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By Bob Sturm Sep 15, 2021
The game is already in the rearview mirror and it is definitely, “On to Los Angeles”, but Wednesdays are when we look at the defense under a thorough microscope.
Tom Brady demonstrated a level of excellence that a 44-year-old has never shown before in the Bucs’ Week 1 win, and he continues to incinerate the envelope of what is possible. He played what could have certainly been a perfect game if it wasn’t for a few drops and a tipped pass. Brady is ridiculous because he gets the ball out before you can touch him and still manages to fillet opposing defenses vertically as almost nobody else can.
Anyone who studies football for 10 minutes knows that this is supposed to be the eternal paradox of QB play — by getting rid of the football quickly, Brady found that deeper passes became easy? How? It makes no sense. The quick game is, by definition, routes that can be run in two seconds, which limits the offense to short and intermediate throws. Unless you are Brady and then quick routes are verticals that travel deep down the field.
You can live with him throwing 50 passes if you are beating him up a bit in the process. But, what sorcery is being used when he throws it this many times, scores that many points, leaves that much on the table and gets touched one time all game?
We can sit here and act like he is overhyped, but we are lying to ourselves. When a 44-year-old plays in an NFL game at its toughest job, we should marvel. But, when he teaches a masterclass while becoming the oldest QB to win an NFL start?
Just give the man his due.
That said, the Cowboys still wish to design a defense that makes it tougher this season. And through Week 1, we saw some decent signs from the young Cowboys’ defense, but we also know that starting the semester with the final exam on Day 1 was never going to put minds at ease. Nor should it.
The Cowboys have plenty of young, talented players who will continue to work their way on the field. They have plenty of new faces to make it work. But, there are two principle issues that defensive coordinator Dan Quinn has to address before this can go anywhere, and the truth is that the front office might have to eventually get involved.
1. The Cowboys still don’t have a good enough pass rush, and the questions outnumber the answers by a healthy margin.
2. The Cowboys are still trying to match up against world-class receivers with coverage players who are overmatched.
Until these two things begin to equalize, they will always look at opponents like Tampa Bay — heck, like the Chargers, for that matter — and see that the job might be too big for some of those who need to be upgraded. So, you either simplify your scheme to make up for this or you try to play a scheme that these guys can’t handle.
Simplify it too much and you get dissected by a great quarterback. Complicate it too much and you are right back where you have been with asking guys to do things you know they can’t accomplish.
Welcome to Coaching 101.
We absolutely can look at these two issues as it applies to the Cowboys’ first game against Tampa Bay and see what this looks like on the field.
Cowboys still don’t have a good enough pass rush
When Brady throws 50 passes and gets touched once on a hit that barely would have made your grandmother stumble, you know he is enjoying his evening. He required some heavy labor in the 60th minute of the game to get the win, but Dallas never even caused him a grass stain.
Yes, Tampa Bay has a nice O-line and a solid scheme, but if that is where this pass rush is going to be, then everything else is an exercise in futility.
Four players generated multiple hurries, and DeMarcus Lawrence led with five pressures. Micah Parsons, Dorance Armstrong and Randy Gregory each had three. But, that was it, and none of them sacked Brady, who understands that his career has been long because he doesn’t hesitate to get the ball out of his hands.
Did they try blitzing? Yes.
Twelve blitzes with five rushers, two blitzes with six rushers, and the famous blitz with seven rushers that Brady beat against “Cover 0” to hit Rob Gronkowski for this touchdown:
This play is some brilliant QB play and chemistry between Brady and his favorite red zone target. They combined for two excellent moments in the red zone that became touchdowns simply because they know each other’s thoughts, and that might be the difference between which team won on Thursday. Whichever offense could punch in its red zone chances was going to win, and one team did this while the Cowboys sputtered too often. In a game with small margins, I think we saw this one as the key.
But, if you look below at our NextGen animation, you will see safety Donovan Wilson coming up with the Cowboys’ only hit on Brady.
The problem with this, of course, is that the Cowboys had to bring seven rushers, play with no safety and give up a touchdown just to touch Brady and show he wasn’t a hologram.
Fifteen blitzes for zero sacks, and one QB hit is not going to win games.
Do they have capable players who should be hitting the quarterback more than this? That remains to be seen. Gregory must produce results, and the countless Day 2 picks that have been spent on this defensive front must step forward to assist Lawrence. Lawrence is very good, but he isn’t Myles Garrett and even if he was, this league requires an ensemble to get enough pressure to derail an offense of this caliber.
Cowboys are playing coverage with players who are overmatched
This will be a work in progress because we really know that they aren’t playing their most talented corners because those guys are not ready as rookies for this situation, and I agree with them here.
But, if you aren’t playing second-round pick Kelvin Joseph or third-round pick Nahshon Wright because you want to ease them in, then you are still playing Anthony Brown and Jourdan Lewis full time. You can live with one of them — I would always choose Brown because I have long considered Lewis a cover guy who isn’t very good at covering guys — but, both of them? Well, that won’t work unless the Cowboys play all zones.
Through one weekend, the Cowboys are sixth in the NFL in man coverage. Now, I would ask everyone not to read into one-game samples, but that is a lot of man coverage from a team that was 24th in man coverage usage in the past two seasons.
That sounds exciting because more man coverage usually invites more blitzes. More blitzes suggest a more aggressive defense that doesn’t defend passively, but rather defends aggressively and they make the offense run plays where they are defending against your attacks.
The problem is not the attitude of the defense, it is the ability to carry it out with the players on the roster.
If you are going to run so many man-coverage plays, here is what you are asking.
Trevon Diggs locked up with Mike Evans. He did very well.
Anthony Brown was covering Antonio Brown all night. That didn’t go well at all. Antonio Brown looked like the best receiver in football, which he was not so long ago before he seemed to derail his own career. He finished with five catches on seven targets for 121 yards and a touchdown, and Brady had a QB rating of 153.3 when throwing to Brown.
And Lewis was assigned to Chris Godwin. And that went as we could have predicted. Godwin caught nine passes on 14 targets for 105 yards and a touchdown, and Brady had a QB rating of 110.7 when throwing to him despite a drop that would have made him the leading receiver on the night.
Here is that touchdown against Lewis:
The bottom line on that is if you want Lewis covering Godwin with no help, you are in big trouble. In fact, you might recall the long touchdown to Antonio Brown was a result of the safety rolling to help Lewis (who had fallen) and that left Anthony Brown without help — which he badly needed.
Damontae Kazee is the safety up top who has two open receivers. He can go to only one of those red circles and whichever one he chooses, Brady is going to throw to the other one for a touchdown. There is really no third possible outcome. And if you want to be further depressed, you can also see Leighton Vander Esch trying to run with Gronkowski and Jaylon Smith trailing Leonard Fournette. So, essentially, the Bucs have four open receivers as the Cowboys try to play man coverage without the players who can carry this out.
Quinn is smart, and we know Tampa Bay is a rough test for any defense. He mixed coverages all night and did about all he could do. The Cowboys played mostly man coverage, but there was plenty of Cover 2, Cover 3 and even Cover 4. They played five different coverages at least five times each. I was fine with the variety, and the Cowboys blitzing 15 times demonstrates that every idea was attempted.
They also stopped the Tampa Bay rushing attack well. There is promise.
The bottom line is there are better players available, but they are very young. The best chance at winning might be to play the rookies sooner than later and let the veterans step aside. That will be uncomfortable and will probably expose some young players to some rough days.
And that leads us to our final topic: Micah Parsons versus the veteran linebackers.
How can you take Parsons off the field? How can you play four linebackers?
The Cowboys want to tell us they have four linebackers who are starters. We know this isn’t true, of course, because they are trying to replace last year’s linebackers with better versions. I’m sorry, but if you are trying to move out problematic players with better players, you cannot let them keep their jobs and take their jobs simultaneously. You are either the guy or you are not.
On Thursday, they had two players in Parsons and Keanu Neal play almost 80 percent of the time and two players in Leighton Vander Esch and Jaylon Smith play about 20 percent.
It is almost exclusively two linebackers at a time and they seem to be pairings. Nobody was particularly poor, but we already saw that Parsons is an obvious cut above the rest of the group — despite being the youngest and this being his first NFL season.
The great Brian Baldinger broke it down for NFL.com as he always does.
I went through the 20 percent of Smith/Vander Esch and found their playing time to be mostly in two spots:
• Against the Tampa Bay 12 personnel package when Gronkowski was joined by tight end Cameron Brate in what would be a bigger run-heavy look. In these situations, the second tight end would replace Antonio Brown.
• In the red zone. Smith was definitely playing the closer the Bucs got to the goal line.
There was also a series late in the third quarter when they played the full series to perhaps give the Parsons/Neal pairing a rest, which is not terribly uncommon if the game dictates.
But, overall, I concur with Baldinger. On that Brown TD, Parsons is not trailing Fournette, but Smith is. I assume Neal can handle Gronkowski better than Vander Esch.
In other words, your starters are your starters for a reason. Full commitment to them will be required or the opponent will quickly pick up on your tendencies and attack your weak links. This is the NFL, and there is no place to hide weak links.
And now, on to the Chargers.
