Wide Receiver CeeDee Lamb Will Be the Key to Dallas Cowboys Success in NFL Playoffs
It feels disrespectful to say that a 12-5 Dallas Cowboys team is limping into the NFL playoffs, but it's difficult to avoid just how bad Week 18 was for NFC's No. 5 seed. The Cowboys played all of their starters in a bid to keep their NFC East division title hopes alive but they succumbed to the division-rival Washington Commanders —who were playing several of their backups— in embarrassing fashion, losing by three+ scores, 26-6.
While the defense wasn't outstanding, they received absolutely no help from their offensive counterparts, as they sputtered to a season-low 182 yards while quarterback Dak Prescott set the single-lowest completion percentage (37.8%), third-lowest passer rating (45.8%) and fifth-lowest completion (14) marks of his career. In turn, wide receiver CeeDee Lamb had one of the worst games of his year, earning marks well below his 2022 averages; Lamb caught five catches, 52 yards and a touchdown.
When asked about the performance after the game, offensive coordinator Kellen Moore said;
“Certainly we went into (the Washington game) to win it. We just didn’t execute and didn’t call it well. … There’s been plenty of good football. (Sunday) was really, really poor, obviously, for all of us. You evaluate it, clean it up and move on.”
The Cowboys will now take to the road in the Wild-Card Round and will look to avenge a Week 1 loss that looked almost as bad as last week's debacle. The best way to get this offense back on track will be to run the offense through one of the best wide players in the sport.
Wild Card Matchup and CeeDee Lamb's Playoff Projections
The Cowboys have had seven chances to beat Tom Brady throughout his lengthy career and are a whopping 0-7 in those matchups. In what might be their final chance to notch a win against the veteran, they need to come up big on the road, and that will involve unleashing CeeDee Lamb like they have been doing through the back half of this '22 - 23 season.
In nine post-bye games, the Cowboys have lined Lamb up in the slot on 70%+ of his snaps four times after allowing him to operate at that clip only once pre-bye. Moving him around the formation to find mismatches has done great things for his latest stats, with the post-bye usage raising his efficiency metrics; his yards per route run climbed from 2.4-to-2.6, his yards per target from 7.6-to-9.7 and his yards per game from 69.5-to-89.2.
Of 46 qualifying wide receivers (min. 50 targets from the slot), Lamb has proven to be one of the best options in the league, ranking fifth in yards per route run, fifth in yards per target, and fifth in EPA added per target. On the flip side, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense ranks 31st in schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to opposing wide receivers. Much of that concern how susceptible they are to options coming out of the slot.
Opposing receivers coming out of the slot catch 70% of the balls thrown their way (second-most) and earn 8.8 yards per target (fourth-most), while opposing quarterbacks have a 107.7 QB rating (second-most) when targeting their slot receivers against this defense.
The best way to get this offense back on track is to move CeeDee Lamb around the formation and often target him. This bodes well in fantasy circles as well, as we should be in for a big game, with a receiving yards ceiling that should rival anyone not named Justin Jefferson this week. Lamb's 2-29-0 on 10 targets stinker of a Week 1 against this Bucs team should scare people off of him, but don't fall into that trap.
