After playing their first complete game on both sides of the ball, the Dallas Cowboys secured a 37-22 Week 5 win against the New York Jets. Let’s take a look back at the keys to victory we discussed in the leadup to the game and see how they played out after kickoff.

Continue to Get the Ball Out Quickly on Offense

Our first key to victory was pretty self explanatory: with the offensive line injured and struggling, the Cowboys negated the Green Bay Packers pass rush in Week 4 by gameplanning an offense that had Dak Prescott throwing quick, short throws (0-9 yards beyond the line of scrimmage).

In Week 4, Prescott was 17/19 for 136 yards and two touchdowns, and we said that continuing to exploit those short attempts was key to winning. In Week 5, Prescott was 8-of-12 for 57 yards and two touchdowns on these short throws. 

Not as prolific as Week 4, but Prescott also threw 11 less passes in Week 5, leaning more on the running game. He also only took only one sack on Sunday and was pressured only four times, so we’ll say this key helped unlock a win against the Jets. 

Force Fields to Throw

Our second key was to force Justin Fields to throw beyond those short throws and throw more intermediate passes, qualified as 10-19 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. This one was not quite reached. 

On Sunday, Fields went 27-of-30 for 208 yards and two touchdowns on short throws, good for a 90% completion percentage and an 81.0 PFF grade. This stat is somewhat misleading though, as the majority of these numbers came on the Jets’ last two drives when the Cowboys were playing soft coverage to let the clock run and avoid the big play. 

With that said, we’ll say this key was not met, although it didn’t end up mattering thanks to the defense recording five sacks on Sunday. Dallas will surely let opposing offenses dink and dunk all day if it leads to wins like this. 

Continue to Get Ryan Flournoy Involved

We talked about how Flournoy had started to get more attention in the offense lately, even having touches schemed up specifically for him. However, not even I expected him to put up the performance he did against New York. 

Flournoy set career highs across the board, recording seven catches on nine targets for 114 yards while also taking two carries for ten yards. On a day where George Pickens was limited to two catches, Flournoy stepped up and helped to open up the offense on deep to intermediate throws by catching all three targets for 96 yards.

This prevented the Jets from creeping up and loading the box, opening up lanes for Javonte Williams and Jaydon Blue all day. Because of this pressure applied to the defense as well as his own numbers, we’ll say that Florunoy was indeed key to victory.