The Cowboys didn’t ever abandon the run in their season opening victory over the New York Giants on Sunday night, but the run-pass ratio was still slanted heavily in favor of the pass. Specifically, Dallas threw it 51 times. They ran it only 21 times.
Looking back on the 36-31 victory, Jason Garrett sees offensive balance as an area where the Cowboys offense can, and should, improve.
“We’d like to be more balanced,” Garrett said, per ESPN Dallas. “I thought Bill did a really good job in the ballgame calling plays and giving us a chance to move the football, but we would like to be a more balanced football team.
“At the end of the day it’s not about, ‘OK we get a stat sheet and you want it to be 30 runs, 30 passes.’ That’s not how we look at it. We want to be able to run the ball more and more effectively, particularly at the end of the game when we’re up a couple scores. We need to be able to hand the ball to DeMarco Murray and run the game out. We didn’t do that as well as we need to and we’ll continue to work on being better at that.”
DeMarco Murray finished with 86 yards on 20 carries. Phillip Tanner added a carry for two yards. In Week Two, Dallas will likely have the services of Lance Dunbar, an addition that could give the run game a bit of a shot in the arm.
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