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FRISCO, Texas — Possession is nine-tenths of the law. That fact isn't entirely lost on the NFL, a league atop a sport whose outcomes are often determined by which team can control the time of possession in a matchup, and it's not entirely about owning that statistic but, again, more about controlling it — though the Dallas Cowboys are doing neither in 2024.
And, to put it plainly, they won't win another game until they get a handle on one of those two things.
But before we dive into that a bit, let's speak to another elephant in the room, one that is pink and adorned in flashing LEDs as to demand your attention, because there's another time-related dilemma that's plagued the Cowboys, primarily at home, and it explains why they've now dropped a sixth consecutive game at AT&T Stadium.
Out of a combined 24 quarters of football, the Cowboys have had the lead for a total of only two minutes and 15 seconds out of a possible 360 football minutes.
Yes.
That's it.
Two minutes, 15 seconds.
It takes longer to walk from your couch to the front door to pick up that Amazon package.
Contrarily, they've been down, and by more than 20 points, for more than 109 minutes during that same six-game span. In other words, they've been down by more than 20 points around the same period of time you'd sit in a theater for a movie screening.
And it's leading to the credits being rolled mid-movie.
It's not difficult to ascertain why the tailspin is occurring when looking at that metric alone, but every metric is fed by another, and this is where time of possession begins to rear its head in this discussion — for one of the reasons the Cowboys are struggling to remain competitive overall is because the offense can't stay on the field for extended periods of time and, as a result, a defensive unit that's been improving becomes gassed.
And becoming gassed eventually leads to getting gashed.
Here's a look at how the Cowboys have fared since their first season of earning a 12-5 record (2021) in the post-COVID era, and TOP have affected their corresponding rankings and performance:
Time of Possession, Annually
- 2024: 27:52
- 2023: 31:45
- 2022: 29:27
- 2021: 30:07
Time of Possession, Ranked
- 2024: 28th-overall
- 2023: 4th-overall
- 2022: 22nd-overall
- 2021: 19th-overall
Offensive, Defensive Rankings*
- 2024: Offense - 24th-overall, Defense - 31st-overall
- 2023: Offense - 1st-overall, Defense - 5th-overall
- 2022: Offense - 4th-overall, Defense - 5th-overall
- 2021: Offense - 1st-overall, Defense - 7th-overall
*points per game versus points allowed per game
The first thing that jumps out here is just how often Dallas is losing the time of possession battle in 2024, down nearly four full minutes over last season alone, as they fight through the lowest TOP mark of the Mike McCarthy era (it was 28:21 when they went 6-10 during the pandemic-riddled 2020 season that served as McCarthy's inaugural year, included Mike Nolan as defensive coordinator, etc.).
What does this mean, exactly?
It means the defense is on the field for more than half the game, virtually every game, due to offensive giveaways and three-and-outs and/or failed fourth-down conversion attempts, be it a fake punt or a traditional play called. And when the defense is as ravaged as it has been and continues to be by injury, especially on the defensive front, allowing those who have been available a moment to breathe is not only paramount.
It's downright mandatory.
But this admittedly leads back to what I mentioned initially, in that it's not always/simply about trying to own time of possession. It's about controlling it, and that means that when you lose ownership, you'd better have efficiency on your side — i.e., chunk plays that end in touchdowns, high red zone percentage, etc. — with all manner of quick-strike production that don't require a continual amount of third-down conversions and 10+ play drives.
That's why the Cowboys' offense was able to rank fourth in the league in 2022, despite possessing the ball for less than half of their games, on average, and it's not a coincidence that the defense was still able to finish in the top-5 that season because, again, one metric lends to another.
In the case of 2022, the Cowboys' offense overcame the loss of TOP ownership with high-level efficiency and potency that applied pressure to opposing offenses via the scoreboard, especially at AT&T Stadium, that forced them to become one-dimensional and allowed Dallas' defense to pin its ears back and attack the passer — leading to pressures and a ton of takeaways.
Ah, the butterfly effect.
This season, however, it's more akin to an eclipse of moths desperately seeking some light.
And now you know what a group of moths are called.
Do with that what you will.
And as you peel back the many layers of what is going wrong with the Cowboys in 2024, and there is much you can point at as one of the culprits of a season that's devolved into a tailspin heading into Week 12, try and keep track of all of the leaves and branches on the dying tree while going deeper and realizing one of the root causes involves the clock itself.
No ownership of it. No control of it.
A team that once killed time is now being killed by it.
