With an additional game in 2021, will Cowboys offense finally crash through the 500-point barrier?

OXNARD, Calif. – Peyton Manning’s Denver Broncos lit the scoreboard with 606 points in 2013. The 2007 16-0 New England Patriots hit 589. Patrick Mahomes’ first season as Chiefs quarterback earned the third-highest score in league history and Mike McCarthy’s reigning Super Bowl champions checked in 4th during a 15-1 season at Green Bay a decade ago.

Neither team won Super Bowls.

When you look at the list of 25 teams that have scored 500 points in more than four decades of 16-game seasons in the NFL – an era that ends this year increasing to 17 games – you notice two things . One is the absence of the cowboys from the list. Fifteen franchises hit that number. New England did it four times. The Rams did it in two different cities. But Dallas’ most prolific offenses never made it, peaking in 1983 with 479 points.

It is noteworthy that the first Cowboys playoff team in 1966, with scoring records to be broken in a league that always tweaks the rules to help the offense, holds the club record in points per game – 31.8 – and scored 445 points in a 14-game season.

Greetings from Dandy Don and Bullet Bob.

The second thing that stands out is that the teams with the top 12 points couldn’t win the Super Bowl. Today’s NFL game is about scoring points, but it’s not just about scoring points.

Now this cowboys team isn’t going to score straight away because quarterback Dak Prescott was diagnosed with a pulled muscle in his right shoulder on Wednesday. He left training early and is considered commonplace, despite making a statement saying he does not consider this “some kind of serious setback”.

In September, this club is able to break the 500-point mark in the league’s newly expanded season. Everyone knows how Prescott passed at unprecedented levels before his year ended against the Giants in early October. But it’s important to remember why he threw all those yards and Dallas got all these points.

Prescott threw for 450 yards against Atlanta because the Cowboys had practically the entire game behind them and only won because of a successful onside kick. He threw 472 in a loss to Seattle. He threw 502 in an embarrassing loss to Cleveland. Yes, the Cowboys scored 40 and 31 and 38 points, but they were a losing football team.

Amari Cooper and CeeDee Lamb were each more than 1,300 yards in pace in five games and Michael Gallup was more than 1,100 yards in pace, and all three fell between 200 and 450 yards after Prescott was injured. So it’s normal for fans (and fantasy gamers) to have some big numbers on their mind when they think about the Dallas attack in 2021.

For McCarthy, the focus is not so much on whether his club gets 30 points every week, but how he does his offensive business.

“I want to be a winning team. We have to play better complementary football than we did a year ago, ”said McCarthy on Wednesday. “Calling passes is a lot more fun than runs, but that doesn’t always mean winning football. You have to be able to run if you want to run football. And you have to be able to run when everyone in the stadium knows you will run the football. “

McCarthy admitted that there is acute awareness in the camp of his team’s need to resolve his run defense problems from 2020 onwards. From this point of view, an average possession of 33 minutes per game is much more important than an average of 30 points per week.

“We don’t want to fall back and throw all day, every depth and distance. I understand the weapons we have, ”he said. “But run defense is a main focus for us. So there are a number that I would like to accompany in running football, just in terms of the makeup of our team and how we play complementary football on offense and defense. ”

That number is 30 rushs per game. The Cowboys were below par in McCarthy’s first season 50, but the massive injuries killed off any real opportunity for that to be achieved. The last time Dallas beat that number was in 2016, Dak and Zeke’s rookie season (they matched the total exactly a year later). It’s hard to imagine that a team with a healthy Cooper, Lamb and Gallup along with very skilled pass-catch tight ends will run the ball that often, but successful drives are always the best way to travel.

On Wednesday, the club’s first padded training session made it clear that expectations in this league are very cautious. Prescott left training with the strained muscle, and Gallup and Cooper didn’t work initially, so only Lamb of that explosive foursome could work on his craft.

With the opening game at Tampa Bay in six weeks, there’s plenty of time to get things right. The big games and the points are coming. And maybe Dallas will finally get its first 500 point season with a little help from the scheduler, but it’s balance and versatility and the helping hand they give to their defenses that will determine how far this January offense goes.

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