Quick Slant: MNF - Wind in an Empty Hall

Mat Irby's Quick Slant

• Cardinals
• Cowboys

It’s hard to fathom now, but the Arizona Cardinals used to be part of the NFC East as recently as a quarter century ago. Before the Houston Texans existed, the NFL was in dire need of realignment; expansion and team migration had left the divisions in a jumbled mess. Atlanta and Carolina were in the NFC West with the St. Louis Rams; Tampa Bay was in the NFC Central; Jacksonville was in the AFC Central. It was a strange time.

Of course, the Cardinals had started in Chicago before moving to St. Louis, where they were at the time of the NFL/AFL merger. When they were placed in a division with Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Dallas, they weren’t even the most glaring oddity. Yet throughout their time in the NFC East, from 1970 to 2001, they were outpaced by their four divisional bunkmates, who combined for 10 Super Bowl wins, while the Cardinals languished at the dank seabed of the NFL’s most successful division.

NFC East, 1970-2001

When the league expanded to 32 teams, it made sense to move Arizona to the West; not only were they geographical outliers, but no one left in the East ached over the departure of some bitter rival they needed to settle the score with each fall. Instead, the torch was snuffed out, a new room was booked at the Ponderosa, and no one lifted a finger to protest.

Bonded by 31 years of semi-annual appointments, the two teams were inevitably linked by some big moments: The Cardinals handed the Cowboys one of their most significant nationally televised embarrassments on Monday Night Football in 1970, when they stunned the Craig Morton/Roger Staubach-led Cowboys 38-0 in an island game just before Dallas rattled off seven in a row to reach the Super Bowl. The Don Coryell Cardinals swept Dallas in 1974, handing them their only missed playoff berth between 1966 and 1983. When the Aikman/Emmitt/Irvin Cowboys gasped their last playoff breath, their necks were under the squeezing fingers of Jake Plummer’s Cardinals in 1998. The Cardinals are also the only team to ever wrest the annual Thanksgiving game away from Dallas—twice in the 1970s, when they hosted Buffalo and Miami while the Cowboys ate turkey.

But the rivalry—whatever there ever was of it—died like a houseplant without water, or Kodak; it just drifted like high school sweethearts that go to separate universities. Today, there is almost nothing left of it.

While Cardinals’ QB Kyler Murray—a native of Allen, a suburb of Dallas—will miss Monday night’s festivities, his third absence in a row, the Cardinals approach with one of the more competent backups in the NFL today, Jacoby Brissett.

Meanwhile, the Cowboys are an offense trying to save themselves from their embarrassingly dreadful defense, as QB Dak Prescott plays some of the best ball of his career, ten years in.

Each teeters on the edge of relevance, hoping just to keep their helmet on. The NFC East rivalry survives only in a photo album on the top shelf—a rusted key—wind in an empty hall. Still, there is the here and now, with January implications still on the table. Monday will go a long way toward clarifying them.

Cardinals

Implied Team Total: 25.25

The Cowboys and Cardinals have gotten there in vastly different ways, but each has scored about the same number of points as they’ve surrendered. In Pythagorean expected wins, they are the same, projecting for 8.4 wins.

For the Cardinals, this has manifested in fewer wins; they are less effective on offense than Dallas, but conversely, far less thoroughly horrific defensively. They lie toward the league average in both offensive and defensive EPA.

Offensively, they rank 18^th in EPA per play and 29^th in offensive success rate. Their offensive strength is in the passing game, where they rank 13^th in EPA per dropback and 19^th in offensive success rate on dropbacks.

Arizona is close to league average in its pace at 27 seconds to snap (T-16^th). They have passed on 61% of their plays so far this season (T-7^th). They have run 67 offensive plays per 60 minutes (T-6^th). With a +2.7% pass rate over the expected (PROE), they rank fifth.

73.2% of their plays have come from a neutral script (345, 4^th). They have only run 68 plays while trailing by seven or more points (4^th).

Murray was trending toward playing in his homecoming game, but it was announced on Friday that Brissett would start his third straight. Admittedly, it requires some contextualizing because the Cardinals have surrendered far more points in the two games Murray missed, but the Cardinals have thrown far more often with Brissett under center, and to greater effect. They have also had more offensive snaps.

The late QB change announcement has fueled theories about everything from a traditional QB controversy to Murray being the subject of a trade (the trade deadline is Tuesday). Thus far, the Cardinals have denied anything other than Murray not being medically cleared in time.

However, it is notable that Murray, despite a quality rushing component, has failed to secure a top 12 fantasy performance in five starts.

Meanwhile, Brissett has gone two for two.

As mentioned already, the Cowboys’ defense is awful, ranking dead last in EPA per play allowed and defensive success rate.

They rank 32^nd in EPA per dropback allowed and 31^st in defensive dropback success rate. They have surrendered the most fantasy points to QBs in their last five games, allowing no fewer than 21.3 fantasy points to anyone during that stretch. This is not a particularly great set of QBs either.

The Cardinals have a relatively narrowly focused passing attack. Only TE Trey McBride (25.5%) and WR Marvin Harrison Jr. (16.0%) have target shares above 15%.

Similarly to how advantageous the matchup is for fantasy QBs facing the Cowboys, WRs have scored the fifth-most PPR points in the Cowboys’ last five games—this despite also playing a relatively modest selection of receivers (Terry McLaurin and Deebo Samuel were both out when Dallas played Washington).

The Cowboys have done better to limit the efficiency of the TEs they’ve faced during this time, so TE feels like less of an automatic smash. Again, not the most elite total group, but at least Tucker Kraft and Zach Ertz are a part of the sample, but only Jets’ rookie Mason Taylor was able to put up a top 12 performance.

Of course, McBride is an auto-start—possibly the best TE in fantasy football. McBride ranks in the top five in route percentage (1^st), targets (1^st), receptions (2^nd), receiving yards (4^th), TDs (4^th), air yards (1^st), targets per route run (TPRR, 4^th), first-read targets (1^st), first downs (3^rd), weighted opportunity (WOPR, 1^st), percentage of team receiving yards (1^st), end zone targets (1^st), horizontal breaks (5^th), and expected points per game (EP/G, 1^st). He ranks as the overall TE1 in PPR/G. There is no doubt about it: McBride is elite.

McBride has incredible consistency, hitting as a top 12 TE in six of seven games thus far, but he has reached new heights with Brissett under center, essentially lapping the field for each of his past two games.

A different QB has seemingly transformed McBride under center. His PPR points have more than doubled on average.

Harrison has not benefitted from Brissett’s presence, however, putting up about half the PPR/G in the past two games. Harrison has been an inconsistent fantasy asset all season, hitting the top 12 only once in Week 1.

The standard narrative (and it is historically true) has been that Murray can’t work the middle of the field, as he is likely too short to see over the line, causing him to either send targets outside the hashes or further downfield, or rely on bootlegs or working out of structure to find a window to see through. This has not been the case thus far this season, as Murray has worked the middle of the field far more frequently.

That’s neither here nor there for this one, as Brissett has excelled in the middle column between the hashes thus far.

Like a lot of TEs, McBride works primarily in the shallower depths, getting targets under ten yards out. But more of his success this year has come between the hashes. He and McBride make a good pairing.

The Cowboys’ defense employs a zone coverage on 78.9% of its defensive snaps (6th) and has a relatively mixed approach to safety alignment, leaning towards two-high safeties over single-high (51.8%, 13^th). Their primary defensive alignments are Cover 3 (35.0%) and Cover 2 (25.7%). They are not a particularly blitz-heavy team, with a rate of 23.2%.

Fantasy Points’ coverage matchup tool compares the types and rates of coverage a pass-catcher succeeds or fails against to the types and rates of coverage their opponent prefers to use to create a zero-based coverage grade. Based solely on the alignments, WR Zay Jones and WR Michael Wilson have favorable matchups while McBride and Harrison don’t (at +41.2%, Jones literally has the highest coverage grade of any WR or TE on the week).

PFF’s matchup tool is player-based, projecting the defenders a pass-catcher will face most often, then basing their results on season-long performance. They give McBride a great matchup, while all three WRs draw a fair matchup. Brissett actually shows up with a poor matchup.

There are no highly discernible advantages in the trenches, either in run blocking or pass blocking; all are relatively neutral. If the Cowboys can get pressure, Brissett has historically taken a lot of sacks. Dallas has maintained a surprisingly respectable pressure rate over expected (PrROE, 9.40%, 10^th this week), but the Cardinals are their equal offensively.

It took a little trial and error, but RB Bam Knight has seized the majority of the ground work in the absence of RBs James Conner, who is out for the year, and Trey Benson, who is out for at least one more week (possibly more). In Week 7, Knight received 50% of the team's rush attempts. Knight himself is nothing special, but his opportunity is fairly consolidated for the first two downs of each series. Emari Demarcado, who has dealt with injuries of his own, will be back this week and should slot into pass-catching duties. He could be a sneaky play.

The Cowboys’ defense is also struggling to stop the run, ranking 30^th in EPA on rushes allowed and 32^nd in defensive success rate. They have surrendered the second-most PPR fantasy points to RBs in their last five appearances; they were steamrolled by Josh Jacobs, Rico Dowdle, and R.J. Harvey. They have allowed the second-most rushing yards and the most receiving yards to RBs in that span.

It remains to be seen if Knight or Demarcado has what it takes to truly punish the Cowboys, as they are pretty below-average NFL RBs, but it simply may not matter; the Cowboys’ defense is bad enough that either or both should have usable production in many fantasy contexts.

Cowboys

Implied Team Total: 28.25