Cowboys Critic Calls for 'Chaos' - And Coach Kellen Moore Demotion; Why?
It was early on Sunday morning, at least for me. Certainly early for the morning after Christmas Day, but I wanted to make sure I spent some more time with my dad before I drove back to Dallas.
I don’t typically watch the Fox Kickoff show on Sunday morning, hosted by Charissa Thompson. Nothing against the show, I’m just usually doing other things. But, this morning, my dad had it on. So I watched.
Naturally, talked gravitated toward the Dallas Cowboys and what they needed to do in order to beat Washington on Sunday, but to also be a contender for the Super Bowl.
Everyone contributed a solution. Including former Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt.
"Sometimes to solve a crisis, you need to cause one,” Wannstedt said to the Fox crew. “Mike McCarthy needs to grab the reins of this offense."
I’m sorry, what?
I rewound, because I wanted to be sure what I heard. Did Wannstedt just advocate for McCarthy to take the play sheet out of offensive coordinator Kellen Moore’s hands?
Yep, that’s what he did.
I wonder if Wannstedt watched Sunday night’s 56-14 Cowboys blowout over Washington. I’m sure he did. That’s his job. His comment, put in a vacuum with Sunday’s game, makes Wannstedt look like he received several lumps of coal for holiday gifts and was taking it out on the Cowboys’ offense.
Of course, we don’t put these things in vacuums. We know the Cowboys have been struggling on offense for a month to produce the points they produced before quarterback Dak Prescott’s injury. We know that owner and general manager Jerry Jones acknowledged that Prescott has been in a slump of late. We also need to acknowledge, as I wrote last week, that the Cowboys had won three straight entering Sunday’s game. And, while the Cowboys weren’t scoring a ton of points, their reliance on their suffocating defense and resurgent run game would eventually pay off for Prescott and the rest of the offense.
Sunday night was the payoff.
After Wannstedt’s comment, I paid particular attention to the play-calling, especially in the first half (because, frankly, that’s what mattered).
I thought Moore called a diverse game against a depleted Washington defense. Not everything worked, of course. But some of that was execution. That trick pass play early in the game that wide receiver Amari Cooper dropped ended the first drive. Running back Ezekiel Elliott fumbled a handoff exchange but recovered it.
But, from there, everything worked, and not just because of execution. Moore put Prescott on the move more often in this one, at one point moving Prescott to his non-throwing side and allowing him to throw a completion against his body to CeeDee Lamb. In situations where Washington used a zone, Moore streamed the middle of the field with receivers and let Prescott find the best matchup.
Even though Prescott threw for 321 yards in the first half, Moore called effective run plays, effective enough to allow Prescott to use play action in several instances, including Prescott’s play-action rollout on a touchdown pass to tight end Dalton Schultz and the play action that sucked in Washington’s defense to allow for Terrence Steele’s ‘Big Man’ touchdown reception.
Elliott’s numbers weren’t gaudy, but he scored two first-half touchdowns, and his touchdown reception was an effective slip-screen that allowed Elliott to move freely into the opposite flat after making it look like he would stay in to block.
But two big adjustments stood out. First, the offense pushed the pace, keeping Washington’s defense on its heels and suiting Prescott’s penchant for making quick decisions. Second, heeding Cooper’s call for more attention gave him one of his best games of the season and forced Washington to pay more attention to Cooper, which helped everyone.
These Cowboys looked more like the Cowboys of September and October, the ones that were putting up gaudy numbers and, paired with a terrific defense, were nearly unstoppable.
Moore’s play-calling had something to do with Sunday’s win. Play-callers get plenty of scrutiny. That’s part of the job. One game, one play-call, one mistake sets scores of people off on social media and talk shows.
Was the Cowboys’ offense the previous three games a thing of beauty? No, but they won. The Cowboys’ offense was banged up, missing players due to COVID, and a play-caller like Moore has to modulate the game plan for that. Against Washington, with the Cowboys’ offense nearing full health, Moore could integrate more of the creativity that everyone loved in the first part of the year, along with the quicker pace.
It doesn’t make what Moore did in between those two points in time wrong. It likely makes it what he had to do based on where the team was from week to week.
But the worst part of what Wannstedt said was "Sometimes to solve a crisis, you need to cause one.” That’s quite possibly the worst single piece of analysis I’ve heard in pro football all season.
The Cowboys are a playoff-bound team that is this close to being sharp and ready for the postseason. Sunday’s win leads me to believe they’re peaking at the perfect time. For McCarthy to yank the play sheet away from Moore at this point could end up being a catastrophic move for the Cowboys. Moore has a built-up relationship with the offensive personnel. He’s been the voice in Prescott’s ear all season. It would be utterly discombobulating for McCarthy to do that now.
Wannstedt didn’t even cover the fact that Moore doesn’t create these game plans in a silo. Moore works with the offensive assistants. He works with McCarthy. He works with Prescott and the other offensive players. It’s not like McCarthy doesn’t bless this thing before game time.
Football seasons are long, and that’s before the NFL added a regular season game this year. We sometimes get caught up in recency bias when it comes to breaking down a team or a play-caller. Maybe that’s where I am today — the recency bias of one game in which the Cowboys did everything right.
Maybe that’s where Wannstedt was on Sunday morning — the recency bias of the Cowboys’ past few games where their offense was good enough to win, but not ‘good enough’ to create those style points that we love to talk about.
But creating chaos where none exists is a recipe for disaster proposed by a former coach that knows better.
Leave creating chaos to the Cowboys’ defense.
You can reach Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
