In past years with the likes of Ezekiel Elliott, the Dallas Cowboys relied on a dominant rushing attack to fuel their prolific offense. And moving forward, Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones would like to see his team get back to their calling card.
This season, the Cowboys rushing game was nowhere to be found, averaging just 100.3 rushing yards which is the sixth worst in all of football.
As a result of their inability to run the ball, the Cowboys naturally didn’t attempt to do so all that often, finishing the season with the ninth least rushing attempts on the year.
Jones spoke to reporters on Wednesday about the direction of the Cowboys when it comes to their offensive coordinator vacancy, outlining how he envisions that their next offensive coordinator is someone who is “outstanding in the running game”.
“We want to be able to run the ball,” Jones said via the Cowboys team website. “Everybody says that we want to run the ball and we want to stop the run, and certainly that’s what we want to do. That’s what great championship football teams do, and I know coach Schottenheimer wants to do that. I think it’s real important that we find in this hire a coach that’s going to be outstanding in the run game area.”
Regardless of who the next offensive coordinator is in Dallas, it will largely be on new head coaching Brian Schottenheimer to establish a running game.
The Cowboys have already announced that Schottenheimer will call plays for the Cowboys next season.
So while an offensive coordinator certainly matters equally to a successful running game, scheming up successful run plays will be key for the Cowboys to have more success in that area.
Luckily, the Cowboys will be getting Dak Prescott back heading into 2025, which can go a long way in taking some of the pressure off of the stacked defensive boxes that focused on the run game last year with Cooper Rush at quarterback.
