Dallas Cowboys: How will the offensive line perform in the season opener?
By Matt Aaron
Center
I feel bad for Joe Looney. He’s in what they call an unenviable position. He’s taking over the job of retiring perennial Pro Bowl center Travis Frederick. Fredbeard, as he is affectionately known, has often been referred to as the best center in the NFL.
In addition to his abilities as a blocker and a snapper, Frederick has a brilliant football brain, and excelled at calling out the defensive formations, helping quarterback Dak Prescott avoid monstrous pass rushers. Frederick was great at spotting trouble before it started. It’s a very difficult ability to replace.
In Looney, the Cowboys don’t have an unknown quantity. He started for Frederick in 2018, when the Pro Bowl center was out all year with Guillain-Barre syndrome. In examining the play of Looney, he looked pretty good at most facets of his job that year.
Looney was a solid blocker, both in pass protection and against the run. He was a competent snapper. And he only allowed one sack all season, with only five penalties. It wasn’t bad.
Except for one thing: Dak Prescott was sacked 56 times in 2018, 24 times more than any other season of his career, according to Pro Football Reference. When the dust settled, at least some of this was attributed to the loss of not just Frederick’s body, but his eyes and brain.
It looked like Looney, though competent at the other facets of the game, wasn’t so great at calling out the defense. This summer, however, Dak Prescott expressed confidence not only in Looney, but in the coaching staff to handle it, per his response during a press conference via the Dallas Cowboys official YouTube account.
"“Yeah, no worries. No worries at all. As you said Joe was the center for 2018, and that was a good year for us … There’s no worries there. Not at all. I trust Joe, I trust our coaches. And I trust that they’re going to have whoever it is that needs to be in there at the offensive line, whether it’s filling in for a guy or not, that we’ll all be ready.”"
It’s nice to hear Prescott expressing confidence like this. But he also tends to be a rah-rah type of guy. Have you ever heard the Dallas quarterback express reservations or concerns? Ever heard him sound anything less than supportive of any other player?
No. I don’t think so. But he does have a point. Despite the high number of sacks, Dallas made the playoffs that year. So, I think Looney probably has a ceiling and a floor. His floor is likely his 2018 play, which was pretty good, except for the vision thing. But what’s his ceiling? Can he improve at calling out defensive formations? We’ll see.