Compare and Contrast: Cowboys and Buccaneers Offense

A question has been bugging me since Sunday night’s game. How did the Tampa Bay Buccaneers do so much better on offense than the Dallas Cowboys did? A lot of time people can just chalk this question up to “Tom Brady being Tom Brady” but I want to dive deeper.

One difference I noticed between both offenses was that Tampa was making quick passes. This made Brady only need about 1-2 seconds to throw a bullet at one of his receivers. The Buccaneers’ offense was very fast-paced this game with very simple plays that resulted in large drives and scores.

Meanwhile, the Cowboys tried to play tricky and long. Barely any quick passes or plays the whole game. Quarterback Dak Prescott took about four seconds each down to look for a receiver, unlike Brady’s time to throw.

This was critical and it is one of the reasons Dak Prescott suffered an injury near the end of the game. Dallas needs to stop making their QBs scramble every down and start designing plays that allow them to sit in the pocket while throwing it away quickly.

Speaking of the pocket, that’s one thing Dallas didn’t have. Every single down a red shirt was running throw the line trying to sack Dak. This caused much scrambling on offense for Dallas while Tampa didn’t have this issue.

Yes, Micah Parsons did have two huge sacks in the game yet that’s it. They barely had Tom Brady scrambling in this game. Like in my previous paragraph, he threw it away so quickly that when the team got to him, the ball was already gone.

Now our running backs were a different story. Ezekiel Elliott played great, and so did Leonard Fournette. The run game was Magnificat for both teams. Only comparison with these two, both had large stats and impressive runs.

Overall, I think our main issue is the play calling. Poor management from the coaching side resulted in 3 points for the whole game. I would like to see more runs and quicker passing plays. Success is repetition, and that’s something the Cowboys need to work on before the next game.