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The Morning After: Cowboys unleash full defensive attack on Giants
By Bob Sturm 5h ago
The Cowboys entered the fourth quarter with a double-digit lead and a relatively comfortable position last night. With the score 13-3, the game was not won at this point. But if you can get to that spot in a game with only three points and 155 yards put up against you, then everyone who has witnessed the proceedings knows you are in control.
On the first play of the fourth quarter with the Giants facing a 3rd and 9, the Cowboys defense found its sixth sack of the night when Tyrone Crawford was the DT on a “pirate stunt” that looped him all the way from the left defensive tackle around the right defensive end and put him in Eli Manning’s lap after Dorance Armstrong forced Manning to flee to his right.
Six sacks is a very significant number for a Rod Marinelli defense and a level they have only attained one other time in the five years he has been at the helm – Week 3 last year in Arizona on that Monday Night when Demarcus Lawrence destroyed Cardinals then-right tackle Jared Veldheer with a ridiculous 13 QB pressures (three sacks, two QB hits, and eight QB hurries) by himself.
This time, something very different happened. It wasn’t an individual mismatch that yielded six sacks as much as it was just sheer domination by a scheme and a unit that found that the best way to stop a shaky Giants offense was to enter full-out attack mode.
The first play of the fourth quarter was the final sack and the only one from the evening in which the Cowboys did not blitz. Dallas called nine blitzes on what turned out to be 50 pass plays – just 18%. But, when you consider they called off the dogs for the final 18 pass plays and just played a soft defense late to run clock, that means they were actually quite liberal in sending extra rushers at the confused New York front. Over and over again, they got home.
The onslaught began in the second quarter. Here are the six:
14:20 2Q – 3rd & 9 – Taco Charlton sack on a double-a-gap blitz up the gut. Six rushers.
10:08 2Q – 1st & 10 – Antwaun Woods banks his first NFL sack on a Damien Wilson blitz. Five rushers.
7:35 2Q – 1st & 10 – Kavon Frazier comes off the edge for a sack on a play-action fake. Five rushers.
0:58 2Q – 1st & 10 – Demarcus Lawrence gets his sack off a slot blitz that allowed him a free run. Five rushers.
13:28 3Q – 2nd & 10 – Damien Wilson runs free on a fire zone blitz with Lawrence dropping into pressure and the ball comes loose with a Taco Charlton recovery. Five rushers.
15:00 4Q – 3rd & 9 – Crawford gets the day’s sixth sack on the pirate stunt to end another drive. Four rushers.
Now, please forgive us for being a little bit worked-up about the Cowboys sending extra defenders, but this is pretty new since they switched back to a 4-3 scheme after the 2012 season. The Cowboys hired Monte Kiffin and Rod Marinelli back then to install a Tampa-2 type defense that has certainly morphed into more of a Cover 3, but the bottom line on all of this is that Coach Rod is a guy who believes that you should “get there with four.”
This type of philosophy is certainly conservative in style and allows the coverages behind it to be far more safe and sound. The more rushers you send, the fewer cover guys are left. Fewer defenders in coverage means the defense plays less zone, and that makes everyone step up and cancel out their guy. In other words, the Cowboys of the past didn’t blitz because they didn’t believe they could cover well enough.
In 2015, the Cowboys blitzed 20.1% in a league where 30% was average. They ranked 30th. In 2016, their rate actually dropped to 19.6% and they came in 27th. And in 2017 they came up a tiny bit to 21.6% and ranked 24th.
But at no point did their blitzes get the results we were seeing last night. These blitzes were not just giving the QB something to think about. Against the Giants, they were game-changing plays. They were stopping drives and knocking the ball out. This is what the whole point of disguising and bring pressure is all about: rocking an opponent’s confidence.
Dallas faced a Giants side that has a new player at every single spot in their offensive line than the team that came to Arlington last September. The Cowboys used that lack of chemistry and continuity against them.
Of the six sacks, very few of them were simply a man beating a man. Rather, like Carolina last week, if you can cause confusion about who is coming from where, you can get a free rusher a few yards away from a blocker who has nobody to block. It is where the chess match of scheme is so very important and where games are won and lost on Sundays.
Have the Cowboys changed their view of their defense? Or was this just a perfect opponent upon which to unleash the hounds, given that the Giants haven’t scored 30 points in a game since the final week of 2015? In fact, one of the more staggering numbers from New York would be that the Giants have scored just 36 points against Dallas in the last 4 meetings. You may recall that Eli Manning and his offense scored 41 on the Cowboys in 2010 and 37 in 2011 in this same stadium. Now, in four consecutive meetings, the old QB has put up performances of 10, 3, 10, and 13. Since 10 of last night’s 13 points were in full-fledged garbage time, the Giants have to be losing their minds today.
They have poured every last resource into their offense: $90m on Odell Beckham, $84m for Eli Manning, $62m for Nate Solder, Saquon Barkley with the second overall pick (which already makes him one of the NFL’s highest-paid runners), taking Evan Engram in last year’s first round, drafting Will Hernandez in the second to plug right in as a LG, and hiring Pat Shurmur to bring it all together.
That group might figure things out, but for now, the Giants continue to spin their wheels thinking they can put a team around Manning that can make him successful at this advanced age. The reality seems to indicate that his prime is well behind him and even though there are QBs in this league playing at a very high level around their 40th birthdays, I will suggest that Manning isn’t close to being one of them. He ranks 30th in a 32-team league in passer rating since 2015, and with more and more QBs posting ratings near or above 100, he still sits in the low 80s. That was acceptable a few decades back, but in this NFL, it doesn’t come close to cutting it.
Which is why, for the life of me, I cannot believe the Giants did not take their next QB when they had their highest draft position in 30 years last spring. They didn’t have to play the rookie this year, but they needed that valuable asset. Instead, they appear to still be building around Eli Manning who turns 38 at the end of the year. The craziest part is that the regime they just fired in New York seemed to be willing to admit that his run is likely over. Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese got fired for many worthy reasons, but in replacing them, the Giants seemed to dig back in on the premise that they don’t need a QB of the future. To them, that is Manning. And, I suppose, to any Cowboys enthusiast, if your rival wishes to roll with the guy who averages nine points over your last four meetings, you should cross your fingers that they don’t change their mind.
But enough about the Giants. Let’s get back to the story of last night and what it should tell us about the Cowboys defense.
The story was that this defense appears to be the real deal. We have to temper it with the idea that their first two opponents were not exactly aerial attacks filled with protection and weapons. We can assume that the upcoming schedule will present several challenges on that front (although Seattle’s offensive line is just as big a mess, at last check). But for now, we must go back to the idea that the Cowboys have been quietly building a defense that is filled with young, athletic, high-investment pieces that might all be coming together at the same time.
They appear to have a number of butt-kickers on the defensive line with the length, twitch, and relentless motors to rotate and stay fresh as well as call stunts and games that require a lot of precision from the opponent. They appear to have some depth and athleticism at linebacker, and while we must carefully slow our roll on the arrival of the talent, seeing a guy like Jaylon Smith make several plays last night that he was incapable of in 2017 is most reassuring.
Perhaps most importantly, they have some very talented defensive backs who sure look capable of holding up so that you can blitz with the belief that they can cover their receiver until you get home. Playing corner in the NFL is next to impossible sometimes, but the Cowboys employed “off and soft” for so long that a more aggressive approach from Chido Awuzie and Byron Jones is slightly stressful. But through two weeks, there is plenty to like there, too. I get asked plenty how I think they are playing and my answer today would be simple: If the Cowboys feel confident enough to blitz as much as they did – especially on early downs – you can believe the coaching staff believes in the product.
Is Rod Marinelli changing his stripes? Does the guy who seemed allergic to bringing pressure with aggressive coverage concepts do a 180? Or has Kris Richard, imported from Seattle to bring over his “Legion of Boom” disposition, assumed some of the coverage/pressure calls already? I certainly have my suspicions on that topic, but the point is that we can pretty clearly see that this team has turned a lot of the heavy lifting to its defense.
And why shouldn’t they? In August, I wrote about the investments that have been made:
In the last four-year draft cycle, the Cowboys have had 12 “Day one or two” draft picks. Over that span, they have certainly spent more draft capital on the defense, with eight of those 12 picks playing on that side. Yes, Ezekiel Elliott might have been Jalen Ramsey with the highest pick in the bunch, but perhaps to compensate for that purchase, the defense has received the following eight pieces: Byron Jones, Randy Gregory, Jaylon Smith, Maliek Collins, Taco Charlton, Chidobe Awuzie, Jourdan Lewis, and Leighton Vander Esch. In other words, two defensive ends, a defensive tackle, two linebackers, and three defensive backs. And every last one of them is an athlete.
The offense is now the “work in progress”. Scott Linehan’s side will have some good days and some bad days, and the cyclical nature of things will require plenty of scheme wins on that side, too. I am not dedicating much of today’s piece to evaluating the offense – tomorrow is coming – but I am also blown away at how much ridicule they seem to be taking from their own fanbase.
Dak Prescott and the offense averaged six yards per snap yesterday and had a double-digit lead for almost all of the game against a divisional rival with a stiff defense. We talked about how much trouble they cause the Cowboys running game in the last few years and last night was no real exception. They gained 298 yards on just 50 snaps last night. Yes, there certainly would be more snaps if they could convert a few more third downs, but that comes in at 5.96 yards per play. You could easily round it up to six yards per snap.
When this offense – Prescott, Linehan, Garrett – get 5.7 yards per play, they are 17-1. When they fall below that number, they are 6-10. That is a rather large indicator of success and the Cowboys were on the good side of the threshold last night. It might be simply because they hit that shot to Tavon Austin in the opening minutes of the game, but they did and they had control of the game throughout. The final drive, one which put the game away, featured Prescott making tough throws to get the team to midfield and then the textbook execution of the zone read finished the drive with QB/RB punishing the Giants and delivering the knockout blow.
This is the team they have. This is how they must win. We can argue about how they got here, but I would suggest to you that the 2018 Dallas Cowboys showed you their blueprint for success last night. The defense must lead the way and the offense must find two scores per half. We would prefer for those to be touchdowns.
Winning is hard to do in this league. It doesn’t matter if it is by an inch or a mile. You don’t complain about beating a rival in rather decisive fashion. There is plenty to fix, but getting that first win was pretty vital.
By Bob Sturm 5h ago
The Cowboys entered the fourth quarter with a double-digit lead and a relatively comfortable position last night. With the score 13-3, the game was not won at this point. But if you can get to that spot in a game with only three points and 155 yards put up against you, then everyone who has witnessed the proceedings knows you are in control.
On the first play of the fourth quarter with the Giants facing a 3rd and 9, the Cowboys defense found its sixth sack of the night when Tyrone Crawford was the DT on a “pirate stunt” that looped him all the way from the left defensive tackle around the right defensive end and put him in Eli Manning’s lap after Dorance Armstrong forced Manning to flee to his right.
Six sacks is a very significant number for a Rod Marinelli defense and a level they have only attained one other time in the five years he has been at the helm – Week 3 last year in Arizona on that Monday Night when Demarcus Lawrence destroyed Cardinals then-right tackle Jared Veldheer with a ridiculous 13 QB pressures (three sacks, two QB hits, and eight QB hurries) by himself.
This time, something very different happened. It wasn’t an individual mismatch that yielded six sacks as much as it was just sheer domination by a scheme and a unit that found that the best way to stop a shaky Giants offense was to enter full-out attack mode.
The first play of the fourth quarter was the final sack and the only one from the evening in which the Cowboys did not blitz. Dallas called nine blitzes on what turned out to be 50 pass plays – just 18%. But, when you consider they called off the dogs for the final 18 pass plays and just played a soft defense late to run clock, that means they were actually quite liberal in sending extra rushers at the confused New York front. Over and over again, they got home.
The onslaught began in the second quarter. Here are the six:
14:20 2Q – 3rd & 9 – Taco Charlton sack on a double-a-gap blitz up the gut. Six rushers.
10:08 2Q – 1st & 10 – Antwaun Woods banks his first NFL sack on a Damien Wilson blitz. Five rushers.
7:35 2Q – 1st & 10 – Kavon Frazier comes off the edge for a sack on a play-action fake. Five rushers.
0:58 2Q – 1st & 10 – Demarcus Lawrence gets his sack off a slot blitz that allowed him a free run. Five rushers.
13:28 3Q – 2nd & 10 – Damien Wilson runs free on a fire zone blitz with Lawrence dropping into pressure and the ball comes loose with a Taco Charlton recovery. Five rushers.
15:00 4Q – 3rd & 9 – Crawford gets the day’s sixth sack on the pirate stunt to end another drive. Four rushers.
Now, please forgive us for being a little bit worked-up about the Cowboys sending extra defenders, but this is pretty new since they switched back to a 4-3 scheme after the 2012 season. The Cowboys hired Monte Kiffin and Rod Marinelli back then to install a Tampa-2 type defense that has certainly morphed into more of a Cover 3, but the bottom line on all of this is that Coach Rod is a guy who believes that you should “get there with four.”
This type of philosophy is certainly conservative in style and allows the coverages behind it to be far more safe and sound. The more rushers you send, the fewer cover guys are left. Fewer defenders in coverage means the defense plays less zone, and that makes everyone step up and cancel out their guy. In other words, the Cowboys of the past didn’t blitz because they didn’t believe they could cover well enough.
In 2015, the Cowboys blitzed 20.1% in a league where 30% was average. They ranked 30th. In 2016, their rate actually dropped to 19.6% and they came in 27th. And in 2017 they came up a tiny bit to 21.6% and ranked 24th.
But at no point did their blitzes get the results we were seeing last night. These blitzes were not just giving the QB something to think about. Against the Giants, they were game-changing plays. They were stopping drives and knocking the ball out. This is what the whole point of disguising and bring pressure is all about: rocking an opponent’s confidence.
Dallas faced a Giants side that has a new player at every single spot in their offensive line than the team that came to Arlington last September. The Cowboys used that lack of chemistry and continuity against them.
Of the six sacks, very few of them were simply a man beating a man. Rather, like Carolina last week, if you can cause confusion about who is coming from where, you can get a free rusher a few yards away from a blocker who has nobody to block. It is where the chess match of scheme is so very important and where games are won and lost on Sundays.
Have the Cowboys changed their view of their defense? Or was this just a perfect opponent upon which to unleash the hounds, given that the Giants haven’t scored 30 points in a game since the final week of 2015? In fact, one of the more staggering numbers from New York would be that the Giants have scored just 36 points against Dallas in the last 4 meetings. You may recall that Eli Manning and his offense scored 41 on the Cowboys in 2010 and 37 in 2011 in this same stadium. Now, in four consecutive meetings, the old QB has put up performances of 10, 3, 10, and 13. Since 10 of last night’s 13 points were in full-fledged garbage time, the Giants have to be losing their minds today.
They have poured every last resource into their offense: $90m on Odell Beckham, $84m for Eli Manning, $62m for Nate Solder, Saquon Barkley with the second overall pick (which already makes him one of the NFL’s highest-paid runners), taking Evan Engram in last year’s first round, drafting Will Hernandez in the second to plug right in as a LG, and hiring Pat Shurmur to bring it all together.
That group might figure things out, but for now, the Giants continue to spin their wheels thinking they can put a team around Manning that can make him successful at this advanced age. The reality seems to indicate that his prime is well behind him and even though there are QBs in this league playing at a very high level around their 40th birthdays, I will suggest that Manning isn’t close to being one of them. He ranks 30th in a 32-team league in passer rating since 2015, and with more and more QBs posting ratings near or above 100, he still sits in the low 80s. That was acceptable a few decades back, but in this NFL, it doesn’t come close to cutting it.
Which is why, for the life of me, I cannot believe the Giants did not take their next QB when they had their highest draft position in 30 years last spring. They didn’t have to play the rookie this year, but they needed that valuable asset. Instead, they appear to still be building around Eli Manning who turns 38 at the end of the year. The craziest part is that the regime they just fired in New York seemed to be willing to admit that his run is likely over. Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese got fired for many worthy reasons, but in replacing them, the Giants seemed to dig back in on the premise that they don’t need a QB of the future. To them, that is Manning. And, I suppose, to any Cowboys enthusiast, if your rival wishes to roll with the guy who averages nine points over your last four meetings, you should cross your fingers that they don’t change their mind.
But enough about the Giants. Let’s get back to the story of last night and what it should tell us about the Cowboys defense.
The story was that this defense appears to be the real deal. We have to temper it with the idea that their first two opponents were not exactly aerial attacks filled with protection and weapons. We can assume that the upcoming schedule will present several challenges on that front (although Seattle’s offensive line is just as big a mess, at last check). But for now, we must go back to the idea that the Cowboys have been quietly building a defense that is filled with young, athletic, high-investment pieces that might all be coming together at the same time.
They appear to have a number of butt-kickers on the defensive line with the length, twitch, and relentless motors to rotate and stay fresh as well as call stunts and games that require a lot of precision from the opponent. They appear to have some depth and athleticism at linebacker, and while we must carefully slow our roll on the arrival of the talent, seeing a guy like Jaylon Smith make several plays last night that he was incapable of in 2017 is most reassuring.
Perhaps most importantly, they have some very talented defensive backs who sure look capable of holding up so that you can blitz with the belief that they can cover their receiver until you get home. Playing corner in the NFL is next to impossible sometimes, but the Cowboys employed “off and soft” for so long that a more aggressive approach from Chido Awuzie and Byron Jones is slightly stressful. But through two weeks, there is plenty to like there, too. I get asked plenty how I think they are playing and my answer today would be simple: If the Cowboys feel confident enough to blitz as much as they did – especially on early downs – you can believe the coaching staff believes in the product.
Is Rod Marinelli changing his stripes? Does the guy who seemed allergic to bringing pressure with aggressive coverage concepts do a 180? Or has Kris Richard, imported from Seattle to bring over his “Legion of Boom” disposition, assumed some of the coverage/pressure calls already? I certainly have my suspicions on that topic, but the point is that we can pretty clearly see that this team has turned a lot of the heavy lifting to its defense.
And why shouldn’t they? In August, I wrote about the investments that have been made:
In the last four-year draft cycle, the Cowboys have had 12 “Day one or two” draft picks. Over that span, they have certainly spent more draft capital on the defense, with eight of those 12 picks playing on that side. Yes, Ezekiel Elliott might have been Jalen Ramsey with the highest pick in the bunch, but perhaps to compensate for that purchase, the defense has received the following eight pieces: Byron Jones, Randy Gregory, Jaylon Smith, Maliek Collins, Taco Charlton, Chidobe Awuzie, Jourdan Lewis, and Leighton Vander Esch. In other words, two defensive ends, a defensive tackle, two linebackers, and three defensive backs. And every last one of them is an athlete.
The offense is now the “work in progress”. Scott Linehan’s side will have some good days and some bad days, and the cyclical nature of things will require plenty of scheme wins on that side, too. I am not dedicating much of today’s piece to evaluating the offense – tomorrow is coming – but I am also blown away at how much ridicule they seem to be taking from their own fanbase.
Dak Prescott and the offense averaged six yards per snap yesterday and had a double-digit lead for almost all of the game against a divisional rival with a stiff defense. We talked about how much trouble they cause the Cowboys running game in the last few years and last night was no real exception. They gained 298 yards on just 50 snaps last night. Yes, there certainly would be more snaps if they could convert a few more third downs, but that comes in at 5.96 yards per play. You could easily round it up to six yards per snap.
When this offense – Prescott, Linehan, Garrett – get 5.7 yards per play, they are 17-1. When they fall below that number, they are 6-10. That is a rather large indicator of success and the Cowboys were on the good side of the threshold last night. It might be simply because they hit that shot to Tavon Austin in the opening minutes of the game, but they did and they had control of the game throughout. The final drive, one which put the game away, featured Prescott making tough throws to get the team to midfield and then the textbook execution of the zone read finished the drive with QB/RB punishing the Giants and delivering the knockout blow.
This is the team they have. This is how they must win. We can argue about how they got here, but I would suggest to you that the 2018 Dallas Cowboys showed you their blueprint for success last night. The defense must lead the way and the offense must find two scores per half. We would prefer for those to be touchdowns.
Winning is hard to do in this league. It doesn’t matter if it is by an inch or a mile. You don’t complain about beating a rival in rather decisive fashion. There is plenty to fix, but getting that first win was pretty vital.
