GAME OVERVIEW::
By Hilow >>
- The Cowboys have three major injuries, all on the defensive side of the ball. CBs DaRon Bland (foot), Trevon Diggs (calf), and DE Micah Parsons (ankle) are all unable to practice Wednesday or Thursday this week. That trio encompasses both starting corners and the team’s true difference maker off the edge.
- I get the feeling Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and Jake Ferguson will go relatively overlooked on this slate, which would be a mistake.
- Kirk Cousins has just three games all season over 29 pass attempts and just one game all season over 35 pass attempts. He also has just two games all season over a modest 241 pass yards, both of which came against the Buccaneers.
HOW Dallas WILL TRY TO WIN::
The Cowboys rank 10th in pass rate over expectation this season but have just one game greater than one standard deviation from neutral this season, a Week 3 shootout loss to the Ravens. The other component of that equation is that the Cowboys have been expected to pass a metric ton due to their defense underperforming last season’s tallies while allowing the second most points per game (28.3), leading to the Cowboys averaging the most pass attempts per game this season at 39.4. Furthermore, an offense that averaged a 57.89% red zone touchdown rate a season ago has fallen to 31st in red zone touchdown rate in 2024 (42.11%), better than only the Giants. For whatever reason, the Cowboys have been more efficient both on the scoreboard and in the red zone on the road this season after leading the league in scoring per game at home in 2023, with a 30.0% red zone touchdown rate at home and a 55.56% red zone touchdown rate on the road. I almost never read into home-road splits, so take that for what it’s worth, but I found it interesting enough to include here.
Cowboys lead back Rico Dowdle was not listed on the team’s injury report on Wednesday or Thursday this week, meaning he has recovered from the illness that kept him from suiting up in the team’s Week 8 loss to the 49ers. Considering the state of the backfield behind Dowdle (veterans Ezekiel Elliott and Dalvin Cook), I would expect Dowdle to return to a lead back role that saw him account for more than a modest 13 opportunities only once all season while never playing more than 50% of the team’s offensive snaps. There isn’t much more to say than that as this backfield has not been fantasy relevant all season.
The Falcons rank third in the league in zone utilization this year, with a solid 36.1% of that coming from Cover-3. That has led to near-even utilizations of single-high versus two-high alignments behind elevated rates of Cover-4 and Cover-6. If you remember from previous weeks, we talked about how elevated rates of those two coverages correspond heavily to defenses that look to force opponents to march the field, leading to additional holes in the short-to-intermediate areas while playing over the top to take away deep passing. All of that is important for how it pertains to the expected usage from the Dallas pass offense as CeeDee Lamb has been the go-to target against both Cover-3 and single-high for the previous two seasons. In 2024, Lamb has amassed ridiculous numbers in each split, with a 34% targets per route run rate (TPRR), 2.90 yards per route run (YPRR), a 31.8% first-read target rate, and 0.57 fantasy points per route run (FP/RR) against Cover-3, 31% TPRR, 3.09 YPRR, 33.3% first-read target rate, and 0.61 FP/RR against single-high, and 25% TPRR, 1.39 YPRR, 27.1% first-read target rate, and 0.24 FP/RR against the combination of Cover-4 and Cover-6. The only split he doesn’t lead the team by a massive margin is against the combination of Cover-4 and Cover-6, which has largely been where tight end Jake Ferguson excels over the middle of the field. Jalen Tolbert has been rather mid in all of those meaningful splits, meaning we should expect a large portion of the passing volume and production to flow through Lamb and Ferguson here. That exploration checks out as the Falcons have allowed the 11th most fantasy points per game to tight ends and 12th most fantasy points per game to wide receivers this season (and the eighth most fantasy points per game to opposing quarterbacks). Most of that production has come from the relatively soft defense between the 20s, meaning the Cowboys primary pass pieces are in a solid spot to rack up the yardage in this spot.
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