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Since hiring Brian Schottenheiemer as their head coach, he and the Cowboys’ brain trust have mentioned the team’s desire to run the ball. Executive vice president Stephen Jones mentioned the desire “to marry” the run game to the pass game.
Schottenheimer has spent 14 years as an offensive coordinator, though not always as the play caller, and twice his offenses ranked No. 1 in rushing. In 2009, Jets running back Thomas Jones ran for 1,402 yards as the team finished first in rushing, and in 2018, the Seahawks had Chris Carson (1,151), Mike Davis (514) and Rashaad Penny (419) to lead the league as a team.
“I think offensively you try to build it based on what your guys do well,” Schottenheimer said Thursday from the Scouting Combine. “I got in trouble for letting Russ [Wilson] cook a little bit back in Seattle. Some people got the joke; some people didn’t.
“No, at the end of the day, you have to be able to run the football. We’ve made a commitment that we want to be great on both sides of the line of scrimmage. That’s a huge part of it. The way I say it, ‘When teams know you’re going to run the ball, you have to be able to run the ball and conversely stop the run.’ Again, depending on how the roster is filled and how it’s constructed, we want to be able to feature our guys and what they do well, and we want to be multiple.”
The Cowboys tried a running back by committee last season before making Rico Dowdle the feature back. They ranked 24th in attempts (429), 27th in rushing yards (1,705) and 32nd in rushing touchdowns (6).
The top running back in the draft, Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty, has been linked to the Cowboys with the 12th overall pick. Schottenheimer said he has not studied Jeanty yet.
The Cowboys, though, will need multiple running backs as Dowdle is a free agent, and Ezekiel Elliott is gone.
Schottenheimer knows WHAT he is looking for in a running back. He just doesn’t know WHO that is.
“You want a guy that’s got vision. You want a guy that has contact balance,” Schottenheimer said. “The fronts that we’re seeing, the fronts that we’re facing, require guys to be able to make hidden yards, whether there’s a free safety in the hole or there’s a linebacker or a defensive lineman coming off the point of attack, you’ve got to have a guy who is willing to run through arm tackles. I do believe that you have to have the ability to catch the ball coming out of the backfield. Why do I say that? If a team wants to commit to stopping the run, there’s ways they can try to do that. We don’t want to take an elite runner or a position like that out of the game, so if a team is doing a nice job stopping the running game, you want to be able to get them involved throwing it to them. That doesn’t mean they have to play like a receiver, but they have to be able to run routes coming out of the backfield and have the ability to separate and run after the catch is important.”
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