Dak Prescott isn’t shying away from the Cowboys’ offensive identity debate after Jerry Jones made it clear he wants Dallas to be “a run-first team.”
Coming off Monday night’s 38-21 win over the rival Philadelphia Eagles, Prescott said Thursday that the performance in Philly was bigger than just one good outing. It was, in his words, “an attempt at re-identifying who we want to be” on offense.
The quarterback was blunt about what the Cowboys had been missing. Dallas has leaned too far away from the ground game at times, and Prescott said that hurt the offense.
“We obviously know we love our run actions and throwing the ball like that, but you've got to get the run going,” Prescott explained, per Tommy Yarrish of the Cowboys' website. “We weren't committed enough to it the last couple of weeks before last, and I think that obviously hurt us. We got us into more of a passing situation than we wanted to be earlier than we planned.”
The numbers back up the issue. ESPN stats show the Cowboys enter Sunday’s home game against the 2-5 Arizona Cardinals ranked 25th in the league with 94.3 rushing yards per game.
But the Eagles game looked very different. Javonte Williams powered Dallas with 155 rushing yards and a touchdown on 25 carries, and the Cowboys finished with 204 rushing yards as a team.
Prescott said the plan in Philadelphia was deliberate from the start.
“It was a very intentional approach of making sure that we're gonna stick to the run, trust those guys, watch that one-yard, two-yard runs turn into four and fives, and then even those turn into 10 and 12's. It was a great start,” Prescott added about what occurred at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field.
Now the focus shifts to Arizona, and Prescott made it clear the Cowboys can’t afford a repeat of recent struggles against the Cardinals. Dallas has lost four straight to Arizona and eight of the last nine meetings overall. Last November, the Cardinals beat the Cowboys in Dallas.
“We got to win,” Prescott said about this Sunday's contest. “Understanding what happened last year, it was an ugly, ugly game, ugly on our part.
You can go to some years before then, whether it'd been at Arizona. They've had our number these last couple of years.
Credit to their defense, credit to the way those guys come in and play and execute, but it's a new year.”
As of Friday morning, DraftKings Sportsbook listed the 3-4 Cowboys as seven-point home favorites against the Cardinals.
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