How the Cowboys Defense Tipped Its Hand and Let the Rams Run All Over Them

p1_

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How the Cowboys Defense Tipped Its Hand and Let the Rams Run All Over Them


By keying into how the Dallas defensive line set up, L.A. allowed C.J. Anderson and Todd Gurley to run free—and punched their ticket to the conference championship game

By Danny Heifetz Jan 13, 2019, 1:34pm EST


Photo by Harry How/Getty Images

Sun Tzu wrote that “every battle is won or lost before it’s ever fought.” The Rams proved that against the Cowboys on Saturday by out-preparing them last week.

L.A. beat Dallas 30-22 on Saturday with an unstoppable ground game. The Rams ran the ball 48 times for 273 yards (5.7 yards per carry), earning the fourth-most rushing yards in a game this season and the most the franchise has had in a game since 2001. Seventeen of L.A.’s 30 first downs came on the ground, which is the most rushing first downs in a playoff game since the number started being tracked in 1999. C.J. Anderson and Todd Gurley each ran for more than 100 yards, the first time two running backs on the same team both crossed that mark in the same playoff game in more than 20 years.

How did L.A. put together such a dominant performance against a run defense that ranked fourth best in rush yards allowed per attempt (3.8) and fifth best in run defense DVOA this season? Anderson and Gurley deserve credit for the romp, but so too does L.A.’s underappreciated offensive line, which submitted one of the best blocking performances by any team this year. The Rams’ run-blocking has been great all year, and in this game they had a secret weapon: They knew what the Cowboys’ defense was going to do before the ball was snapped.

They’re a defensive line that really likes to move a lot,” right guard Austin Blythe told The Ringer. “We had a pretty good tell when they were going to do that.”

The Cowboys don’t blitz often under defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli, so they rely on stunts with their four defensive linemen to disrupt the backfield. A stunt is when a defensive lineman (or usually multiple defensive linemen) attacks a different gap than the one he is lined up across from. The goal is to confuse opposing offensive linemen by having multiple defenders crash to a different spot than expected and then use the chaos to disrupt the backfield. But stunts depend on the element of surprise, and during Los Angeles’s film study in the week leading up to their game against Dallas, the Rams discovered that the Cowboys defensive line was tipping whether they were going to stunt based on how they aligned before the snap.

Depending on the alignment of the Cowboys defensive tackles, particularly whether Maliek Collins was shaded closer to the tackle instead of the guard, the Rams figured a stunt may be coming. If the Rams saw Collins lined up slightly wider than usual, they looked for a second tell. If a certain Cowboys lineman had a specific hand on the ground—right or left—or if a player was tilted one way or the other, it confirmed what the Cowboys defensive line was going to do.

“They have good players, but we just felt scheme-wise we were able to—we had a lot of tips and tells on what they were going to do in front of us,” said Rams center John Sullivan.

Blythe elaborated:

“Usually they like to play a 3-technique but if he got a little wider, and looked like he was going to play the [left or right] tackle, he was going to slant out and we were going to get another movement from the other side too,” Blythe said. “If [the defensive tackle] is going to come in, the tell is going to come in from the other side.”

I asked Blythe how often the tells accurately predicted the Cowboys play call.

“Plus-90 percent” Blythe said.

With the knowledge in hand, all the Rams had to do was execute, and they played almost flawlessly. Quarterback Jared Goff wasn’t sacked, and he was pressured on just one of his 28 dropbacks. That pressure rate (3.4 percent) was the second lowest for any quarterback who had 20 or more dropbacks in a game this season, according to the NFL.
 

lostxn

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Well there it is. I was so wondering how our line got rolled so badly. There it is. I guess this is the lack of detail that gets you beat. The inability to change things up. Eventually you run into a well-coached team that will take advantage of your tendencies. Amazing that our 50 year old coach is so stodgy.

So this was a coaching loss after-all.

Depressing.
 
D

Deuce

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Still don't know the Rams picked up on it in one game when no other team (that I know of) did it all season long.
Having the extra week to prepare isn’t always about just getting healthy.
 

fortsbest

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Well the Titans and Colts ran all over our asses too...
They just weren't "telling" everyone how they figured it out. Coaching gets a huge ton of blame again for a loss. And in even worse news, Garrett said today on the Fan, Linehan isn't going anywhere. God I hope that's not true.
 

Couchcoach

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They just weren't "telling" everyone how they figured it out. Coaching gets a huge ton of blame again for a loss. And in even worse news, Garrett said today on the Fan, Linehan isn't going anywhere. God I hope that's not true.
Saw this on BTB a while ago. Blew my mind
​​This has to be some kind of front
 

bbgun

please don't "dur" me
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I've heard of pitchers tipping their pitches but not NFL defenses.
 

Rev

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun
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I've heard of pitchers tipping their pitches but not NFL defenses.
Well this isnt the only time that it's happened
 
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