In 2018, the Cowboys went 10-6 in the regular season and got to the divisional round of the NFC playoffs despite an offense that didn’t blow anybody away with its creativity. Stars like Ezekiel Elliott, Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper, as great as they were, were stilted in an offense led by Scott Linehan that was so predictable, Prescott and Cooper started to change the calls on the fly just to get traction beyond what Linehan called. It seemed that NFL defenses weren’t all that challenged by a bunch of stop routes over and over, which is probably why Dallas fired Linehan in January and replaced him with Moore, a former Cowboys backup quarterback who had risen in the ranks and was getting tagged as a rising star as a quarterback guru and play-caller.
So far, the change has done nothing but good. The Cowboys stomped the Giants 35-17, and Prescott completed 25 of 32 attempts for 405 yards with four touchdowns and zero interceptions. He became the fourth quarterback in NFL history, following Ken Anderson, Kurt Warner and Jared Goff, to end a game with a perfect 158.3 passer rating with at least 30 passing attempts.
Moore dialed up plays that featured everything from smart play-action to multiple vertical routes to Prescott’s obvious advantage. Last season, per Pro Football Focus, Prescott used play action on 25.4% of his 680 dropbacks, a percentage that ranked 15th in the league. Using play action, Prescott completed 68.6% of his passes for 1,312 yards, 8.6 yards per attempt, seven touchdowns and two interceptions. Without play action, Prescott completed 66.9% of his passes for 3,065 yards, 7.0 yards per attempt, 17 touchdowns and seven interceptions. Prescott’s play action passer rating was 104.8; his passer rating without was 93.3.
There are different ways to create explosive plays with play action, and you don’t need a dominant run game to do it. Carson Wentz led the NFL last season with an improvement of 3.2 yards per attempt when using play action, and the Eagles’ run game was rather anemic in 2018. Philly made it work with a lot of RPOs and backfield motion; the Cowboys had the advantage of Ezekiel Elliott and an overall offense that forced linebackers to choke up to the line of scrimmage or remain neutral as opposed to ignoring the run threat and just dropping into coverage all the time. Imagine how things would go with a better offensive mind than Linehan’s.
Against the Giants, Prescott used play action on 46.9% of his 32 dropbacks. Among starting quarterbacks in Week 1, only Lamar Jackson had a higher play action rate (50%), and Jackson was the only other quarterback in Week 1 to put up a perfect passer rating with at least 20 attempts. Three of his four touchdown passes came with play action, his yards per attempt went up from 11.6 to 13.8, and his passer rating went from 124.1 to 158.3. There are other factors that go into an explosive passing offense, of course, but the intelligent schematic use of play action is something you’ll see a lot of when discerning why Prescott was so effective last Sunday.
Dallas also ramped up their use of 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three receivers). Per Sharp Football Analysis, the Cowboys went with that personnel package on 73% of their plays as opposed to the 66% they used in 2018. And in 11 personnel, Prescott completed 20 of 24 passes for 13.6 yards per attempt, all four touchdown passes, and that perfect passer rating.
“We’re getting our best athletes in open space and getting them in the areas they’re most comfortable in,” Moore said after the game, per USA TODAY’s Jori Epstein. “It’s fun to be a part of.”
Owner Jerry Jones said that it reminded him of the Cowboys’ famed “Triplets” — Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin — who helped the franchise win three Super Bowls in the early- to mid-1990s.
“I know if they tried to put more up in the line to stop Emmitt back in those days, then Aikman would pick them apart going down the field,” Jones said. “One or the other. I don’t know if I have seen us since those days being able to take whatever the defense gives us and find an answer. I feel that. I saw us do that out there against the Giants today.”
As much as he was frequently boxed in by Linehan’s offense, that’s how expansive things were for Prescott in his first regular-season game in Moore’s system.
Vince Verhei of Football Outsiders points out that as valuable as Prescott was when throwing touchdowns, he set the offense up for success even more when he was up against the sticks. Prescott threw 10 passes on the wrong side of the Dallas 40-yard line, and eight of them resulted in first downs. The other two were a 6-yard gain on first down and an incompletion on second-and-4. Those nine completions produced a total of 216 yards.
This 62-yard quick slant to Michael Gallup that took the ball from the Dallas 13-yard line to the New York 25-yard line was the most explosive example. The Giants spun from a two-high coverage look to single-high, Prescott happily took the opening, and then it was just up to Gallup to exploit Big Blue’s execrable tackling and placement.
Basically, wherever the Cowboys were on the field, the Giants had no answer for their passing concepts. And yes, part of that equation is a sub-par defense. But these are concepts that will work against just about any defense, and Moore’s fixes to the playbook shouldn’t be minimized just because they worked against an inferior opponent. This offense is set up to succeed as never before through Prescott’s time as its quarterback, and here’s how Moore has done it.
This 28-yard first-quarter touchdown pass to tight end Blake Jarwin is an excellent example of intelligent play action. Creating space in the middle of the field is one thing; Moore also had plans for his subsequently open receivers when New York’s defense downshifted on Elliott and vacated between the seams. Jarwin runs a narrow over route from right to left against the Giants’ two-high coverage shell, and his efforts are aided by three Giants defenders–safety Antoine Bethea and linebackers Tae Davis and Alec Ogletree–who bite on the fake.
“When you have a great run game like [we do], that’s what happens,” Prescott said, via John Machota of The Athletic. “The backers step up and they leave void zones in the field. That’s what happened on both of them. It’s great play-calling by Kellen, great timing. Those are easy touchdowns. You beg for those.”
Moore also used a lot of pre-snap motion, which aided Prescott in discerning whether the coverage he was facing was zone or man–generally speaking, if a defender follows your receiver across the field in motion, they’re using some sort of man coverage. If your opponent hands off responsibility from defender to defender through the motion, you’re facing zone. Prescott has receiver Michael Gallup as his backside option to the boundary, and he has faith in his read of the defense, and faith in his target, to make this challenging throw for a 36-yard completion even with a late-developing blitz coming at him.
Here’s an eight-yard completion to Tavon Austin with 4:37 left in the first half. Not an explosive play, but an interesting one in how Moore sets up quick escape hatches through scheme. This looks like a screen RPO based on the blocking scheme in which center Travis Frederick and left tackle Tyron Smith pull to the left, but again, motion shows man coverage and when the slot defender does blitz, Prescott has an open outlet to either side by design. He could have hit Randall Cobb, the motion receiver, just as easily with the backside slot vacated by the blitz void.
This 28-yard touchdown pass to Amari Cooper shows a few interesting things. Since we’re beholden to compare every passing offense to Sean McVay’s, there were elements of McVay’s magic dust in what the Cowboys did, from the increased use of 11 personnel to backfield motion on passing plays to the use of “nasty” (narrow) receiver splits to widen the field to the front side after the snap.
Again, the pre-snap motion shows man coverage. It also displaces any possible help to the backside. Prescott is presented with a wider read perception to his front side with the motion to bunch, but he also knows that he has a one-on-one matchup between his best receiver and Giants rookie cornerback DeAndre Baker. Prescott is smart enough to know how that’s going to work out.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the transition from Linehan to Moore is that Moore didn’t immediately throw a bunch of new concepts into the playbook and force everyone to get with the program.
“I don’t know if we ran one play tonight that hasn’t been in our offense for some time,” Prescott said after the game. “But as I said, credit to Kellen of just dialing them up, putting it at the right time, knowing what the defense is going to give us. It resulted in a few wide open touchdowns.”
Nothing the Cowboys did was incredibly complicated. None of it had to be, because the offense was run by a coordinator who understood his personnel, reacted to how his opponent was reacting to his team, and had multiple factors in place for success that would work on a universal basis.
When you’re advancing from a coordinator who seemed unable to do any of those things, you get what we saw on Sunday from the Cowboys: A team whose talent will finally be unleashed at its highest potential.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar has also covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018.
