Football doesn't work like that. For most of those years, Dallas had no running game at all. No defense whatsoever. Not a hint of a pass rush. Just a QB that had to basically win or lose every game all by himself. If he could Houdini his way into a place to throw, he had Witten and a long list of receivers that came and went.
It was a toxic approach to football. Those Saints and Giants had good offensive lines, a reasonable pass rush, and their defenses were not even close to the depths of hopelessness we watched around here.
Now, we've fixed the run game, and the defense is slowly inching along to getting better on occasion. But now we have QB questions.
Jerry.
To say we had no running game is false. We typically had an average running game. From 2006-2014 we averaged 16.5 ranking on total yards with 2012 being worst at 31st in the league and 2004 being best at 2nd in the league.
During that same time, our average yards per attempt ranked 11.5 with 2009 being 2nd best in league and 2012 being 30th in the league.
From and attempts standpoint, we averaged 20th in the league in attempts. 2014 was our best year in total attempts raking 3rd best, and 2012 and 2013 as our worst years ranking 31st fewest rushing attempts in the league.
2009 sticks out to me as we ranked 21st in the league in # of attempts yet were averaging the 2nd best yards per attempts and finished with the 7th highest total yards.
We had the ability to run the ball but we focused on passing the ball. For years fans would continually complain the team wouldn't run the football enough. Garrett would even say in his press conferences they needed to stick with the run, but would continue getting away from it in favor of the pass.