{"id":8060,"date":"2016-12-13T22:21:57","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T03:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/?p=8060"},"modified":"2016-12-13T22:22:40","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T03:22:40","slug":"the-cowboys-formula-for-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2016\/12\/13\/the-cowboys-formula-for-success\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dallas Cowboys Formula for Success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The biggest debate of the early part of the NFL season was <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/R\/RomoTo00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tony Romo<\/a><\/strong> or <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/P\/PresDa01.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dak Prescott<\/a><\/strong>. In spite of what some of his critics have said after this weekend, the deliberation has now ended. Dak Prescott is the Cowboys quarterback moving forward, but is that really the biggest thing going on in Dallas? The Cowboys have had a formula that they have tried to execute since the early 90s. Now they may be closer than ever to duplicating what they had two decades ago. So what is the Cowboys&#8217; formula for success?<\/p>\n<h2>The Dallas Cowboys Formula For Success<\/h2>\n<p>It is a simple concept and has three main components: build a dominating offensive line, have an elite talent at running back, and play lights out defense. The Cowboys teams of the early 90s had this formula down. The Cowboys of the 90s had an incredibly talented defense and hall-of-fame running back <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/S\/SmitEm00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Emmitt Smith<\/a><\/strong> had huge holes opened for him by what most would consider the best offensive line of the era.<\/p>\n<h3>Reliving the Past<\/h3>\n<p>Now the Cowboys have gone back to the future. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/E\/ElliEz00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ezekiel Elliott<\/a><\/strong> has not only lived up to the hype, he has exceeded it. He is truly a special player, but he is not doing it alone. The Cowboys have built a strong offensive line which clears the way for Elliott and protects the quarterback whoever that may be. The Cowboys defense has been strong this year giving up less than 19 points per game. When you put these factors together, you get a Cowboys team that is a Super Bowl favorite in their conference.<\/p>\n<p>Although this analysis covers the biggest factors, it leaves a few things out. For one thing, it doesn\u2019t cover the change at the quarterback position. This omission is intentional because with this offensive line, running back, and defense either quarterback would have this team sitting at or near the top of the conference. \u00a0There was merit to the Dak\/Romo debate, but\u00a0in the short term, these three factors are what has gotten the Cowboys where they are.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/629546334\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 65.656566% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/629546334?et=gjC0mhZ9Qh5zIw2X1S7QtA&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=AAE1WV9yOVxP7QtY5y4AyTjsBdiykF5JFTg3u0Ebic4=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"390\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a deeper look at the Cowboys&#8217;formula for success and what has made them a super bowl favorite.  It goes deeper than the quarterback position.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1768,"featured_media":8223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[302,49,258,61,1296,889,40,132],"class_list":["post-8060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cowboys","tag-dak-prescott","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-ezekiel-elliott","tag-football","tag-jason-garrett","tag-jerry-jones","tag-nfl","tag-tony-romo"],"modified_by":"Ryan Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1768"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}