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By Bob Sturm Mar 26, 2020
I can’t help myself. Despite almost no contact of substance and certainly nothing close to inside information being available, my idle time these days – of which there is much more than any of us would prefer – continuously takes me to the looming questions presented by the 2020 Cowboys.
Most notably, for me, that is a question about the quality of the defense.
After all, even in an 8-8 season, the offense was quite impressive. It is crazy how much time people spend debating the offense and going on and on about their dissatisfaction about certain components. Certainly, talking about the coach and the QB and the RB and the WR and everything else gets clicks, and is really interesting to those national talking heads who need to figure out how to generate content these days. I don’t blame them. It is an easy target, and the cheese that the mice cannot resist. Talking about the relative merits of Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott is easily consumable for those who only “sort of” watch the Cowboys.
But the offense did more than enough to win 10 or 11 games in 2019. I know that sounds like a revised version of history, but I promise it is plenty true. Take a look at these numbers:
No. 1 in total offense.
No. 2 in passing offense.
No. 5 in rushing offense.
No. 5 in scoring offense.
No. 2 in third-down offense.
No. 9 in giveaways.
While the Cowboys lost games in which their offense was not necessarily blameless, they also lost to Green Bay in a two-score game in which they missed two field goals. They lost to the Jets in a game where they missed a field goal. They lost to the Vikings by four in a game where they missed a field goal. They lost to the Patriots by four in a game where they missed a field goal. They lost to the Bills and missed two more field goals. And they lost to the Bears in a game where they missed a field goal. Those are six games in which they lost by a manageable margin with a field-goal kicker who did not kick straight and also couldn’t get cut no matter what he did.
I cannot stress how bad it is to miss 10 field goals in the NFL in just 11 weeks. It is nearly unheard of, especially in 2019 and especially when we are not talking about a generational kicker the team is refusing to release. Sometimes a great kicker will be allowed to miss five out of eight, but most short-timers won’t be. Well, Maher was inexplicably allowed to stay well past his expiration date (some might call it a parallel to the head coach’s tenure), and the team suffered.
So, before we get to the defense, allow me the flimsy premise of saying an 8-8 team might have been 10-6 with no changes to the entire team save a competent kicking situation. They had the worst kicker in the NFL by almost any measure, including going 1-for-5 (20 percent) from 40 to 49 yards, which is a range where the NFL kicked 71 percent (even including Maher).
https://twitter.com/SportsSturm/status/1243008277111332864
Let’s assume that Kai Forbath and Mike McCarthy will offer change and remove two of the festering issues that have caused this franchise recent distress. Let’s assume that the Cowboys will convert 82 percent of their field goals rather than the 66 percent they received from Maher in 2019. In my estimation, they should have probably waited no later than the Minnesota game to try a new direction. Instead, it was the Rams game right before Christmas when the change was made.
Too late.
I suppose I am going to get a reputation if I wait 500 words to get to the actual topic of the piece, but let’s dig into the defense.
The defense was not horrendous in 2019. Rather, it was just not very good. They were average in almost every way. They ranged somewhere between ninth and 22nd in almost every category — right in the middle of the league. Sometimes a bit better in some categories and sometimes a bit worse in others.
As we discussed, there were two notable exceptions:
Third-down defense – 2nd.
Takeaways – 25th.
The problem with this entire summary is simple. They drafted defenders to fix it. They did not draft for average. Over the course of 2014-2019, they had spent 10 different top-100 picks – nine of them in the top 60! – on their defense. They threw pick after pick at that unit and still felt like they were running to stand still.
DeMarcus Lawrence, Byron Jones, Randy Gregory, Jaylon Smith, Maliek Collins, Taco Charlton, Chidobe Awuzie, Jourdan Lewis, Leighton Vander Esch and then Trysten Hill. 10 different players – nine of them in the top two rounds – were invested to be the young and remarkable core of this defense. And still, they could not beat the Bills, Jets or Bears in 2019.
The front office had decided they had enough very early down the stretch. As early as Thanksgiving, we started hearing that this team might survive and still win the division, but there will be no saving this defensive braintrust. The defensive philosophy that survived in some form since 2013 would end right then and there.
After a stretch in 2018, where it seemed they were a few takeaways from being an elite defense, they had regressed. Of course, Gregory and Charlton were not even in the picture, but several others needed to be paid. They had to make choices (and very expensive ones) on guys like Byron Jones, Robert Quinn and maybe even Maliek Collins. Still others like Awuzie and Lewis would need deals soon, with Lawrence and Jaylon Smith already have been paid their massive extensions.
But the personnel was only part of the issue. As we have discussed plenty this spring (and you may wish to review with the extra time), the team no longer wants to play vanilla coverages and “hustle” their way to solid performances. The league had figured out rather comfortable ways to play the Cowboys defense, and it often was as simple as cooperating. The Cowboys wanted to guard against big plays and offer a conservative defense without much mystery or ambush. Even without premium quarterback play, opponents would generally sniff this out and take what was given on their way to a reasonable day.
Minnesota, Detroit, New England, Buffalo. The Cowboys went more than one calendar month (November 4 until December 5) without a single takeaway. They would finally get a few takeaways in Chicago, but they would also surrender 31 points and lose their fourth game out of five.
There was no attack to this defense. It wasn’t part of their scheme or disposition. You could argue that with so many homegrown players over the years – who, aside from Sean Lee and Jeff Heath, were all added after 2013 – they wouldn’t have a great idea how to play a high-pressure defense anyway. Most of them had barely played a pressure-man defense since college, if ever at all.
You may recall the below graph from the piece back in January, when McCarthy and Mike Nolan were hired. I wanted to investigate blitz rates and pressure packages of the new coaches versus the Rod Marinelli/Kris Richard approach here in Dallas. I think the findings will shock most who did not read those stories. These are the league rankings of blitz rate frequency in the last decade among McCarthy, Nolan and Dallas:
Almost no team in the NFL believed in bringing pressure less than Dallas did from 2013 through 2019. Meanwhile, it is pretty clear what Mike McCarthy was comfortable with in Green Bay. Mike Nolan moved around, of course, and didn’t always have the play sheet, anyway. But, as you can see, his defenses were always above the red line, too (and miles above the blue lines).
This is when we circle back to the questions about personnel.
The question I posed a few months back was, “How can Cowboys improve their defense while losing some of their best defenders?”
Well, the answer might lie in that they felt like they had players selected to match Marinelli’s view of the sport. If you are keeping them, especially at high rates of pay, then they better have a good feel for what you want to do with your new coaches.
In other words, you have Marinelli personnel who are selected to play a Cover 3 base, with stunting up front among smaller tackles, and players behind the ball who are carefully trying to make sure the big play doesn’t destroy them.
But in building a five-year program, the early signals are that the team is not interested in getting married to the old-guard defenders who already don’t have their deals. D-Law and Jaylon have deals, fine. But Byron Jones, Robert Quinn, Maliek Collins and even Jeff Heath did not. Were they worth keeping at their appropriate prices? Or is it a time to make a clean break and to start seeking players who might be able to be part of a more varied defense that will definitely wish to bring pressure and therefore ask more of the coverage players behind the pressure to hold up in individual situations? Given that all four of those players signed elsewhere, we may have our answer.
But what does this all mean?
Well, here is the truth about building a defense that takes a longer look at the future than just 2020. It means, simply put, that the draft is far more important than free agency. But since the draft is after free agency, how does that work?
It means that you build your depth before you build your quality. Quality in free agency is very, very expensive. Quality in the draft is easier to come by, but it takes longer to fully develop. And that means that we should look at the Cowboys defense with an “under construction” label.
Here is how the two-deep currently looks (with some guesswork, of course):
The Cowboys have made four signings for this defense:
Gerald McCoy, DT
Dontari Poe, DT
Maurice Canady, CB
Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, S
Now, in every single case, the price has been small. In fact, it is pretty clear that once the Poe contract is finalized, all four players will fit for well under the price that Byron Jones will be paid in Miami in 2020. These are short-term deals on veterans (McCoy, Poe), declining players (Clinton-Dix) and injury-prone players (Canady). If two or three turn into regulars, it is worth the price. The bigger defensive tackles will make the linebackers’ job easier, but their addition will also suggest to us less stunting and games, and more straight-up play from the front four in both run and pass. They will attempt to plug up the middle a bit more often and attempt to make the entirety of the defense a bit larger per man. We still don’t know exactly what they are thinking in terms of fronts and coverages that will marry together, but with each breadcrumb, we will know more.
Clinton-Dix is well aware of life on defenses that bring all sorts of pressure in Green Bay. Canady has lived in the same situation in Baltimore for most of his career. Poe and McCoy have managed in multiple types of fronts and certainly can do whatever is needed in reasonable servings.
However, the big hints will come in the draft. Like we said, it feels like most of what they are accomplishing right now is filling depth. They are plugging massive holes in their roster on defense in the name of having serviceable professionals available so that they don’t have to do anything on Day 1 or Day 2 of the upcoming draft. In fact, if CeeDee Lamb or Jerry Jeudy falls to them, maybe they go wide receiver and don’t help the defense at all at pick No. 17. We know the defense needs it more, but you cannot walk away from a better player like a star wide receiver if we look at the roster globally.
All things being equal, and they never are, you would like to snag a defender at pick No. 17, No. 51 and No. 82. Three quality players and maybe even potential starters helping the defense would really change the math around here in a hurry. Furthermore, you have the added benefits of youth, cheap contracts and no history whatsoever in a conservative defense that played a certain way for almost a decade. No, these young men, who will average 21 or 22 years old, will very possibly be programmed to attack the moment they are unleashed on the field.
With that in mind, I had my guy Skyler offer this early two-deep again, but with red denoting the possible places on the defense that I think we should consider open and ready for a potential top draft pick.
I said back in January that the defensive options on Day 1 or 2 of the draft could go almost in every direction:
- Safety
- Defensive tackle
- Defensive end
- Cornerback
If you look at it with the red tags in mind, you can see that the defensive roster has plenty of new names and several you recognize. But I suggest that every one of them aside from Gerald McCoy is easily movable still for a talented college star. At the same time, if they have to be a stopgap because a better college player is not available when the pick is due, that can work, too.
The Cowboys have done their job so far to allow themselves to “not force a pick” but rather to try to address two to three of these red tags with their first three picks. If they can do that with quality youth that can already demonstrate proficiency for the style of defense they wish to execute, I think they believe their defensive build will really have picked up some steam and still have some financial powder dry for future investment in the spring of 2021, when there are more pieces already in place.
But that vision won’t be clear in late March. It just tells us they are more prepared to draft than they were 10 days ago.
