Dallas Cowboys win big, but can’t disregard sloppiness

The Dallas Cowboys beat the New York Giants by the score of 37-18 but they did so in poor fashion and need to correct things to gain national respect.

Raise your hand if the start of this game reminded you of Week 5 against the Green Bay Packers. Like that fateful week, the Dallas Cowboys were able to move the ball with ease. And like that week, Dallas repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with unforced errors and turnovers.

Lucky for us, the New York Giants offense isn’t the Packers. Unable to capitalize fully on Dallas’ mistakes, New York left the door open for a comeback bid. To the shock (and horror) of Steve Young, who happily pointed out the Cowboys were 0-14 when falling behind early by more than 7 points, the Cowboys were able to right the ship just before half, scoring 10 points in the last 52 seconds.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing from there (apologies for my gratuitous use of maritime analogies). Dallas continued to struggle on offense and if it wasn’t for their strong defense and their vastly inferior opponent, the box score would have looked considerably different.

Early down passing

Dak Prescott struggled from the get-go with his passing. The first play of the game Dallas had a beautiful RPO scheduled that Dak misread and fired a direct shot into the bow of the USS Antoine Bethea. Things just continued from there and the passing game actually had a worse success rate on early downs than the rushing game (which, if you follow the analytics you know that rarely happens).

Eventually Dak was able to bulk up those numbers, but the reality is he struggled hitting open players deep, he avoided targeting outside receivers most of the game, and unnecessarily forced balls downfield. We’ll need to wait for some of the play-charting data and the All-22 to become available to assess definitively, but this was a sloppier game by Dak than the pure numbers indicate.

Zeke’s back

As mentioned above, Ezekiel Elliott was great on early down rushing. It’s taken him a while to get back to the Zeke of old this season. We can go ahead and blame that on the holdout. Up until Week 7 against the Eagles, Zeke was about as elusive as a fat guy in a phone booth. He wasn’t breaking tackles or avoiding tackles and was relying on open holes and falling forward to amass totals.

Monday night was his second big showing in a row. While Zeke downplayed the performance as just taking opportunity of wide open holes, I’m going to break from my brand and give him kudos. The holes may have been there, but Zeke showed great vision and great athleticism reversing field, cutting on a dime, and following blockers. Zeke didn’t move so fluidly or patiently earlier in the season.

Giant Cadillac sized holes ain’t always gonna be there. Sometimes the holes won’t be anything bigger than a crease. But if Zeke keeps playing like this it may not matter.

Play-calling and audibles

We’ve been eager to praise Kellen Moore quite a bit this season but it hasn’t all been sunshine and rainbows from the first-year coordinator. Moore has been calling far too many 1st down running plays and has been making up for it with a pass-heavy approach on 2nd down (the only thing worse than a 1st down run is a run on 2nd and long).