The Dallas Cowboys' playoff hopes hinge on the next four games. With everything on the line, each of these final games is essentially a playoff game. Two games against the New York Giants in this final quarter of the season means that the Cowboys will have to start playing to win, rather than coaching and playing not to lose. When Dallas isn't playing the Giants, it will be playing two teams with failed playoff aspirations that would love to play the role of spoilers: the Eagles and the Buc's. Let's face it, in today's NFL, playoff teams score a lot of points.

If the Cowboys are to take the next step toward being a dangerous playoff team, it is imperative that they begin attacking on offense at a level they have yet to achieve this season.

A quick glance at the strongest playoff-bound teams, the Packers, the Saints, and the Patriots, provides a clear image of what the Cowboys must become if they are to have any success in the post season.

These teams win by overwhelming the opposition with aggressive offensive game plans. They deploy all of their weapons through the air and on the ground and they give their quarterbacks full rein to light things up.

Teams like the Packers establish the pass and hit you with a run when you least expect it. Teams like the Saints are so unpredictable, you have very little chance as a defensive coordinator. Is Darren Sproles going to be unleashed the moment you blitz or is Jimmy Graham going to kill you with another amazing catch and run? Payton’s packages don’t give much away.

Each of these teams have suspect defenses, in terms of yardage stats, but they win because they grab an early lead and pressure the opposition into mistakes while they are trying to catch up.

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In the past three games, the Cowboys have been without the services of their number one receiver, Miles Austin and their starting fullback, Tony Fiametta. During this stretch, we have seen Jason Garrett’s offense become less and less potent. 

This is due in part to the missing these key players, but has also been a function of play calling that has been less than inspired.

The Cowboys still had pro-bowl tight end Jason Witten, dangerous receivers in Dez Bryant and Laurent Robinson and the surprisingly effective running back, DeMarco Murray during that stretch.

It appears as though Garrett pulled back on the reins because he saw three games the Cowboys should win by simply going out and playing conservative mistake free football.

For the most part, that worked, but only barely. The Cowboys won in the closing minutes of two of these games and lost in the final second of the third game, because of an ill-advised time-out called by Garrett himself, which negated their winning field goal and set up the subsequent overtime loss.

 

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Overall, Garrett’s strategy has been the wrong approach for this point in the season. What the Cowboys needed to do was to gear up their offense as close to the level of the Packers and Saints as they could manage.

 

If Romo threw an occasional pick, you needed to just trust him to overcome those set backs with touchdown passes to Robinson, Bryant or Witten.

Sometimes Garret’s lack of confidence is manifested in his unwillingness to stick to the run. For example, as Bob Sturm points out in a recent blog post, Garrett got away from running on first down against Arizona, despite picking up 7 yards on both first down runs early in the game. He followed those with 9 first down passes.

Sure, this could be because Arizona loaded the box, but that shouldn’t dictate a complete capitulation of your running game’s most important down.

Murray, who has shown that he is truly special once he breaks into the secondary, was given only 12 touches against Arizona. No passes were thrown his way, despite the fact he was averaging about 6 catches a game leading up to Arizona.

You will not find compelling evidence for a conservative ball control offensive style if you go back and look at the box score for those games. Garret’s unfortunate conservatism is often only manifested  in key third down or fourth down situations.

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These are times when an offensive coordinator simply has to trust his quarterback to go make a clutch play.

 

 

At times this season, Garrett has been willing to do this, but at other times, as we saw back in the New England game, and again in Arizona, Garrett seemed to pull back on the reins at exactly the wrong moment.

To be fair, this is due in part to the fact that the Cowboys have an offensive line that is young, inexperienced and wildly inconsistent. If Garrett had the confidence in this bunch to protect Romo, I’m sure he would be more likely to pull the trigger on more aggressive plays.

Ultimately though, as the old cliché goes, you must go to battle with the army you have.

And going to battle should be about deploying and using all of your most powerful weapons. The Cowboys will have all of their weapons back for this final quarter of the season.

In order for Dallas to capitalize on this, Garrett must be willing to do two things:

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First, he must challenge his offensive line to play with more guts and determination. The time for excuses has long since past. They need to understand that they are playing not just for the playoffs, but for roster spots next year.

Second, Garrett must shift into attack mode. Take a cue from coaches like Belichick and Payton. Make the entire first half look like a two minute warning drill that includes runs. Push the opposing defense back on their heels, get the lead and never let up. If you watched the Lions or the Giants get blown out by Saints, you know what this looks like.

 

The days of the Bill Parcels approach to grinding it out and winning by a field goal in the final minutes are over. Teams that try to do that against the elite offenses find themselves down by three touchdowns in the fourth quarter.

At that point they have to open things up, but without the game plan to support it. That is why it is so much better to come out firing all of your weapons from the first kick.

The good news for the Cowboys is that everyone is supposed to be back on the field for this final push. With Miles Austin, Tony Fiametta, DeMarco Murray, Felix Jones, Dez Bryant, Laurent Robinson and Jason Witten, the Cowboys will field a team with as many dangerous weapons as the Saints.

 

The time is now for the Cowboys to attack with everything they have.