Dallas Cowboys: Change and unpredictability are key to defensive success

The Dallas Cowboys defense is at its most successful when it deviates from its normal transparent tendencies and throws in some wrinkles to catch opponents off guard

The Dallas Cowboys are a transparent defense. Their calls are uncreative, their coverage is predictable, and their strengths/weaknesses are apparent. When bottom tier QB, Sam Darnold, and his bottom tier NY Jets carved Dallas up a few weeks ago, he said about as much.

After that, other suspect signal callers like Mitchell Trubisky and Josh Allen had season-best performances against Dallas as well. In press conferences they’ve all cited Dallas’ predictability in coverage. With no wrinkles they simply made their pre-snap reads and carved up the Dallas Cowboys secondary like a Christmas roast. When all the bad QBs in the league enjoy career days against your defense, it’s kinda a red flag, ya know?

The Defense

The Rod Marinelli and Kris Richard scheme is based on Pete Carroll’s Seattle Model. And Carroll’s model was an adaptation (evolution) of the old Tampa 2. Given the success of the Legion of Boom and the fact all of these coaches fall under the same Monte Kiffin coaching tree, it’s understandable they all share the same basic defensive concepts these days. Its success is well documented in the annals of history.

But like all successful concepts in history, it’s been studied and exposed. And since it makes zero effort in disguising its intentions, it’s easily beatable. And therein lies the problem…

The best defenses are beatable

It’s not really that the single high safety look is completely outdated. It’s that it’s obvious. Since the forward pass heavily favors the offense in today’s NFL, even a below average QB can beat a premium secondary if he knows what coverage they’re running. With no wrinkles it’s just about timing and playing a game of catch.

Under the above circumstances, the only way you can really disrupt the pass is by pressuring the passer. Despite having two defensive ends (DeMarcus Lawrence and Robert Quinn) and one defensive tackle (Maliek Collins) rated the top-5 in pass-rusher win rate, Dallas is league average (14th) in team sack percentage. That’s largely because they hate to blitz.

It should be no surprise that when Dallas does blitz they find success. Last week Dallas’ only two sacks came off of blitzes by Sean Lee (LB) and Jourdan Lewis (CB). The mixed it up and played unpredictably. And guess what? It paid off!

In fairness, Dallas does disguise some of their coverages. They just don’t do it enough. This is why they get victimized by pedestrian passers and why they struggle making interceptions.

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According to Sharp Football Analysis, Cover 1 defense only has an interception rate of 1.9% (the lowest amongst the top four coverages. It’s also responsible for the highest EPA per pass attempt at 0.23. Cover 3 (Dallas’ other often used coverage) has a 2.7% int rate and a stiff 0.06 EPA/attempt. That’s night and day from the Cover 1 yet the results we see on the field from Dallas are basically the same. Transparency will do that.

We don’t need to go all Rob Ryan and get so creative our own players don’t even know what’s going on (Shout out to those that remember those Rob Ryan DC years). But we do need to throw in more wrinkles that opponents don’t see coming. Just like how the misdirection of play-action helps offenses, misdirection and unpredictability helps defense.

The Dallas Cowboys don’t need to fundamentally change their defense this week, but they do need to do a better job of disguising their intentions going forward. Good things happen when they catch opponents off guard.

• Published on 12/22/2019 at 12:01 PM
• Last updated at 12/22/2019 at 07:20 AM