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Thursday, December 18, 1997

Dear Santa: Send Dallas an offense

By MIKE BALDWIN / The Daily Oklahoman

IRVING, Texas -- One sub-par season can be dismissed as an aberration. Two lackluster seasons is a trend.

For the second consecutive year, the Dallas Cowboys' offense has struggled. The organization's most difficult question this offseason is what changes need to be made.

Do the Cowboys tinker with their offensive philosophy? Is a revamped offensive line all that's needed? Or is it time to go in a different direction?

"If they ever wanted to change their philosophy, now would be the perfect time," said one NFC personnel director. "They used to assault people, just run over them. They're not assaulting defenses anymore, and I don't see them assaulting teams next year." The primary reason the Cowboys are 10-12 in their last 22 games and 17-16 since winning Super Bowl XXX is a dramatic drop in points scored. Last year, Dallas was ranked 24th offensively and scored 17.9 points a game. This season, the Cowboys are ranked 19th and once again are scoring less than 20 points a game.

Compare those numbers to the previous five sea sons and it's a significant decline. The Cowboys averaged between 21.4 and 27.2 points and were always ranked ninth or higher in total offense, three times finishing in the top five.

"They're not as good running the ball down people's throats," said San Francisco pro personnel director George Streeter. "There's never been many offensive lines as good as that one was in its prime. There won't ever be a line like that one ever again. But if you do some tinkering, you have to change your philosophy."

That's the dilemma. If you upgrade the offensive line, maybe that solves the problem. Then again, a change in philosophy may be the very thing needed to generate that run-pass balance coaches strive for.

"That's probably the key more than anything is getting back to where you're running the football again," said coach Barry Switzer. "You know when Troy Aikman is at his best? When Troy is 17-out-of-20 or Troy is 18-out-of-22. Go back and look at those games. When Troy has to throw 50-some balls, we're not at our best."

No team wants to have its quarterback attempt 53 passes, as Aikman did last week in Cincinnati. Yet, there's some thing to be said for a low-risk passing game, although the tradeout is you won't have near as many momentum-changing passes, i.e., home run plays.

In the Cowboys' current system, a precision passing attack, many of the routes are slow-developing. Those type of routes place more pressure on the offensive line, a line that has yielded 35 sacks this season, 16 more than last year.

"Do you want to be a vertical team? Or a zone team -- movement, motion, crossing?" Switzer said. "There's a lot of different things you can do. A lot of people don't ever throw the ball more than 10 yards down field and move it right down the field. Run the ball, dink, dink, run the ball.-.-. There will be a lot of things discussed."

But will Switzer have a major role in the decision-making process? Even if he's "bumped upstairs," if he isn't the head coach next season, we may not know what direction the Cow boys take until a new regime arrives at Valley Ranch.

"I don't know what direction the team in general is going," said Aikman. "I don't know what direction the offense may be headed, what philosophy may be in place next year, whether it be the current coaching staff or some other staff. I don't know what all is going to happen, so it's hard to try to determine exactly what is needed."

It's also more complicated than choosing a flavor of ice cream. In the modern-day NFL, cap-o-nomics play a major role.

"With the current personnel and the salary cap, you're not always able to do some of the things that you would like to do. You've got to be sensitive to that," Aikman said. "You've got to somehow try to improve on offense, but yet you have some restrictions how you go about doing that. I don't have the magical answers."

Whether a new head coach or new offensive coordinator can come up with those magical answers is one of the intriguing stories that won't be answered until 1998.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)