The Cowboys have a lot of work to do for next season.
Over this past weekend, the Los Angeles Rams, Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos, and New England Patriots advanced to championship weekend, by beating the Chicago Bears, San Francisco 49ers, Buffalo Bills, and Houston Texans respectively. Obviously, this means that the winning teams did something that the Cowboys have not done in three decades, and even the losing sides that reached the Divisional playoffs achieved something the Cowboys have failed to do since 2022 – losing in the Wild Card round in their last playoff appearance in 2023.
It will be up to Brian Schottenheimer and his staff that’s remained in tact despite the coaching carousel being in full swing around the league to look at the trends and tendencies of the teams finding playoff success this winter, and apply it to year two under Schotty’s leadership. On offense, the Cowboys are picking up the pieces from their 7-9-1 season from a familiar place. A healthy Dak Prescott and the duo of CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens put up impressive numbers in the passing game to lead a highly-ranked Cowboys offense statistically. This is nothing new for the Cowboys, and is a point of contention within the fanbase as different coordinators and offensive play-callers have come and gone. The results have remained impressive on offense, but no playoff success to speak of has followed – and now another top-ranked offense was left out of the playoffs entirely, mainly to the fault of the defense.
Sticking with areas the Cowboys passing offense can improve even further to be more like the offenses that were playing this past weekend, or will be with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, there is one very noticeable one. With the amount of work that is needed for the Cowboys to field a more game-ready defense in 2026, including with a new defensive coordinator, the personnel on offense may remain mostly the same going into 2026. This is why adjustments within Schottenheimer’s scheme will be even more critical to find improvements, and luckily this noticeable difference from the Cowboys offense to the best of the rest is in fact scheme based.
Cowboys were one of the least effective passing offenses when targeting their running backs in 2025
Going in order of the games played on Divisional weekend, the usage of running backs in the passing game paints an interesting story when compared to the Cowboys. James Cook caught two of his three targets for the Bills, with one of them going for an explosive play of 24 yards. On the winning side of that game, R.J. Harvey caught five of his six targets for 46 total yards, also with one explosive of 24 yards.
In the Seahawks blowout win over the 49ers, Kenneth Walker caught all three of his targets for 29 yards. On the losing side, Christian McCaffrey tied for the 49ers lead in targets with six, catching five for 39 yards. On Sunday, the Patriots beat the Texans with another perfect targets/receptions ratio from a running back, as Rhamondre Stevenson caught all four of his targets. Willie Marks caught two of three for the Texans. In the Rams’ overtime win at the Bears, Kyren Williams caught four of his five targets for 30 yards. In the Bears latest wild comeback attempt that fell just short, Kyle Monangai was the back they targeted in the pass game, and also went a perfect four for four with 36 yards.
Combined across all four games, this is an 85% (29 for 34) completion percentage when targeting running backs. Creating advantageous matchups in the passing game is the name of the game in today’s pro football, and finding a way to get running backs routed against linebackers and safeties continues to be a consistently reliable way to do this. Even if just to move the chains once or twice on key drives, these plays make the difference in games, especially this deep into the season. These types of easy completions and checkdowns with opportunities for yards after the catch have not been a strong suit of the Cowboys passing game for longer than just their first season in Schottenheimer’s scheme.
With Dallas having the depth they do at tight end and seeing an uptick in usage of multiple tight ends though, they do have this option beyond wide receivers and running backs to spread the ball around, but in watching other elite teams the truth still remains that specifically getting the ball to running backs through the air matters.
The Cowboys shortcomings here were not necessarily because of a lack of effort, either. Starting running back Javonte Williams was tied with Saquon Barkley for eighth in the NFL in targets for running backs this season with 51. The first problem is, his 42 receptions are the lowest by a full 13 catches out of this top eight, and his 322 yards fall well behind other backs just ahead of Williams on the targets list. Kenneth Gainwell in sixth with 78 targets, 73 catches, and 486 yards. Williams’ 3.9 yards per catch were a career low in his first season in Dallas by a full yard. Starting just five total games through his first two seasons, his 51 targets in year one with the Cowboys are also a low compared to 58 in 13 starts for the Broncos in 2023, and a career high 70 in 2024.
The “eye test” from watching and taking notes on each and every Cowboys game this season backs up all of this numerical data as well. Far too many times, passes into the flat from Prescott to Williams or other backs were desperation throws under pressure to outlet the ball behind the line of scrimmage, not intentional throws with blocking set up to gain yards or priorities within the progression. Losses like Week 6 at the Carolina Panthers or Week 14 at the Detroit Lions come to mind when thinking of passes to running backs that lost yards and were drive killers in key spots.
Overall, the Cowboys actually had a high completion percentage when throwing to backs, a stat that is helped along by Hunter Luepke catching 13 of 15 targets and Miles Sanders going eight for eight on targets to receptions in the four games he appeared in. Completion percentage does not nearly tell a full story though.
There are multiple sources of hope that the Cowboys can make significant improvements in this area. The first is the overall added creativity that was seen within Schottenheimer’s offense, to mix up personnel groupings, alignments, and increase motion all in year one. The second is the usage of fullback Hunter Luepke, which shows the Cowboys want to use players out of the backfield in a variety of ways, just that they have the most room to grow in throwing these players the ball. The third is the knowledge that these types of plays to feature throws out of the backfield are in fact within the playbook, although unfortunately one of the best examples of this from 2025 was a play that led to an injury. CeeDee Lamb was lined up in the backfield for a running play against the Bears in week three, but got hurt on the play and was out for the rest of the game – a 31 to 14 loss. Dallas may want to think twice about putting their best and most consistent receiving threat in the backfield, but the idea on principle to change up the ways they get Lamb the ball to include out of the backfield is a good sign overall.
In their last, meaningless game of the regular season, the Cowboys expanded on this with options that would be much better than Lamb, giving Jaydon Blue a game-high 16 carries and targeting Phil Mafah in the passing game twice for two catches. The Cowboys have options beyond Williams, who is set to be a free agent but one the Cowboys already have reported interest in prioritizing a return for, to expand their running back usage and get more reps for Blue and Mafah to see the field as receiving threats. Blue was constantly fighting an uphill battle to earn the trust of the coaching staff to see these reps, and Mafah was lost in the shuffle a bit as a seventh-round pick third in line behind a starter in Williams who was very effective running the ball – something the Cowboys ultimately still want to prioritize above everything else.
If the Cowboys are able to re-sign both Javonte Williams and George Pickens, for the first time in a very long time the idea of “running it back” on offense for the most part isn’t a scary one. They can actually use scheme continuity to their advantage, adding the wrinkles that Schottenheimer should be trusted to install after a successful year one as HC/play-caller. Assuming the Cowboys will give rightful attention to the defense all offseason, when it comes time to project growth in the passing game for 2026, a lot of familiar names such as Lamb, Pickens, Jake Ferguson, Luke Schoonmaker, Brevyn Spann-Ford, Javonte Williams, and Jaydon Blue will likely be in the conversation. This is not a bad place for the Cowboys to be, and if these in-house players continue to ascend, the Dallas passing offense could move even closer to matching not just the ones that put up big numbers like they’re used to, but the ones that keep their quarterbacks on the field into January and February.
A final four quarterbacks standing of Matt Stafford, second-year starter Drake Maye, Jarrett Stidham (for the injured Bo Nix), and Sam Darnold, and the league’s highest paid passer in Prescott well on the outside looking in for the second year in a row, should be all the motivation the Cowboys need to realize the opportunity to make a run with the talent they have on offense is right in front of them. It will take deviating from what’s led to solely regular season success for a long time from this core, and having a more diverse passing game that finds better ways to include throwing the ball to their running backs for significant yards would be a great lesson to learn based on how this year’s playoffs are unfolding.
Category: General Sports
