Cowboy Wire: Redzone issues are keeping this offense from being elite

Kwyn said:
At least half of all red zone touchdowns are pass plays so it’s being good at run blocking doesn’t mean you’re helping them score red zone touchdowns.

Steele is also an excellent run blocker but like Smith is not good at pass blocking but he takes a hundred times more heat than Smith.

Also, Tyler Smith committed the most penalties on the entire team.

Six holds and four false starts.

It’s hard to track down and distance details for penalties without a lot of detailed game log digging but

I do remember him with a holding penalty at the five yard line that negated a Fluornoy touchdown against the Chargers in week 16

Red Zone Penalties seems to have been a repeated issue for the team and since we led the league in penalties, I imagine it’s a safe bet thst we had a large number in the red zone.

I just think this was a terrific example of a player getting his big bag of money and then coasting. Smith had his worst season in a year where he had the richest interior lineman contract in NFL history.
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Steele WAS an excellent run blocker; he is just good now
 
Kwyn said:
The team was awful in the red zone. Read the article. 24th in the league inside the ten.
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Ok? Has nothing to do with what I said.

That ranking also doesn't include other percentages. One poor game can knock you down 20 spots.
 
when you are inside the ten, the play caller has to know exactly what his team is capable of
who is playing well and who is not
who on the D is baling and who is not
Fact is there are not a lot of great play callers
and we have not had any of them for a long time
 
big dog cowboy said:
Look at what happened last year with Adams and Schotty. The Red Zone issues were considerably better.
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while it’s true they improved, they were still really bad, especially since we had our best, most well rounded, offense in years

Inside the twenty: 56.92% (18th)
Inside the ten: 69.4% (24th)


2024, we converted 46% inside the twenty
 
The thing about leaning on play calling as an excuse is this. While of course you want to be running the best play for the situation the defense ultimately decides what that play should be. Any play can be defensed with the right defensive play calling.

You have to be able to react and adjust in real time to what the defense is showing you before the snap. Then you have to be decisive and precise in the execution.

There is no magic play the play caller can send in without knowing what the defense is going to do.
 
Kwyn said:
I don’t know what you meant with that sentence. Did you?
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The last? I'm referring to this:
In goal-to-go situations (i.e. inside the 10-yard line), the Cowboys ranked much worse, finishing an embarrassing 24th in the NFL. They only got across the goal line in 69.4% of these doorstep situations, wasting prime opportunities for points and making things much harder on themselves than they have to be.
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The article says they're 24th but it doesn't mention what other rankings are or the raw data. This has multiple problems.
- Assuming a team has 50 goal-to-go situations a year, one game where you go 0-3 can skew rankings significantly (6% swing). That's probably high for total opportunities.
- It doesn't show the delta between higher rankings and 24th. If the difference between 24th and, say, 10th, is 5%, that's mostly meaningless.

It's a problem of small data samples.
 
Vtwin said:
The redzone exposes overly cautious QBs. Especially overly cautious QBs who are a tick slow on the trigger and a smidgen off on the placement. Been a thing for the last ten years.
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Yep...that's a big part of it. When the D can compress, things MUST happen faster and more accurate.

First...the right plays have to be called in an agressive manner...keep the D from refreshing and planning. Then the QB has to dig in hard, find the right play quick. The OL has to move a couple bodies and RB get tough yards.

I don't think we're very good at doing any of it. Aubrey comes in.
 
Vtwin said:
The redzone exposes overly cautious QBs. Especially overly cautious QBs who are a tick slow on the trigger and a smidgen off on the placement. Been a thing for the last ten years.
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Dak is not, by any metric, a cautious QB so...basically the exact opposite.

Consistently one of the best in the league in CPOE.
 
SteveTheCowboy said:
Yep...that's a big part of it. When the D can compress, things MUST happen faster and more accurate.

First...the right plays have to be called in an agressive manner...keep the D from refreshing and planning. Then the QB has to dig in hard, find the right play quick. The OL has to move a couple bodies and RB get tough yards.

I don't think we're very good at doing any of it. Aubrey comes in.
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Exactly. I'm no expert but I'd be coaching my QB and supporting him to take control and call his own plays, especially inside the ten. Put your base personnel out there and the playbook is wide open.

Keep the defense on its heels hitting them fast and hard.
 
LouBrown said:
Dak is not, by any metric, a cautious QB so...basically the exact opposite.

Consistently one of the best in the league in CPOE.
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No sir. Dak is very cautious with his throws and always has been. It's why he went so long without throwing a pick his rookie season. It is also why his history is littered with poor starts only to come on strong when playing from well behind when the defense has loosened up and in 'keep everything in front of you' mode.

I'll give you that he really did seem to try and change that last season and it was effective (quick slants to Pickens) but it is not natural to him and defenses did start to jump him. The pick in the Lions game is a great example. Defender was sitting on it licking his lips and Dak threw a slightly off target ball (outside of Pickens frame) allowing the defender to easily jump it. Great example of effort without instincts. Pump fake and look somewhere else was the play in that situation.
 
LouBrown said:
Red Zone success is mostly just random and is significantly swayed by both starting field position and where a red zone possession happens to start.

The offense was elite anyway.
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Nothing in the NFL is random. This isn't a monopoly board game
 
stilltheguru said:
Nothing in the NFL is random. This isn't a monopoly board game
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Year-to-year small sample things like red zone performance and turnovers are random in that you can't predict them.

It doesn't matter if a team was good/bad in the red zone last year. Philly, for instance, improved their red zone TD offense by 13% but had a worse offense.
 
Vtwin said:
No sir.

Not in any objectively quantifiable stat that doesn't contain a subjective interpretation, such as the cpoe fantasy football hogwash.
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CPOE isn't subjective.

You are literally only using the subjective lol.

You are wrong. It's fine. You'll live.
 
On paper cowboys should be able to do whatever they want. Especially with that interior. Calls do seem suspect at times. Could be a Dak thing. Tough to point to one particular thing.
 
LouBrown said:
CPOE isn't subjective.

You are literally only using the subjective lol.

You are wrong. It's fine. You'll live.
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That’s the first time he’s ever heard CPOE so he’s gonna chalk it up as hog wash and call it subjective. I don’t know why he didn’t just google:
 
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