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By Bob Sturm Jan 21, 2020
It has certainly been a busy couple of weeks, and in all of the excitement and drama of the Cowboys “not firing” Jason Garrett and hiring Mike McCarthy — along with tentacles of both storylines growing all over the place — we never had a chance to have a good discussion about the defense.
This will hopefully suffice for now, as we take on the cause today with a look ahead and then close the book on what happened in 2019. You may be interested in both, but if you are only seeking one or the other, I will try to make the conversations somewhat independent of each other. There are plenty of visual aids throughout.
2020 — The Year Aggression Was Brought Back to the Defense
Let’s start with a “brief” look ahead to what Mike Nolan and Mike McCarthy believe their ideal defense to be. This is extremely speculative in nature, as McCarthy was thought to be rather hands-off with Dom Capers’ defense in Green Bay while Mike Nolan has not called defenses very much since Atlanta in 2014, and even that was for a defensive head coach in Mike Smith (so we don’t know what level of autonomy he had there).
We do know that these guys have been doing their thing for years and years and have plenty of thoughts of how to run a defense, but we also don’t know exactly what that means. So much in football has changed over the years so quickly that “what you believe” in 2010 or 2016 might not be as relevant as things in your life that might actually remain static (favorite team, favorite food). In football, either you are evolving with the league or you might be falling behind.
In my mind, so much of defense is starting with a general philosophy and then following a decision tree down a certain path to fine-tune it. But, at the very start of the discussion, I think you have to mix your idealistic approach of how you see football with the pragmatic view of your talent. Once you have assessed that, you probably internally declare to your coaching staff the following view:
Are we an attacking defense or a conservative defense?
Attacking defenses don’t always attack, and conservative defenses don’t always sit back, but I think you do have two different stats that each side would hold dear. The attacking defense is trying to find turnovers. The conservative defense is trying to prevent big plays.
Now, before you protest my premise and show me the 1985 Bears or even the 2019 49ers — who are very good at both — I will already concede that the very best defenses can do it all. They can shut you down and take the ball away twice a game. But that isn’t a result of some coaching ethos. That is because you have many phenomenal football players. The more great players you assemble, the less the scheme will matter. Obviously, I am oversimplifying when I say that, but regardless of what the Legion of Boom did in their Cover 3, I suggest they were going to be awesome in any number of coaching selections. Much like a great offense where the entire play sheet looks appealing, there is so much you can do with generational talent.
But what about teams that do not seem to have extraordinary talent — the ones that just have good, or even very good, talent at most positions? What can coaching do for them?
It all starts with the question of whether a defense is looking to steal a possession per half with a takeaway or if they obviously want takeaways, but they want to play sound defense and make a team drive the field over 10 to 12 plays in hopes the offense eventually harms its own cause with a drive killer (holding, fumble, dropped pass, etc).
This is how teams try to marry their offense and defense. A head coach wants complementary units. If you are going to play a certain style on one side, it should make sense on the other. And that is why high-octane offenses are often accompanied with a really aggressive defense: They know their defense isn’t very good, but maybe it can turn the game with an interception or a strip-sack.
On the other hand, slow and methodical offenses often choose a defensive philosophy that mirrors the attack. Those teams play a conservative style that tries to keep “bodies behind the ball” and swarms to the ball while attempting to avoid isolated defenders who either must make the play or the ball winds up in the end zone. Deep safeties, highly populated secondaries, bend-but-don’t-break and all of the principles of trying to make sure we don’t “beat ourselves” are the things you often hear from those defenses.
Hopefully, that brief digression leads us to this following truth. The Cowboys tried the ultra-conservative defense for about seven years now and tried to marry it with their “run-first” offensive initiatives of building a hulking offensive line, mauling defenders, running the clock and employing a defense that could not kill the entire plan by giving up big plays.
Before they did any hiring and firing this winter, I believe they decided they had enough of it. They tried and tried, but aside from two months in 2018, they never felt — despite so much investment in the defense on draft day from 2015 through 2018 — they could get it right.
They would play plenty of zone, they would never blitz, they would fly to the ball with high-effort players and they would hope for the best for their defense. They, mostly under Rod Marinelli, would try to make their opponents earn everything. This type of defense can work, and it can have great success, but it would be difficult to say that the Cowboys ever found the perfect defensive talent and disposition to enjoy long-term success.
They were often good — occasionally very good — but they never really approached being elite. They simply never could get takeaways. Over the last five seasons of football, they were 31st out of 32 teams in total takeaways. Ironically, the 32nd team is in the Super Bowl this year, as the transformation of the 49ers defense from horrendous to elite has not taken too terribly long at all. This presents yet another case for elite talent being a real shortcut. If all you need are game-wreckers, I highly recommend drafting some when you get those rare high draft picks.
The Cowboys decided they needed a change. I do not believe they seriously considered Kris Richard or Rod Marinelli for future positions here. They tried their ideas repeatedly and found that no takeaways were a constant, and this constant was tilting the field against them. When that happens, you are asking more of your offense — not less — by starting every field position deeper than your opponents every week. And, no matter how careful your offense is with the football, they still lose the turnover battle because the defense can’t get it. They were determined to change in 2020 long before they hired the new help.
I want to be really clear when we discuss blitz rates and other aggressive defensive tactics. There are bad teams that blitz all of the time. There are good teams that never blitz. Never ever confuse attacking as shorthand for dominance. Blitzing can often be an act of desperation. I constantly repeat a coaching quote I learned years ago: “We blitz as a weapon, not as a necessity.” If you have to blitz, you are in trouble. But if you believe the best way to defeat an opponent is to terrify them, then it can really be something special.
You already know some of this intuitively if you closely follow the Cowboys, but since the Rob Ryan era (2011-2012), Dallas’ defensive philosophical shift has been based on two basic premises: They don’t blitz, and they very seldom play man coverage. I am speaking in absolutes, and when we describe seven years and 7,500 plays, I am only speaking with regards to the majority of the time. But that is basically what they have done, mostly under Rod Marinelli throughout.
To demonstrate, I made you a fun little visual aid here with four different lines. The red line is the league-average blitz rate, which is usually around 30 percent or so over the last decade (but it obviously fluctuates).
Now, look at the blue line below, and you will find the Cowboys’ annual blitz rate over the last decade. You will quickly see that it almost is never above the red line. When it was, Rob Ryan was in charge, and the results were often bad.
I added a green line on the graph above for the Green Bay Packers under Mike McCarthy (and 2019 under Matt LaFleur), as well then a yellow line for Mike Nolan’s various stops in the last decade, too. As I referenced earlier, we should be skeptical in both cases of how much McCarthy ordered blitzes versus Dom Capers, as well as whether Mike Nolan had any power whatsoever. But, in both cases, you can see their lines suggest that they are often well-above league-average in their belief of how defenses should apply pressure in the name of aggressive defenses.
McCarthy, in particular, is never even close to the red line. His teams always brought pressure and also were always well above Dallas in takeaways. Interestingly enough, Green Bay this year dropped their blitz rate enormously without him (with the same defensive coordinator, Mike Pettine), and they experienced their best defensive season in years. Of course, they also added a boatload of defensive talent since McCarthy was fired, so I don’t know how relevant that shift in play-calling truly is.
Here is another version of that graph above, which is smoothed somewhat by league rankings in blitz calls:
This distinction is very easy to see. Mike McCarthy’s teams always bring pressure while Jason Garrett’s teams never brought pressure after he was able to get Rob Ryan out of town. Looking back, that was a very odd marriage to begin Garrett’s head-coaching tenure and perhaps proof that he had little-to-nothing to do with the selection of his defensive staff.
The Jones family had a lot of things to say about what they wanted in their next head coach. So much so that, for a while, it appeared they might be looking for a defensive coach; we will never know how close Mike Zimmer was to being in the mix if the Vikings lose to the Saints on the day McCarthy was hired. Zimmer absolutely uses blitzes as a weapon, but more importantly, has been part of an operation that built a defense that could beat you in many ways. The Vikings made defensive talent a massive priority and hit on a number of top players. Dallas chose the other path, with most first-round hits being offensive players.
Now, McCarthy has to work with the talent he has here. But we can assume the days of Dallas being bottom-10 in blitz rate are about to end. And with that, they hope the days of being near the bottom in takeaways end, too.
Closing the Book on 2019
Now, because I never tied up the loose ends, this will serve as our last statistical dump for 2019 and the era of the Richard/Marinelli Report.
Here are the important data points that we chart throughout the season. In the end, the defense was very strong in a few categories but below-average in sacks and allowing big plays (a very bad combination), then awful (again) at causing turnovers. Ultimately, the Cowboys were top 10 in takeaways just once (2014) in the last decade.
The other data above will tell you about the coverages the Cowboys run and the blitz rate for 2019. They are 20th in most man coverage and 26th in most blitzes. In both cases, these suggest they are bottom-third in the league in defensive aggression. They wanted to generate pressure with four rushers and play seven men in zone coverage. Again, that doesn’t make it a bad choice, but it is a choice.
As always, if you aren’t sure what splash plays are, I will direct you here.
2019 Splash Plays
Remember, more splash plays do not mean better defense was played. They can often mean “more” defense was played, though. And you can have high splash-play counts without high takeaways, so you stay on the field.
The chart below will show you splash totals by week. Here, you can see how the season went for certain players. It’s a very valuable aid from John Daigle for those who like to search for their guy in games by looking back.
These are our season splash leaders by year since this project began. This is also why I don’t tolerate DeMarcus Lawrence slander around here.
It is not a be-all, end-all stat by any means. It is merely a way to measure individual contributions to the cause to help know who is making the real impact, and it might validate their salary or contract priority.
There will be more time down the road to do a full study on Lawrence, but he is nowhere near the top of the list of Cowboys issues.
These will be:
- Where can this team find an elite safety?
- What do they do about Byron Jones?
- Can Robert Quinn be retained?
- Will Leighton Vander Esch be fully healthy?
- Where is the best place to find a difference-maker on defense in this draft?
- How much can Jourdan Lewis’ blitz ability help this defense’s new initiative?
- How many defensive linemen must be added this year?
