Fixing the Cowboys Red Zone Offense in 4 Simple Steps

No team has come close to the number of plays run in the red zone this season than the Dallas Cowboys.

They have 85 offensive plays in the red zone this season.

The next closest teams are the 49ers, Bills, Chiefs, Chargers and Dolphins. Their totals?

• 85 – Cowboys
  —
• 54 – 49ers
• 53 – Bills
• 52 – Chiefs & Chargers
• 50 – Dolphins

And yet despite all of those plays, the Cowboys have just 8 red zone touchdowns scored this season.

Those other teams with 50 to 54 red zone plays? They have between 9 and 15 touchdowns scored, all more than the Cowboys.

The 8 Cowboys TDs on 85 plays is a 10.8% TD rate.

That ranks 30th in the NFL.

If we want to give Mike McCarthy one potential out, I will concede that yes, many of these touches have come in the second half of blowouts where the Cowboys have backups in the game and might be intentionally calling suboptimal offense in order to just end the game faster.

But through the marvel of current statistics, we can remove plays where the offense is up by more than two touchdowns and focus on play calling, decision-making, and execution prior to the game reaching blowout status.

After doing that, I’ve come up with 4 extremely easy suggestions for the Cowboys to fix their red zone offense overnight.

But first, let’s dig into a permeating theme with the Cowboys red zone offense this year:

Dallas MUST get more aggressive on early downs inside the red zone.

In this analysis, we are stripping out all instances of red zone plays when the Cowboys are up by over 2 touchdowns as there are a lot of garbage time calls in the small 2023 sample.

Cowboys in the red zone in 2023:

• Dallas is converting first and second downs into another first down only 24% of the time (#18).
• On these early downs, Dallas is averaging 2.8 yards per play (#18) with the #23 highest pass rate (42%).
• When they do get forced into third down, they need an average of 5.8 yards to go (#11 highest).
• And they are converting these third downs at a 31% rate (#20).

Cowboys in the red zone in 2022:

• Dallas converted first and second downs into another first down on 36% of plays (#1).
• On these early downs, Dallas averaged 4.1 yards per play (#1) and had the #11 highest pass rate (52%).
• When they did get forced into third down, they needed an average of 5.4 yards to go (#18 highest).
• And they converted 52% of third downs (#2).

These numbers speak to the root of the problem.

There isn’t enough aggression nor enough focus on trying to bypass third downs in the red zone in 2023.

There appears to be a collective sigh of relief from a play-calling perspective once a drive reaches the red zone.

Instead of urgency to continue to avoid third downs and retain an aggressive approach, the team is running more, shifting from the #11 highest pass rate to the #10 highest run rate.

Both passes and rushes are less efficient and gain fewer yards.

The team is bypassing third downs less often and being forced into longer to-go distances on third downs.

And they are converting less often on third downs.

What do they need to do?