Last we left the “Romo Friendly” offense, Romo found himself in anything but a friendly situation. I more or less blasted Garret for being rather stubborn and trying to continue passing the ball when Romo was having a less than stellar outing, all while the running game was clicking on all cylinders. Did Garrett learn from his mistakes last week? Did we have an actual return to “Romo Friendly” territory? And of course, most importantly, how effective was the offense on Monday night? Let’s dive into Monday night’s game and find out.
Just How “Romo Friendly” Were We?
Romo had a rather pedestrian night going 22/33 for 255 yards and also had 22 rushing yards on 5 scrambles. Romo threw for zero TDs, but he also did not turn the ball over. It wasn’t a night to write home about for sure, but he did his job and didn’t hurt the team. One of the supposed benefits to having a “Romo Friendly” offense was to not force Tony into a position to where he had to win the game for the team win after week. So in that regard, mission accomplished.
Checking the Balance
On 67 total plays, the Cowboys ran the ball 32 times. 35 pass plays were called with 2 resulting in sacks. That’s a 52.2% pass percentage. Keeping in mind though that 5 of those rushes were from Romo on passing plays, this bumps the ratio up a bit. Moving 5 rushing attempts to pass plays, that leaves us with 27 called rush plays and 40 called pass plays, making the percentage 59.7% pass plays called. While the ending stats will show more balance, overall we leaned on the pass very heavily Monday night.
Jason Witten again lead all receivers with 9 targets (Romo also completed all 9 passes to him). Roy Williams and Tashard Choice followed with 7 targets. Crayton was the third option with 4 targets. Rounding out the night was Bennett with 3 targets and Miles Austin and Felix Jones each having a single target in the game.
Overall, the ball distribution was much better this time around. If you remember the previous week, Tony only had two top options and not really a solid third option in the game as far as targets went. This time around, Tony had three solid options; furthermore, one of those solid options was Roy Williams this time around. This was a nice change from last week in which Williams only saw as many passes as Bennett did.
However, this isn’t to say Romo was always able to find the open man every play. The most egregious of his errors was missing a wide open Jason Witten (ironically enough) by the end zone on the first drive of the game. He was literally standing inside the 5 yard-line with no defenders within a few yards around him. If you remember, this drive later ended on a missed field goal by Nick Folk, not exactly a great start. The only other play that I noted Romo missed a receiver was when he missed an open Roy Williams late in the third quarter; however, he did find a wide open Choice on a dump route once the window to throw to Williams closed on him.
Overall, it was a very well-balanced game from Romo when he passed the ball. He was far from perfect, but avoided any major mistakes that would’ve hurt the Cowboys.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
I feel it is time Garrett really needs to use the K.I.S.S. principle when calling plays. Nearly 60% pass plays called is just mind boggling when you are averaging 6.6 yards/carry in the rushing game for a 212 yard total. As a point of reference, we were gaining 6.8 yards per passing play with a 237 yard total. Why call so many passes?
Granted, Carolina was basically daring Garrett to call passing plays as they spent the majority of the game in a cover 1 defense and leaving everyone in single coverage. However, despite the fact Carolina was clearly selling out for the run, we were still able to run the ball. That’s when you know you should be dominating a game via the run in my opinion. They simply could not it, and that is when you simply continue to pound the ball down their throats. Of course, you will need to mix it up, and that’s when a play action pass would open up the field in a big way (especially against a majority cover 1/single coverage defense). Oddly enough, Garrett called very few deep shots in the game despite this.
If Carolina’s defense succeeded anywhere, it was suckering Garrett into continuously going away from the strength of the offense which was the run.
Garrett also needs to apply the K.I.S.S. principle with the type of plays he is calling. The majority of our running plays were draws. While Romo does a superb job of faking the pass, I wonder what the need is to have this called basically every single run. If you catch people off balance, great, but you also leave yourself open to a blown-up play in the backfield if the defense doesn’t bite on the pass fake. In short, Garrett is getting far too cute with the play calls and the draws are just one example of it. It is great to keep a defense off balance, but you can run plays for the simple reason that you know they can’t stop it.
For further examples of getting cute, let’s take a look at our goal line situations. Our first trip down there, from the one yard line, we line up in a 3-wide, shotgun formation…and run a draw. Why we didn’t line up with at least a 2-TE set and run the ball on a simple dive is beyond me. Surely Garrett doesn’t think we can’t get a single yard when our rushing game has been dominate lately. When the Cowboys finally did get in the end zone, it was on a run by Tashard Choice for 5 yards on a shotgun draw (what a surprise, I guess if you do it enough, it works). Then on the last trip to the goal line, again on the one yard line, we run two fade routes that fall incomplete and end up with a FG. And that was after Choice fought for 3 yards on a great second effort run, aka, exactly the kind of run you want by the goal line. Again, Garrett doesn’t believe we can get one yard there on two runs, does he?
Then we also have the 2nd and 28 play call that was a draw. Of all the times Garrett does not call a pass, I find it very odd it wasn’t here.
Why get so cute with the play calling? We can clearly run the ball whenever we want to at this point and I’m not sure why we take a finesse approach to it. Garrett seems to be in love with the draw play as well as the pass. My fear is that the better defenses in the league will quickly pick up on this and stuff what has been to this point a very good running game by the Cowboys. If the running game starts to fail, I fear the rest of the “Romo Friendly” offense will soon go with it. I believe this line can perform just fine with a traditional power running attack, especially down in goal line situations and I hope Garrett will start to realize that soon.
The Verdict
As far as balance goes, we were great across the board; however, as far as effectiveness goes, I have to give failing or near failing marks to the offense. Only being able to score a single TD against a sub-par offense is inexcusable; furthermore, going 1/3 in red zone attempts against said sub-par makes things even worse. Seeing these results when you have 37:04 time of possession and 449 total yards is just mind boggling. How the Cowboys were able to flat-out dominate the Panthers and not walk out of Cowboys Stadium with a blowout is absolutely beyond me.
