Romo is, without a doubt, at a point in his career where any one hit can knock him out for the season. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that if you limit the number of drop backs, and the number of 3rd and longs, you limit the number of opportunities for that to happen. And a stout run game is the perfect way to establish that. When Romo runs around and feels like he has to do it all, that is when he is exposed and most at risk. You can make up all the nonsense you want in year head, but its no coincidence that Romo had the best year of his career when we dominated in the run game. Its also no coincidence that we have the best season in some 7 years and went 12-4. Blow all the smoke you want about your theory that passing wins in the NFL. It does, but when you add a dominant run game to it, it protects the QB, protects a bad D, and makes you a much better team.
Give me 3rd and 2 all day long over 3rd and 8.
This post has a lot of truth in it, and is a rarity at the Zone, because while it overstates the role of the running game in 2014, it does so only slightly.
Limiting Romo's dropbacks: Over his career up until 2014, Romo had averaged 17 pass attempts in the first half of games. In 2014, he averaged 18 pass attempts. So we were running more, but since we were also punting less, we had more plays. Although the pass/run ratio was not as pass-heavy as it had been, the direct result of running more was actually an increase in Romo's dropbacks in the first half. Since we had more leads that year, Romo didn't throw it nearly as much in the second half, so you could argue that running the ball more was one of the reasons we had the lead, and that this indirectly limited his dropbacks. Of course, simply playing better on offense and defense was what gave us more leads, and there are many, many factors involved in what made us a better team in 2014 that go beyond running more. In any case, we certainly didn't build our leads by throwing
less.
Limiting 3rd and longs: In 2013, Dallas' average 3rd-down distance to go ranked 26th. In 2014, it ranked 7th. But maybe an even better comparison is 2013 (26th) vs. 2015 (17th). Our 2015 offense without Romo (and with McFadden) was better than the 2013 version with Romo at limiting 3rd and long situations. There is no doubt that committing to the run allowed this team to get into more favorable distances on 3rd down, even with a backup QB. But if the team was better at limiting 3rd-down distances in 2015 than in 2013, that also means you're overestimating the effect those shorter distances had on our offense.
1st & 2nd down play selection (scoring rank)
2013: Romo 60% pass (4th)
2014: Romo 44% pass (2nd)
2015: others 51% pass (27th)
The 2013 version with Romo ranked 4th in scoring (per drive), mostly by avoiding 3rd downs altogether. The 2015 offense without Romo (with its shorter 3rd-down distances) ranked 27th in scoring. Obviously, the ideal situation was 2014 (Romo + commitment to the run) when we ranked 2nd in scoring. The point here is that, while both Romo's presence
and the commitment to the run make a difference, the much bigger difference is Romo.
In the last 8 games of 2014, when defenses were playing honest, and Murray wasn't getting as many yards as he had in the first 8, we kept running the ball on 1st down -- not because it left us with more favorable distances on 2nd down, but because we knew Romo could get us out of trouble if our 1st-down run failed. Which it did quite often in the second half of 2014, when Murray averaged only 3.9 yards per 1st-down run.
RB's avg on 1st-down run (QB's rating on 2nd down)
2013: Murray 5.4 (Romo 102.1)
2014 (g 1-8): Murray 5.8 (Romo 87.3)
2014 (g 9-16): Murray 3.9 (Romo 142.1)
2015: McFadden 4.6 (Cassel 30.0)
There's a lot to see there. Without a doubt, it shows that when defenses were forced to play honest in the second half of 2014, it opened up the passing game. By running so often on 1st down all year long, we gradually reached a point midway through the season where we could take advantage of defenders who could no longer cheat toward the pass. Notice that Murray's average went down almost a full two yards per carry -- while Romo's rating skyrocketed and our scoring went up.
Over his career, Romo was already the best in the league on 2nd and long going into 2014. And that was against defenses that were playing pass. That 142.1 rating is what happens when you put the best in the league in that situation up against defenses that now also have to think about the run. Anybody who thinks it doesn't matter how often you run the ball would have a hard time explaining these 2014 numbers.
I think it also shows (again) how important the passing game is, no matter who's running the ball. McFadden faced defenses that were focused solely on stopping the run, and I don't think he would have had any problem adding an extra yard to his average if he'd played an entire season with a healthy Romo to keep defenses honest. Assuming McFadden avoided injury, I also don't doubt that his average would have gone down if he'd been used as often as Murray was on 1st down. But would it have gone down two full yards, as Murray's did? And maybe more importantly, would it really have mattered if it did?
