Better protection has to be a concern primarily at two positions: left guard and right tackle. Despite being without Smith, Fleming has actually held up pretty well in pass protection at left tackle. When teams rush four, the line should be giving Prescott at least three seconds to throw consistently.
Of course, a lot of the sacks are coming on blitzes because of several issues there. First, the line and Dak has to recognize the blitz and adjust to pick it up. Every play call has an audible built in based on what the defense shows. We have not been good at making changes at the line to burn the blitz.
The second problem with blitzes is Dak also has to do with reading it. When Dak does see it coming, he has to know what hole it creates in the defense and attack that hole. He often hits his back foot on a quick drop, pats the ball and adjusts his feet rather than getting it out. There's no time for that when a free man is coming. Either he has to hit is back foot and throw, bail out of the pocket to buy more time or throw it away.
The third problem is play design. When you know that your line and QB are having trouble handling the blitz, then you put in more blitz-beating plays instead of just trying to keep running your slower-developing routes. We ran two screens effectively against New Orleans because of the Saints' aggressiveness then abandoned the screen game.
Finally, one of the main ways to get teams to cut back on blitzing is to burn them deep. You have to hit the one-on-ones on the outside for big gains to get defenses to respect it and back away from the line. We've hit a few of those throws, but not consistently enough that the reward of blitzing us isn't better than the risk.
I can't find it, but I would like to see how many sacks happen against us on five- and six-man pressures compared to four-man. I'd almost guarantee that our numbers against four-man pressure are better than most teams in the league.
