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By Bob Sturm 54m ago
The Cowboys’ 2020 season was long and disappointing. It ended at Met Life Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on a tiny margin that seemed a proper cap to a season that couldn’t end soon enough.
After the game, as has been the case all season, key players met the media through the lens of a camera for what now passes as a postgame press briefing.
Jaylon Smith was wearing a yellow winter coat and what we can assume were sunglasses that were created by him for his name-brand line. The questions began. For four minutes, they were all about this game. The final question was about the future:
“Jaylon, there has been a lot of discussion about the future of players whether they are under contract or not. Do you feel like you will be back here next year at all?”
“Me?” he responded, with what appeared to be some level of confusion.
(Long pause)
“Yeah,” from the reporter.
“Pffffff. I mean, watch the film. But, for me, it’s a blessing to be able to play this game. So many people thought I’d never play. Ever again. So, for me, I’m my worst critic and I’m my biggest fan. I’m gonna keep battling and keep grinding. But the guys that know football and know our scheme and watch film, I don’t have to speak on myself. It’s all love. It’s all love.”
Let’s start at the beginning and with some disclosure. I have long been a huge Jaylon Smith enthusiast. (I resist the word “fan” because it generally means one is not capable of seeing reality sometimes, and I believe you can want great things for another human while still seeing things for what they appear to be, not what you want them to be). I enjoy his story, and his recovery is inspirational. I have even done a public event a few years back where it was just Jaylon and myself in front of a large audience having a conversation. In other words, if anything, I am probably a bit biased on his behalf.
You may recall that after the 2018 season, I wrote a very long story enthusiastically praising what I deemed to be the Cowboys Player of the Year. It was Jaylon Smith. Here is a passage from that piece. I bolded one line in particular.
“The player who was so limited in 2017 shed all of those labels in a hurry. His 2018 was nothing short of magnificent and buried any and all claims that he could not return to being the player projected as a top-10 draft pick before that 2016 Fiesta Bowl.
In other words, the recovery is now in the past tense. Jaylon Smith is a star in this league.
I am not saying he played a perfect season. We will see some plays below that were not all excellent; this is a very tough league with some nearly-impossible matchups. But, I want to recognize Smith’s season, the risk the Cowboys took, and the position they are now in because the player and the franchise believed in a return to form.
Jaylon Smith wasn’t just a good player this year. He was one of the very best linebackers in all of football. Given that people like me had our doubts in August about whether he would ever be a league-average starter, the strides he made cannot be overstated.
My evaluation of Jaylon’s 2018 comes down to more than just his splash plays. But, he made many, many splash plays. He had sacks, forced fumbles, passes defended, and tackles for loss. He made plays that helped win games and one or two we will not soon forget.
Not only did Smith make more big plays, but he made far fewer poor plays. This is the true key of a special NFL player. When you are not making difference-making positive plays, it’s important to avoid the difference-making negatives.”
That was 23 months ago.
And here we are today, challenged by No. 54 himself to “watch the film” of the 2020 season to evaluate whether there should be a conversation about the future of his inclusion on this team. It wasn’t a very good season; too often, it felt like he was responsible for some massive plays and what we called difference-making negatives. So, partly because I enjoy uncovering more than easy narratives, I took on Jaylon’s challenge to “watch the film.”
But not just me — because, despite my extreme interest, I have certainly coached the game of football for zero days in my entire life and have limitations to my scheme knowledge because of this. Assisting me today is a team of experts: coaches and scouts I know or have come to know through this job that I wanted to assist in the evaluation of these plays.
This project is not to make Jaylon look good or bad. It is to understand how a player this good could fall this far and whether the larger changes in the defense — first from 2019’s Marinelli-Richard crew to Nolan and then this year’s move from Nolan to Dan Quinn, which will look like a complete 180 — can undo the bad and help him try to regain the good.
First, I want to bring in a guy whose opinion I really enjoy: Steve Palazzolo from Pro Football Focus. I asked him to evaluate Jaylon’s current status and season performance. He responded that same day:
Bob, some thoughts on Jaylon Smith:
Linebacker grading does tend to fluctuate more than other positions in the PFF system, and I think it’s largely the nature of the position. So much of defensive performance is based upon who you face and, especially at linebacker, opposing matchups. So using multiple years of performance is better than one year as the sample size obviously helps sift through the noise. Also, linebacker play was down a bit across the league, so Smith’s 2020 didn’t look THAT bad comparatively.
This is Smith’s four-year career. Pretty good:
I buzzed through some of Smith’s 2020 film, and I think the biggest difference this year was in the run game, just as the grades show. He still has the speed and agility to beat blockers to the spot and, as I described during the draft process, he looks like a Madden glitch morphing to the ball at times. However, this year, Smith’s negatively graded plays against the run increased dramatically, and it looked like his block awareness was poor. He seemed to have his eyes on the back, and he rarely saw second-level blocks coming his way. Perhaps it was the new scheme, but in past years we’d seen Smith use his hands and shed blocks much better whereas this year he just got popped or moved far too easily. Hope this helps, but the bottom line is linebacker play does fluctuate a bit and think we did see that with Smith this year.
I really appreciate Steve providing PFF’s grading. As you can see, his four-year portrait is in the top half of the league in almost everything and in top quarter of the league in three of those six categories. I tend to agree that most of Jaylon’s biggest issues this year were on the ground in run situations. I also concede that almost all of these situations are not a solo problem: The Cowboys’ defensive tackle and safety positions let him down, as did the long-term health situations of Leighton Vander Esch and Sean Lee, to say nothing of the scheme issues.
Now to our panel of experts. I am not going to name them because I don’t want to lose the focus of the piece and have people questioning them and their track records. The focus should be on evaluating what their eyes see as coaches. I promise, nobody here has an issue with Jaylon, and several are watching these plays on film for the first time. But they do know the game of football inside and out. They are:
Coach 1: 16 years of defensive football and head coach at the high-school level.
Coach 2: 10 years in defensive football — both college and high school levels.
Coach 3: Linebackers coach at the D1 level.
Coach 4: Over 25 years in coaching, including 20 as offensive coordinator at the high school level.
Each of them stressed the issues with not fully knowing the calls but simply looking at what the tape shows. In fact, Coach 2 even qualified it this way: “All comments are qualified by not knowing the defensive play call, which is obviously a huge part of the discussion. But I will confine myself to technique-only (as much as possible) as you requested.” The coaches are all working independently; they do not know each other, nor do they know what the others’ evaluations are.
I gave them seven plays that quickly jumped out as significant moments where Jaylon Smith looked to be at least partly at fault. Each one has five frames for you to look at while we are talking about each spot. On Thursday, I will dive into an overall collection of our evaluation as well as my conclusions. But our panel is up first — and I walked away intrigued by how often the coaches found blame elsewhere.
Play 1 – Seattle – Q2 – 7:25 – 1st-and-goal – Chris Carson left for no gain.
This play caught eyes because, quite frankly, it was the first of many in which Jaylon clearly became confused mid-play, stopped his action completely and turned the other way. It was like someone’s Xbox controller got unplugged because the rest of the defense continued in their uninterrupted direction. What caused him to make a movement that seemingly made no sense? His eyes and his body were in such direct conflict during this two-second play that it even jumped out to people on their couches. The question of “what is Jaylon doing?” certainly popped up a few times this season.
Carson did not get in the end zone. but I still wanted this one to begin our evaluation — and don’t forget there is always money in the banana stand.
Coach 1: Once 54-Smith has hunted his gap, he is committed, continue on, flow to ball, get in the picture; the pause to check the boot (which is long-gone if 3-Wilson has the ball), shows an incomplete understanding of how to be reasonably effective in the defense. “If I do my job, I cannot do that job.” The real problem here is of course 98-Crawford, who gets inexplicably hooked after two steps; poor read of departure angle of covered OL, poor technique vs. full zone to allow his gap to run away from him; 25 too light, too high, not enough pressure on the LOS with his chest, his only hope is to undercut the crack and run through the underside of the block; 39 not quick enough on the crack-replace, especially with full zone flow at him, outside technique (even in man coverage) allows for this read to be made quickly.
Coach 2: Against the outside zone, Jaylon should not jump into that A Gap. It puts him way behind the play. But the crack on Woods cuts off his lateral flow. Jaylon has no good option here. As for turning back to Russ? That is on Jaylon. Do your job and run to the ball. The biggest takeaway here is the lack of trust Jaylon and LVE showed in the structure around them all year. I put 90 percent of this on Brandon Carr (No. 39). He gets a crack block by his key (No. 14). The play is strung out to him, and he can’t make an outside-in tackle. Carr should not hesitate, force the run back inside. He has support coming, and Armstrong is playing this perfectly. Armstrong deserves a mention here. They have a chance because of him, and this shows why he got more reps as the season went along.
Coach 3: Great read, great downhill move, no false steps… BUT HE STOPS AND LOOKS AT… WHAT EXACTLY??? He may not end up making the play, but in the middle of sprinting towards the ball carrier, he stops and sees a ghost. This was the weirdest play of the game. He is not trusting his eyes. Maybe he doesn’t trust his teammates, and he is trying to do too much, but this was just bizarre.
Coach 4: Problem stems from how they are set on the bunch side —makes them out-gapped to both sides —just dumb, got two in same gap to the bunch, that leaves them screwed out the back end. Smith has backside A gap, full flow and should scrape. Safety doesn’t allow it, and Smith is clueless anyhow and put in a bad situation gap-wise to begin with.
Play 2 – Cleveland – Q2 – 9:11 – 1st-and-10 – D’Ernest Johnson left end to DAL 23 for 28 yards
This one is very frustrating, as part of the first half against Cleveland that might have been the defense’s darkest hour this season. It was as if they had never been together or coached. And, yes, we have learned over time that when this team gets gashed on the ground, it does seem to happen more when Sean Lee and Leighton Vander Esch are absent. For instance, Weeks 4 and 5 in 2017, when Jaylon and a backup LB (Anthony Hitchens) were just abused by the Rams and Packers in consecutive home games.
But this seemed different due to the pre-snap motion of the TE and then the pulling RG as well, all to the point of attack. Was this on Jaylon or were they just outnumbered — and was the blitzing CB coming from the far left of the frames way too wide to affect anything?
Coach 1: At the snap, the DE makes a great move but must play under control so he doesn’t slide past the play. For 54, ZERO REASON for hesitation here. He’s on a Strong X, with 2 backs at him. Be gone yesterday. Hesitation costs him his correct shoulder, and even though he ends up reasonably correct at the point, he’s on the wrong shoulder, which of course is the difference between Notre Dame and the NFL. The outside pressure (28-Worley) is terrible. Way too deep, especially on a 1st-and-10 play vs. a formation this heavy; needs to be flat and scraped off the butt of the TE. That the W (88) is able to work past all of that and find the backside LB (48-Thomas) is embarrassing.
Coach 2: Normally Jaylon should get outside the kickout block (No. 88) and send it all back inside, but that is 28-Worley’s job. The corner blitz takes on all primary force responsibility. He is completely untouched and should make this play. Now, in terms of Jaylon, this is a question for the coaching staff. Is he being told to fit the first open window or the next inside gap? First open window: Jaylon fits like he does inside of No. 77 and spills the play outside. This allows Joe Thomas to keep scraping and outrun the OL climbing to him. And it keeps the corner blitz in the picture.
Next inside gap: Jaylon fits between No. 88 and No. 77 and supports the edge created by the corner blitz. This forces the ball back inside to pursuit but puts a ton of stress on Joe Thomas to play through an OL and fit inside No. 77. This is not a horrible situation; unblocked corner and Thomas beat his OL. Someone has to make a play. Maybe a healthy LVE does, or maybe Awuzie does. Why are the coaches relying on replacement-level players to “make plays”?
Coach 3: The defensive line is slanting to the left. This means all the gap responsibilities shift over one gap to the right for the LBs. 54 fits one gap too many inside. You can even see 48 stutter steps because 54 is fitting into 48’s gap. 54 should be fitting between pulling guard and 88. Explosive play + mental error = critical error.
Coach 4: It is unsound to begin with. They are asking Smith to take the left A gap, the left D and C gap. The Browns insert two people — making more gaps — the Cowboys can’t gap it out. Just dumb. They have over-gapped the right side —just draw lines between defenders and gaps, and you can see what I mean. Once the Browns motion and pull, the Cowboys are screwed in the run game. Now, if 54-Smith comes forward and blows it up instead of hopping, NFL dudes may be able to fit it — but not when he hops like that. Just bad.
Play 3 – Arizona – Q4 – 2:00 – 3rd-and-4 – Kenyon Drake up the middle for 69 yards, TOUCHDOWN.
This play happened at a very low time in the year: the week after Dak Prescott was hurt, and we were all looking at those left to just show some fight. I will concede that one of Jaylon’s most important issues with the public is to never look like he is giving up on plays when he thinks it is past him because he has that reputation from previous film studies. This very thing happened early in the fourth quarter on a long play where DeAndre Hopkins took a short pass for 60 yards, and Jaylon did not show proper effort. Therefore, when this happened late in the game, nobody had patience for seeing Drake run right down the middle of the defense untouched for an exclamation-point touchdown. What did our coaches see?
Coach 1: This play is silly to me. 54 is playing MLB by alignment against an uncovered center. Uncovered centers are relatively easy to read because, in pass pro, they are going to have to pass set quick to acquire blitzes or move to chips along the front… they rarely lie to you, much like covered TEs. Vs 2i (DT), the LG blocks down on the 2i, and the C is looking to scoop the inside of the play side gap on his way to Wham on the play side LB (48). In short, if something shows across his face, he takes it; if not, he continues on to 48. Somehow, 54 engages on the wrong shoulder, in the wrong gap, gets himself blocked and blocks two other guys along the way. You hate the reaction by 48: He has an open door, plain as day; he needs to be gone yesterday and attacking the open door, his delay puts him in horrible position to get screened by 54. Don’t know if this is supposed to be a blitz by 25-Woods or not, it might explain the over-commit by 54. But if not, it’s not good by 25. He is the cutback player in this front, with action away. Being in the A gap is OK, but ideally, we would like to see a scrape across the front with consistent pressure with my chest on the LOS (line of scrimmage) until I close down to the cutback run.
Coach 2: Jaylon is lined up in a weak-side “10” over an open A gap, but as the play unfolds, that is not his gap. The Cardinals have a four-man surface to the strong side, and on any run, Jaylon must add himself strong as a play-side player. The open A you point him to is Woods’ responsibility as a cutback player. Jaylon is at full fault here. He must take the play-side B Gap, but he gets reached by the center. Jaylon gets split flow, O-Line weak and RB Strong, since this is a zone scheme he should step with the RB and get downhill into the B Gap. Joe Thomas is stacked on Crawford and is playing the C and D gaps with him. Joe is correct to slow play this because he doesn’t have an open window, and no one is climbing to him. Jaylon has a wide-open window and gets blocked because he can’t process split flow and doesn’t know what to do. By staying at depth it creates a wide-open cutback lane. Please make sure to note that Jaylon has a weak-side and a strong-side gap based on play direction. Donovan Wilson also gets a big minus here for committing to early. He probably assumes Jaylon won’t get bullied all the way to the C gap, but he never has a clear lane and commits too early.
Coach 3: I think I watched this play at least a dozen times. I’ve read how Nolan runs a two-gap defense, but this is clearly a one-gap call. 54 has the A-Gap right in front of him. That’s his sole responsibility in the run game. Ball is snapped and the center comes to block him and 54 goes the wrong way. How do I know it’s the wrong way? There is a NT in the other A Gap and an LB that has the B Gap on the other side. 54 does what we have seen him do far too often and doesn’t fight through the block. 41 sprints untouched for a 69-yard TD. The proverbial cherry on top.
Coach 4: By now, I am starting to think this isn’t Smith; this is just stupid defense. By his reaction, his key read is guard and he has backside A, but they are sending a little guy through backside A. Then look at the front side on the right of the screen! Who has what gap? There are two in one again. Smith just takes blocks —he needs to have flow reads and run — not this stuff they have him doing that is unsound. It seems like the back end and the front are not tied together at all, like the secondary guys and the front guys are not on the same page, and they are just calling stuff and hoping it works. And that doesn’t work.
Play 4 – Washington – Q1 – 3:54 – 2nd-and-3 – Antonio Gibson left guard for 12 yards, TOUCHDOWN.
Much like our first play, Jaylon sees this correctly — until he sees the “eye candy,” 41-McKissic, running across the offense as a decoy and drops everything to go with him. This was so nonsensical and the moment in the year when I was convinced that Jaylon had regressed more than any reasonable player could. When you are down pieces, you automatically expect the remaining highly compensated players to shine and help drag the team along. This was Vander Esch’s first game back, and he was on a snap count, but Jaylon has been lost for a full month by this game in Week 7. I see no chance that this was on anyone but 54, but I did want to see what the coaches thought. Don’t forget about the banana stand, please.
Coach 1: The read triangle (G-C-G) again is full zone right and look how quickly the uncovered center tells you the truth; from the perspective of 54-Smith, he should only see full zone right with the RB action the same… That’s HIS JOB: HUNT THAT GAP. Under no circumstance should he do anything else from this alignment against this front and action. 54 looks like he is just completely guessing here. No concept of the read, no understanding of how the defense fits together, running off to do someone else’s job instead of his own.
Coach 2: Jaylon chases the split zone WR crossing the formation like a dog not sure which squirrel to chase. This is awful and probably the most indicting clip because of the DO YOUR JOB lesson to be learned here. Jaylon has to play his weak-side A gap. That gap is vital on any run-based play; it cannot be abandoned. Now, there is a larger football IQ problem here. Split zone or cutback zones have to involve tight flow from the RB. With a full wide-flow look, such as this play, the most it can cut back is the weak-side A gap. Jaylon not only has bad eye discipline, but he clearly doesn’t understand what is a possible outcome. I still cannot believe he abandons his gap; it is truly baffling. Furthermore, there is no universe where he could realistically cover a route going against the grain, and no DC would ever make that his job. If anyone should chase that action it is Wilson, no one else. LVE actually does very well here and almost makes a TD-saving play. If he any sort of replacement-level help from Jaylon, this is a no play. 10 guys doing their job, and one guy not trusting the structure.
Coach 3: Remember what I said about LB keys? Eyes should be guard through to the RB. What are those three players doing? And explain to me what 54 is doing… He sees Washington-41 run under and to the flat at the last second and throws all the other information out the window while 24-Gibson runs for an easy TD. Again, either he doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t understand where his eyes should be or he doesn’t trust his teammates to make a play. Regardless, this is one of the worst plays out of 54 all year. Eye candy has been and will be a problem all season.
Coach 4: Lol! No. 25-Woods and 26-Lewis are not in force position to begin with —they can be cracked — unsound as hell. The play is just basic split zone; yes, there is a boot fake off of it, but they have the numbers to cover that out the backdoor without him. Again, it looks like a huge disconnect between what he is being told on the front and gaps, and what he is being told on the coverage end.
Play 5 – Washington – Q4 – 12:14 – 1st-and-10 – Antonio Gibson left tackle for 23 yards, TOUCHDOWN.
This is the play immediately following the infamous botched fake punt. You want your defense to be organized and ready to deal with sudden change. If your offense or special teams just handed your opponent an opportunity, a defense has to take that personally and make a stand with some sort of reasonable conviction.
Washington moves Gibson from Alex Smith’s left to his right at presnap to attack the spot that looks undermanned. Gibson basically waltzes down Main Street right past Smith and he is gone. This also showed me that this team has nothing at defensive tackle to help the linebackers. The other thing I would point out is that, in the fourth frame below, Gibson and Jaylon are even with each other (with linemen between them). Often, in runs like this, the two meet at the intersection with a collision by the sixth frame. In this case, by the sixth frame, Gibson had a five-foot lead on Smith to the corner, and he is gone — completely untouched.
Coach 1: I find it very difficult to believe that 54 is lined up correctly here. He’s into the boundary, and perhaps they had some field tendencies (in fairness, LVE is slid one gap to the field also, so perhaps this is correct based on the call). He seems to be trying to communicate something, but the overhang player is to the field, so there’s no one there to talk to. My problem with this is even though the LBs are slid one gap to the field, they still have to work back to their gaps on straight-ahead run action, draw or not. 54 takes first steps towards LVE’s gap instead of his own and out-leverages himself. Again, every single thing in my triangle (G-C-G AND RB action) takes me to my gap of responsibility, but 54 ignores it all. This read by 37 is incredibly poor; his read-key is No. 3 WR opposite (82), who immediately turns out on the DE. Vs. No. 3 engage, he has to work off his rail (the seam) back to his run fit. This puts him in position to play slant back to the single receiver side, as well as ultimately react quickly to the draw, which of course doesn’t happen. Three steps towards an engaged TE with nothing to squeeze vertically is not good.
Coach 2: I would say the LBs are both misaligned. Structurally, this makes very little sense. They are either being set up for failure by coaching, the coaching doesn’t understand how to mesh the safeties and LBs fits together or the players can’t recognize where they should align. This screams of a systematic issue that coaches aren’t teaching or the players can’t implement what they are being taught. As a result, both LVE and Jaylon jump into someone else’s gap because they are aligned over the wrong gap. Of course, they step up — they are NFL LBs; if they see an open window, the reflex is to close it. So the RB winds all the way to the backside B gap, where there is no safety and Jaylon should have been.
Coach 3: 54 has B Gap. He flows to backside A Gap (instead of outside to the B as the play dictates). Touchdown – CRITICAL ERROR
Coach 4: LVE has A/C gap, Smith has A/B gap — just dumb. Now, IF Smith has A and 37-Wilson has B, then this is all on 37. But, again, back end and front end don’t match!
Play 6 – Baltimore – Q1 – 9:22 – 2nd-and-7 – Jackson scrambles right end to BLT 29 for 10 yards (J.Smith).
This was very early in the Baltimore game — I believe their second snap — and they pretty much wanted Jaylon to play as an edge and just sit on the Lamar bootleg. Now that is easier said than done, of course, as Lamar is faster than every player on the field. But if you have one job, you certainly cannot dive too shallow to have the edge and get outflanked this easily. You literally had one job. Incidentally, for those who see the tackle totals as relevant, Smith was credited with a tackle on this play.
Coach 1: 54 has an outside pressure and it is well-timed and run correctly, right off the butt of the expanded W. Vs. Pistol (and I would imagine more so vs. the Ravens), your target is adjusted at the QB because you can dual read the RB on your way to the QB (and the Qb is a second RB). This is harder to do when the back is offset to you or away from you just because of the potential play set and the angle of the mesh. The minute 8-Jackson shows you his back, your job is boot, whether he has the ball or not. Again, this is a question of where can I be reasonably effective in this defense? It’s unlikely I am chasing the zone down from the backside, but I can absolutely make a tackle on the boot. Vs. Jackson, you are never the best athlete, so when you read boot, your return angle must be flat. You can’t attack him, and you have to know that. This is making a great athlete look ordinary, skill to skill. Stick your foot, retrace your steps and work flat to force a throw.
Coach 2: Jaylon is boot responsible and has no “playside” responsibilities if the ball is handed. He is 100 percent responsible for Lamar. But his path is turned in, and his shoulders are turned. Jaylon obviously is at an athletic deficit to Jackson, but he could help himself by keeping his shoulders square and forcing Lamar to stand tall and make a rushed throw from inside the pocket. Also, even if Jaylon plays this well, they have a wide-open crosser to deal with. They are playing a 3 deep 3 under concept, and this is where I would say that Nolan’s age is showing. That coverage vs. 11 personnel is just not realistic given the number of potential threats.
Coach 3: Second play of the game for the defense. 54 blitzes and is outside contain. Yes 8-Jackson is one of, if not the most mobile QBs in the league, but even more so, 54 needs to be extra cautious and not let this happen. Outside contain and rush 8’s upfield shoulder maintaining that leverage so you can force him back into your friends. He does neither. In fact, it looks like he thinks he’s going to run down the RB sprinting to the other side of the field. Physical error.
Coach 4: He got “out-athleted.” The rest of the D is suspect gap wise, IMO.
Play 7 – San Francisco – Q1 – 1:44 – 3rd-and-1 – Mostert left end to DAL 2 for 17 yards
Finally, let’s look at this one. The 49ers are quite strong at game-planning and scripting plays to attack weaknesses that they spot in the lead-up to the game. I am pretty convinced they knew the combination of this Cowboys defensive right side (Crawford-Jaylon Smith) was ripe for the picking. What I thought was tough to understand is how, with maybe the best fullback in football, you can see the 49ers have too many blockers for the Cowboys defense to the left of the center but on 3rd-and-1, you see that while the Niners are expecting a power run, the Cowboys are absolutely outnumbered and easy pickings — so much so that 71-Trent Williams, one of the best tackles in football, finds himself with nobody to block on this key play.
Coach 1: Before the W (44) motions, the read for 54 is 71 to 44, post-motion it becomes 75 to 31. Either way, the read is clean and clear. 75 engages and turns the DT, which takes all fast flow zone out of the question… this is the technique we wished we saw on Play 1. The most important part of this (no matter which lineman you are keying) is that you have a back at you. It’s quick, but he’s at you, so you have to honor that. Don’t run off to chase someone else’s back when you have a back at you. Poor 98-Crawford isn’t built for this play, so you have to do your job when 31 comes to my side at the snap. The crazy thing about this play is that he runs off so far that the OT assigned to him has no one to block. He just goes on down the field and picks him up 15 yards downfield.
Coach 2: Hard to blame Jaylon here. He has to take that fullback action because he appears to be A-gap responsible. I don’t like what Woods does here. As a single high safety, he has to be able to run alley to alley and support. He is a box safety playing out of position, and it shows here. I know they don’t have a better option on the roster. This play hits because the coaching staff puts Tyrone Crawford all alone on a backside edge. When you have D-Law, Gregory and Aldon Smith available, Crawford should never be forced to do this. For me, this one is on the coaching staff for putting Crawford in this predicament.
Coach 3: He’s just flat-out guessing at this point. Mental error.
Coach 4: They are asking him to play two gaps that are way too far apart — there is no force player to the left. This is easy money by the Niners: force his key here, go there, the play-side LT veers through and realizes immediately he isn’t needed to block Smith. This is not Smith’s fault. This is the DC’s fault.
Easy money. Yes, that was what Orlando Brown of the Ravens shouted into the camera in Week 13 when the Ravens were destroying the Cowboys on national TV. Easy money, indeed.
Two of our coaches left these overall summaries.
Coach 1: Overall, I look at 54 and feel like he has an incomplete understanding of how the defense works … almost like someone has coached him to just go run and be the best athlete. He seems to overreact to things that are not his responsibility, and he under-reacts to things that are fundamental to his own success in the scheme.
Coach 3: Playing linebacker is more than being able to blitz and cover receivers down the field. It is about taking on blocks, shedding them and tackling the ballcarrier. It is about living for contact and blowing up an iso. Jaylon wears the green dot, and you are telling me he has a hard time reading keys in the running game? I know I seem to pile on Jaylon a lot, but this is at the feet of Jerry and Stephen. This kid may have been an OK pro at 100 percent, but take away what he relies upon as his fastball and you have someone searching for answers. No wonder he jumps at every crosser he sees; his legs don’t work so he is guessing.
I will end there today and want to let this soak in a bit as we look at the issues. Then, in a few days, I want to write my own summary of this study and see how it can perhaps work out differently in 2021 if they keep him around, or if this actually is a lost cause and the Cowboys should replace him.
We will sort that out then.
