The 2018 NFL is an offensive firehose, with team's lighting up the scoreboard, quarterbacks like Ryan Fitzpatrick and Patrick Mahomes dive bombing defenses, and receivers like Michael Thomas and Brandin Cooks morphing into uncoverable transformers.
It's been a joy to behold. Unless you're watching a Dallas Cowboys game.
We expected the Cowboys to struggle with the passing game entering the season with a no-name receiving corps and a banged-up offensive line. It was easy to predict an Ezekiel Elliott-or-bust offense.
It's been worse than that.
Through three games, the Cowboys rank 30th in yards per game (277.7), 31st in points per game (13.7) and 31st in passing yards per game (145.0). The only offense worse than Dallas has been Arizona, and the Cardinals just turned to rookie quarterback Josh Rosen.
Jason Garrett's Cowboys, on the other hand, will remain on the course to nowhere.
"We're not going to go down that road right now," Garrett said when asked about a possible change in coordinators, via ESPN's Todd Archer. "I have a lot of confidence in Scott Linehan. He's been an outstanding coordinator in this league for a long time. He's been an outstanding coordinator for us. And he's been an outstanding play-caller for us.
"What we need to do is get better on offense and we have to constantly look at ourselves as coaches first at the positions we're putting our players in with our game plans."
Owner Jerry Jones added Tuesday morning on 105.3 FM The Fan that there hasn't been any discussion about making Garrett the play-caller, via Jon Machota of the Dallas Morning News.
On Monday, Garrett dismissed the idea that the issue was play-calling at all.
"I think it would be false for me to say this is about play-calling," Garrett said. "This is about everything we're doing offensively, we have to do better. We have to coach better. We have to play better. We have to run it better. We have to throw it better. We have to protect better. We have to do all the things good offenses do and we have to do all of those things better."
The only thing the Cowboys do well is hand the ball off to Elliott. When the running back makes errors and Dallas gets down like it did Sunday against Seattle, there is little saving Garrett's team. Dak Prescott has yet to throw for more than 170 yards in a game. His 166 passing yards per contest ranks dead last in the NFL among quarterbacks who've started and played all three games.
The Cowboys showed a flash of creativity in the first half of the Week 2 game versus the New York Giants. Outside of that brief spurt, it's been a flavorless brand of saltine-cracker football from Dallas.
"We're evaluating the game and we're evaluating everything that we're doing in all phases of our team and we'll spend the next couple of days doing that as we put a plan together for Detroit," Garrett said. "And we'll make the necessary changes that we need to make."
Changes outside of moving away from a milquetoast play caller, of course.
