That game may have a rock bottom effect and cause some desperation invention. There is still a real lack of use of the talent and has been for years mainly because the offense is made up of a bunch of possible options rather than intentional strategies to free up or isolate the path of one player.
For example, Steve Young was commenting on the Niners last year saying that they were not running the ball all that often, as much as they were putting a lot of thought into the designs of the running plays. Yesterday, the Chiefs did the same and despite the Dallas defense playing pretty well, the Chiefs had the Cowboys on their heels and chasing rather than attacking.
When Dez is having to carry the whole hope of the team despite having Witten, Hanna, Murray, Miles, and Harris, there is something going wrong with the engineering of the plays (not the execution). The team doesn't have an offensive identity problem, it has a severely outdated design that is just wasting its opportunities.
My primary concern is this: Dez, Miles, Witten, and Harris all have the most mastery they have ever had of the playbook. In this offseason, Dez, Harris and Miles all were complimented on their route running. So it appears that despite running their routes the best that they ever have and understanding the playbook the best that they ever have, they are less open than they have ever been.
How is that?
It's fascinating that the WRs can be regarded as being the best they have been at running the scheme and yet the worse at applying the scheme to beating a defense. If Miles runs a crisp route, accelerates in and out of cuts exactly where he is supposed to be for what the defense is showing, it's only effective if the defense can't defend or cover it. With exception to Dez a few times yesterday, the Chiefs went right to the locations they knew Dallas would go with their pass plays. The running plays were far too few to accomplish anything.
Here are my solutions to cure what ails the Garrett delirium.
1. Need more actual lateral running plays with end arounds, pitches, and especially, pulling/trapping plays. They seem to fake those plays a lot but the fakes are only effective if the defense is concerned that Dallas will run the wide play. Remember a few years ago when Jason would call for a play-action play when Dallas was at 3rd and 20 from their own 15. That was just silly (and a little embarrassing).
2. Romo needs to move. He needs to intentionally bootleg a few times, roll out, stretch play, and shuttle the ball quickly.
3. Dunbar and Murray need to be in the same backfield.
4. Put more analysis into how the defense is trying to stop the run and then call plays to counter them. Garrett has been doing this type of experimentation for years with the pass offense, but he never stopped calling pass plays when Romo was shut down game after game in the first quarter. Instead, he was analyzing what the defense was doing to figure out how the pass plays would work later. He doesn't give the same attention to the run. Josh McDaniel is accused of doing the same thing with the Patriots: might get 2 yards on a first down run and does not run again in the series. Frank Gore has had 20 carry games where he averaged 2.7 yards per game.
5. Speaking of the Patriots, they might be desperate for a WR like Miles right now....
