Looking at the Dallas Cowboys remaining schedule by offensive and defensive EPA disparity at Week 5

Offense remains the Cowboys’ bread and butter.

The Dallas Cowboys have one of the best offenses in the NFL. Football Outsiders has the group as the third-best by DVOA after Week 4, and at this point it is obvious that Dallas can put up points with the best of them. It isn’t always a mission that requires an enormous amount of yards, but ultimately the Cowboys are finding ways to score points which is generally a path to success in the NFL.

We discussed the elite level that the Dallas Cowboys offense is playing at in the latest episode of The Ocho on the Blogging The Boys podcast network. Make sure to subscribe to our network so you don’t miss any of our episodes! Apple devices can subscribe right here while Spotify users can subscribe right here.

Each week here at BTB, myself and Aidan Davis are taking a look at the Cowboys’ remaining schedule through the lens of Offensive EPA/Play and Defensive EPA/Play Allowed. The hope is that this will give us an indication as to the sorts of advantages that the Cowboys have week to week.

It should come as no surprise that there are very few defenses (not really any, spoiler alert) that look ready for the challenge.

The Dallas Cowboys offense should have an advantage every single week over the rest of the season

As noted, this is a weekly exercise which means that the results adjust after each round of NFL action. Entering Week 4 it looked like the Carolina Panthers, Denver Broncos, and New Orleans Saints might all stand somewhat tall against the Cowboys offense, but that no longer really seems to be the case.

In fact, as things stand entering Week 5 there is not a single defense remaining on the Cowboys schedule that they do not have the “advantage” against.

We are comparing colors to colors here. A breakdown:

• The dotted grey line represents the stability of the Cowboys offense where the solid grey line represents the stability of opposing defenses. As you can see the solid grey line never breaks the dotted one (upwards) which is how we can discern that Dallas has the advantage every week at present time.
• The dotted blue line represents the stability of the Cowboys defense where the solid blue line represents the stability of opposing offenses. Any time where the solid blue line is below the dotted blue line is where the Cowboys defense has an advantage, like the New England Patriots or Atlanta Falcons. Inversely the Kansas City Chiefs offense should have an enormous advantage against the Dallas defense, what a surprise!

Offensively the Cowboys are at an EPA/Play of .145 which is fairly elite. Couple that with the fact that the average Defense EPA/Play Allowed on the Cowboys schedule is .045 and there is reason to feel incredibly optimistic. The only defense in the NFL that would present a challenge at the moment to the Dallas offense is the Buffalo Bills although their Defensive EPA/Play allowed is likely going to go down after their game this week against the aforementioned Kansas City Chiefs.

Defensively the Cowboys are where you want to be in that they have a Defensive EPA/Play Allowed of -.016, but the average offense remaining on their schedule has an EPA/Play of .068. There is no question that this will be the tougher side of the ball for the Cowboys as a whole although the defense is certainly doing what it can to mitigate that by generating turnovers and what not.

Ultimately life is relatively sweet for the Cowboys as you can see. Let’s hope it stays that way.