The Dallas defense will have the unenviable task of trying to keep Kyler Murray from going 6-0 lifetime in the Cowboys’ home stadium. And Cowboys defensive coordinator Mike Nolan will be leading that effort from the Dallas sideline.
After calling the defensive plan from the upstairs booth for the team’s first four games, Nolan was relocated to the sideline for Week 5’s contest against the Giants. While Nolan’s unit allowed Daniel Jones and the Giants their highest-scoring outing of the season, Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy maintains he saw an improved effort over the team’s first four matchups. And he felt things got even better as the game went on.
“I thought we turned it up, definitely, in the second half,” McCarthy told the media during his Friday press conference. “There’s some things we tweaked at halftime, more in the coverage component of it, but I thought our pass rush was pretty good. I think the most important part is we created down-and-distance for our pass rush to have the opportunity to get after the quarterback. So we definitely increased the pressure on the quarterback.”
The adjustments and improvements were enough, apparently, to convince McCarthy that Nolan should remain at ground level moving forward.
“I just think it’s important for Mike to be down there, for all the right reasons,” he said. “This is a brand-new staff; a lot of guys have not worked together before. There’s advantages, obviously, of being up in the box, and there’s advantages of being on the field. It was a decision we made early in the season for him to be up there, but at the end of the day, I know- just preference from calling games- I thought it was always important to be able to be on the field, to see things live, up close with your own eyes: the body language of players, their players, those types of things. You don’t get that up in the box. But the benefit of being in the box is you can see the offensive scheme and the adjustments immediately. There’s not a right and wrong way to do it; I think just based on where we are as a defense right now, it’s clearly a better operation with Mike on the field.”
That operation will be put to a much bigger test with the Cardinals coming to town on Monday night, led by the explosive Kyler Murray. Murray is a local, having won three high school championships at AT&T Stadium, as well as two more collegiate victories there, one while at Texas A&M and another while at Oklahoma.
“He is a mess,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said on-air on 105.3 The Fan, “in terms of a challenge to the defense. He’s probably in the top ten of any talented player that’s played in that stadium. He’s just so unique in his ability to keep plays alive. And then to not only have that athletic ability but then have that speed to go with it. His entire makeup is centered around competition, and he knows how to win.”
It will be up to the Cowboys defense to keep Murray from getting yet another win in Arlington. And they’ll attempt to beat the Cardinals with a plan not executed from a bird’s-eye view, but rather, with their leader among them in the trenches.
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