What’s wrong with the Dallas Cowboys offense? Jason Garrett counts the ways

In his effort to keep the critical fingers from pointing at just a player or two, Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett spread the blame around with regard to his offense’s ineptitude to score points.

In the wake of Dallas’ 24-13 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, Garrett hit on something that should give you a clue on the offensive issues. It’s a little bit of everything. Or, maybe a lot of everything.

Dallas’ offense has scored 41 points in three games, the second-fewest in the NFL. It’s the fewest combined points over the first three games for the Cowboys since they scored 39 in 1990. They also started 1-2 and finished 7-9 that season.

So what’s the deal with the offense? Take your pick. The play-calling? Execution? Talent level? General coaching?

Garrett said he has no plans in altering offensive coordinator Scott Linehan’s role in calling plays. In fact, Garrett basically dismissed the notion that there was any issue with offensive game plan.

“Yeah, we’re not going to go down that road right now. I have a lot of confidence in Scott Linehan,” he said. “He has been an outstanding coordinator in this league for a long time. He’s been an outstanding coordinator for us. He’s been an outstanding play-caller for us. What we need to do is get better on offense.”

A good start to improving the offense would be to show some form of passing game. The Cowboys’ 435 yards passing (which includes negative yards for sacks) over three weeks is the second-lowest in the league (ahead of Arizona’s 396).

“We haven’t played well enough on offense. So everybody has to look at it. I think it would be false for me to say this is about the play calling,” Garrett said. “This is about everything we’re doing offensively. We have to do better. We have to coach better, we’ve got to play better. We’ve got to run it better, we’ve got to throw it better. We’ve got to protect better. We have to do all the things that good offenses do. We have to do all those things better. We’re working hard to do that.”

Garrett said plays were called in which Dak Prescott had the option to throw down field but either the coverage wasn’t right, or a route was wrong or Seattle’s pressure forced Prescott to improvise. He was sacked five times against the Seahawks and 11 times this season, tied for fifth-most in the league.

On several attempts, including a simple dump pass to Ezekiel Elliott five yards beyond the line of scrimmage, Prescott’s accuracy was woefully poor. At other times, he appeared hesitant to attempt any passes that weren’t risk-averse.

Even still, he was intercepted twice when his receivers failed to pull down passes. Garrett doesn’t believe his quarterback is too conservative. Instead, he pointed to a lack of protection from the offensive line and a failure for the receivers to get open.

“I think it’s more if you look at the specific plays. If you look at this one, ‘Hey, we had an opportunity there, but we lost inside on protection. He had to get his eyes down and get the ball out’. Or he had to move in the pocket, and he didn’t have the chance to hang in there. Or we didn’t win on the route. Or whatever it was. I think it’s more of you have to evaluate it play by pay and that’s certainly what we’ll do with our guys.”

Perhaps the problem goes even deeper. Without a full complement of All-Pro linemen (Travis Frederick), an All-Pro tight end (Jason Witten) and an All-Pro wide receiver (Dez Bryant), the Cowboys’ offense is trying to be something it’s not. After rushing for a career-high 45 yards last week, Prescott rushed just twice for 21 yards in Seattle. He’s not blameless, but he’s certainly not the only issue, Garrett said.

“He’s certainly a part of it, as are the 10 other guys, as is every coach,” he said. “We’re all a part of this. We have to make sure we get it right. We go through and look at what was good in the game and try to build on it. The things that weren’t good enough, we’ll try to address them and try to put a plan in place to get them right. That’s the process we go through. We’ll look at the video and be critical of ourselves and try to be honest and direct with our players and try to get the things that aren’t up to standard right before we play Detroit this week.”

This story was originally published September 24, 2018 at 6:08 PM.