doesn't throw INTs
Plays better pass D than they play Offense
Gets sacks
Get INTs

That they will win close to 80% of the time

That has morphed into the Running game is of no importance

 

[AdamJT13]

I think the issue most have, at least me, with how you state things in a manner where you say that running the ball has no impact on winning. That all you need to do is pass.

I have never once stated or even implied that all you need to do is pass. I've repeatedly stated that it doesn't matter how often you run or pass -- you can run more or pass more by preference. You can run more or pass more depending on the game situation. It's not about how much you run or pass. It's about how WELL you pass (and stop the pass).That's it. Not how often -- how well.

Let me say it again. It's NOT ABOUT frequency of running or passing. It's not even about the percentage of runs vs. percentage of passes. It has NOTHING to do with how often you run or how often you pass.

Do you understand that?

 

[AdamJT13]

So let's try to recap

We have found a stat that says if a team:
Passes well when they pass
Doesn't get sacked
Doesn't throw INTs
Plays better pass D than they play Offense
Gets sacks
Get INTs

That they will win close to 80% of the time

That has morphed into the Running game is of no importance

No, you left out the part about there being very little correlation between:

Rushing well and passing well
Rushing well and winning
Stopping the opponent from rushing well and stopping the opponent from passing well
Stopping the opponent from rushing well and winning

That's why being able to run well or stop the opponent from running well is of little importance.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

So let's try to recap

We have found a stat that says if a team:
Passes well when they pass
Doesn't get sacked
Doesn't throw INTs
Plays better pass D than they play Offense
Gets sacks
Get INTs

That they will win close to 80% of the time

That has morphed into the Running game is of no importance

He never said that. He said that running the ball well is unimportant. He makes a compelling argument while it's countered by a lot of mindless ideology and groupthink.

 

[Nightman]

No, you left out the part about there being very little correlation between:

Rushing well and passing well
Rushing well and winning
Stopping the opponent from rushing well and stopping the opponent from passing well
Stopping the opponent from rushing well and winning

That's why being able to run well or stop the opponent from running well is of little importance.

because yards know how they are gained or defended

 

[AdamJT13]

because yards know how they are gained or defended

Do you think the choice of running or passing is arbitrary? Or do you think there are situations when a team needs to pass the ball to increase its chances of success? And are running and passing plays equally likely to gain the same number of yards, or result in a turnover or score?

 

[Nightman]

He never said that. He said that running the ball well is unimportant. He makes a compelling argument while it's countered by a lot of mindless ideology and groupthink.

I know what he says.....he is locked into a theory based on his interpretation of some numbers.....I don't think 80% is that strong of a metric....that means up to 4 teams lose every week that do exactly what he prescribes...

 

[CowboyRoy]

Romo averaged more passes in the first half in 2014 than he did in the first halves of games from 2011-2013. He averaged more passes in the first three quarters in 2014 than he did in the first three quarters of games from 2011-2013.

Im sure that had to do with the fact that in 2015 we were 3 and out more often and in 2014 Romo was executing long drives hence more plays hence more passing overall.