Dallas Cowboys game plan: Sit back and contain Jalen Hurts

It’s only Week Three in this 2021 NFL season and we already have a battle for first place in the NFC East happening on Monday Night Football. The Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles are both standing at 1-1 and the winner tonight will get to sit in the driver’s seat heading into the month of October.

Both teams are missing multiple key players and the winner will likely be determined by who adapts and game plans the best. Facing off against the surprisingly efficient Jalen Hurts, the Dallas Cowboys need to formulate a workable plan to minimize the effectiveness of the early season standout QB.

The Dallas Cowboys defense can minimize the effectiveness of the Eagles attack by just sitting back.

As counterintuitive as the above statement sounds, it may be Dallas’ best shot at defensive success. Philadelphia has been surprisingly good on offense this season, and Hurts is even ranked at the NFL’s No. 2 passer by notoriously tough graders Pro Football Focus (a ranking that certainly won’t last).

Dare them to run?

The Eagles are happy to call running plays if the coverage looks imposing. We saw it last week against the 49ers quite a bit. So why dare them to run? The easy answer is the Eagles have been considerably more deadly through the air than they have on the ground. For the season the Eagles have averaged -.151 expected points per play on the ground compared to +.275 on drop-backs (per rbsdm.com).

Hurts’ best attribute has been his ability to get yards on the ground on a drop-back

Last week alone it was Hurts that quietly made the plays. When Hurts dropped back, he produced .34 expected points per play with a 53 percent success rate. He was staggeringly efficient in his play.

The running backs were a different story. Sanders and Gainwell each had negative expected points, earning -.27 and -.17 respectively. Even Hurts struggled on called running plays, offering up -.07 expected points per play.

Contain Jalen

When I say “dare them to run” I mean dare them to call traditional running plays. What I don’t mean is let Jalen Hurts scramble and create. Hurts’ best attribute has been his ability to get yards on the ground on a drop-back. The second year passer only threw for 190 yards last week but he ran for 82 (8.2 ypc and one touchdown).

The running game, sans Hurts, only ran for 69 yards on 3.9 ypc. That’s a considerable difference.

Don’t Blitz

The temptation is to blitz Jalen Hurts early and often, but with half of Dallas Cowboys defensive ends out, that may not be possible to effectively do. Instead, the Cowboys should place emphasis on shadowing and containing Jalen. He’s at his best when he can break from the pocket and create – so why not just focus on containing him?

There’s a number of ways Dallas can achieve this but it all requires discipline and a certain level of athleticism. This may not be the best game for a plodding player like Quinton Bohanna since Hurts can pretty easily avoid him.

Instead of rushing with reckless abandon, the Dallas Cowboys should work to push the pocket, maintaining spacing, and caging him. Squeeze him inside and only blitz when they have someone shadowing him.

The key to the Eagles success is getting Jalen Hurts outside of the pocket and on the run.  Even in Week One against Atlanta, Hurts averaged 8.9 yards per carry on the ground with the majority coming on drop-backs turned into runs. Containment is key.

Extra players hanging back and sitting in coverage also makes it more difficult through the air. Ask any passer and they’ll tell you, they’d rather try to beat a blitz than throw into a defense focused on coverage.

The Dallas Cowboys don’t need to be afraid of Jalen Hurts they just need to take away what he’s best at.

• Published on 09/27/2021 at 12:52 PM
• Last updated at 09/27/2021 at 13:07 PM