For many Dallas Cowboys fans, it felt like the 2019 season was a disappointment. Going from a second round exit in 2018 with high hopes of postseason success in 2019, only to reach an 8-8 record after starting 3-0.

However, while the record might not show it, but the Cowboys had one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL. Argueably the most potent part of the Cowboys offense was their passing attack, ranking 2nd in the NFL in total passing yards according to pickingpros.com.

Two proprietary metrics help prove the dominance of the Cowboys passing attack, those being success rate and expected pointed added (EPA). Success rate is used to measure efficency by determining whether every play of a given game was successful or not as defined by footballstudyhall.com. Expected Points Added stricly looks at the situation in which the play occured as defined by covers.com. Basically, converting on a 4th and 2 on the opponents 35 yard line while down by two points with 45 seconds to go in the game adds more points than a 30 yard completion on a 2nd and 5 while up by 21 with 2 minutes to go in a game.

Two situations with Cowboys receivers will be analyzed, targets in open-field and targets in the red zone. Comparing success rate and EPA in these situations will accurately show the efficency of the Cowboys receivers.

When looking at success rate and EPA, Amari Cooper was not only the most efficient receiver for the Cowboys but would provide key yardage in open field situations. When looking at the graph, it makes sense that Ezekiel Elliott is the least successful receiver because he is a running back and most of his touchdowns came from rushing and that when Dak Prescott would throw to Zeke, it would be as a check down or a short pass that would not gain many yards. It is interesting to see that even though Jason Witten and Michael Gallup have very similar success ratings, both being around .56, Gallup has more EPA than Witten. This comparison makes sense because Gallup was more a deep threat than Witten and provided more positive yards per throw than Witten.

When focusing on the red zone targets, Jason Witten is shown to have a 50% success rate in the end zone, meaning that of the four touchdowns Witten has in 2019, he has eight passes thrown to him with only four of those landing in the end zone. Even though Witten’s targets in the end zone were usually on short routes within five yards, those routes counted for points on the board so that added more to his EPA in the red zone. Ezekiel Elliott is below a 35% success rate because he would score in the endzone with rushing touchdowns more than receiving touchdowns. Out of the 12 touchdowns Zeke scored in 2019, two of them were receiving touchdowns, meaning that around 17% of Zeke’s touchdowns were receiving.

Even though the Dallas Cowboys did not have the best season, Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, and Jason Witten had efficent individual seasons. However, some receivers proved to be more successful in certain situations during the game. While Jason Witten might not have been the best open field target, his high success rate in the red zone allowed for the Cowboys to have more scoring opportunities.