During McCarthy’s year off he took a good look at what the successful offenses around the league were doing in an effort to implement some of the better concepts into his offense. In an interview he specifically mentioned watching and liking what Shanahan’s San Francisco offense was doing, which is really great news for us because the Mike/Kyle Shanahan offense is a very good one. Kyle uses much of what his father did in Denver and has added some of his own tweaks to that potent offense. That scheme has always given defenses fits.
McCarthy also said that he liked some of what Moore did in Dallas last year as well, going on to say that is why he wanted to keep Moore as his OC (he even said had he got hired elsewhere, he was going to try to bring Moore there).
During the long offseason, McCarthy and Moore sat down and put together what they want to do on offense. That will be not only a combination of what Moore did last year and of McCarthy’s west coast offense... but will also contain parts of what Mike learned last year watching other offenses.
So, added to the parts of Mike’s and Kellen’s that they implement will likely be some concepts from the Shanahan offense... meaning we’ll likely see a good bit of play action passes in combination with rollouts. That with the zone blocking like McCarthy used in GB and Shanahan uses in SF is bad news for defenses. It is very difficult to deal with.
In Green Bay, Mike used a lot of 3 receiver sets and considering the top 3 WR’s that Dallas has, I expect a whole lot of it in Dallas. McCarthy has always had an efficient, dangerous passing game in the way he has the WR’s run their routes. With all 3 WR’s in Dallas being so dangerous, Zeke shouldn’t face a lot of loaded boxes, so if they use a lot of play action along with that zone blocking, I expect Elliott to have a great year running the ball.
McCarthy was very good at getting receivers the ball where they can get yards after the catch. Really, that is what most west coast offenses do. So I’d expect to see more YAC than we’ve been used to seeing in Dallas as well. With Lamb onboard, that could be fun to watch.
So the offense will probably look somewhat like what you saw from San Francisco last season. The Green Bay OL and the SF OL both use a similar blocking scheme... and Zeke runs well behind zone blocking... all of which makes me think that play action passes will be a nightmare for defenses facing the Cowboys.
The biggest thing is that both Mike and Kellen have really good offensive minds and when given the weapons in Dallas, should be able to create a lot of problems for defenses. That along with going back to the very good zone blocking scheme gives me high hopes about what they can do on offense in Dallas.