(In this series, Touchdown Wire’s Mark Schofield takes a look at one important metric per NFL team to uncover a crucial problem to solve for the 2020 season. In this installment, it’s time to look at how the Dallas Cowboys defense struggled in 2020, and how they might address that issue in 2020).
Much of the discussion taking place right now regarding the Dallas Cowboys focuses on a number.
Dak Prescott’s salary.
But there is another area that should be a concern to the Cowboys and their fans, and it comes on the other side of the football. (As an aside, pay that man his money).
In the 2018-2019 NFL season, the Cowboys finished the regular season with a 10-6 schedule, capturing the NFC East and securing a home playoff game on Wild Card Weekend. They would win that opening round game over the Seattle Seahawks, eventually falling to the Los Angeles Rams in the Divisional Round.
There were a number of reasons the Cowboys made that run into the playoffs. They acquired wide receiver Amari Cooper prior to the trade deadline, and his presence in the Cowboys’ offensive huddle gave a huge boost to that unit, and Prescott. As this piece from The Ringer’s Danny Kelly put it:
That shift has made life a whole lot easier for Prescott. In his first seven games this year, pre-Cooper, the Cowboys’ much-maligned signal-caller tossed eight touchdowns and four picks, ranked 23rd in passing yards (1,417), 28th in yards per attempt (6.9), and 26th in passer rating (87.4). In the four games since, he’s thrown five touchdowns, one interception, and ranks eighth in yards (1,010), tied for 17th in yards per attempt (7.8), and 16th in passer rating (102.4). Those improvements have manifested the most in one crucial area: on third down.
In weeks 1 through 7, the Cowboys were converting on third down just 31.9 percent of the time, third worst in that stretch leaguewide. In that stretch, Prescott had thrown for just 15 first downs (28th), with Cole Beasley as the primary go-to on those plays (grabbing eight first-down conversions). In weeks 9 through 12, though, Dallas is converting on third down at a 48.1 percent clip—tied for eighth best. Prescott has passed for 17 first downs (fourth) and Cooper is tied for the league lead with seven first-down catches on those downs. Cooper is helping his teammates get open, he’s helping to give Prescott easier throws, and he’s helping the team extend drives.
But beyond the impact of Cooper on Prescott and the offense, there was another reason for Dallas’ success in 2018: Their defense. On that side of the football the Cowboys took a huge step forward from the prior campaign. They were a top-five unit against the run, allowing just 94.6 yards per game on the ground, and they were a top-fifteen unit against the pass, giving up just 234.7 yards per game in the air, placing them 13th.
What did this add up to? An efficient defense. Football Outsiders, which produces defensive efficiency ratings, tabbed the Cowboys as the ninth-best defense in the league, with a Defensive DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) of -3.5%. A huge reason for the high mark came from their run defense, which posted a run defense DVOA of -17.6%, which was fifth-best in the league. These numbers were a huge improvement over what the Cowboys’ defense did in 2017, as the Dallas defense jumped from the 25th-ranked DVOA in 2017 to ninth-overall in 2018.
While that was a big step forward for the Cowboys from 2017 to 2018, the defense took a similar step backward from 2018 to 2019. Measured in terms of DVOA, the Cowboys’ defense posted a DVOA of 3.0% in 2019, placing them 19th in the league. Worse still was their Weighted DVOA, which places an emphasis on recent performance. That saw the Cowboys check in with a Weighted DVOA of 3.6%, placing them 21st in the league.
Perhaps most glaring was what this unit did as a pass defense. The Cowboys’ posted a DVOA of 13.2% against the pass, ranking them 23rd in the league.
What are some of the reasons for these poor grades? The Cowboys’ defense first failed to generate a ton of pressure on opposing passers. They tallied 38 sacks, ranking 19th in the league, and they added just 90 quarterback hits, placing them 20th. We have heard Bill Belichick outline how the pass rush and coverage work in concert together, and this had an impact on the Cowboys’ secondary. The Cowboys had just seven interceptions last season, tying them with the the Arizona Cardinals and the Detroit Lions for dead last in the league.
So what did the Cowboys do to improve their defense this off-season? Well, first they let talented cornerback Byron Jones depart in free agency, so it was a bit of a rough start. But since then the organization has made some impressive acquisitions. They added safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, which was an under the radar signing at the time but in the context of their entire off-season makes perfect sense. Dallas also made two additions up front, adding defensive tackles Gerald McCoy and Dontari Poe.
Then in the draft they added a pair of cornerbacks in Trevon Diggs from Alabama and Reggie Robinson II from Tulsa. Diggs was one of the better press CBs in this draft class, and he can play an immediate role for this defense provided he is used in such a manner. Robinson had an up-and-down career at Tulsa, but also showed some press coverage chops and was a big contributor on special teams. To their defensive front they added Neville Gallimore from Oklahoma in the third round, and later on Day Three Dallas drafted Bradlee Anae from Utah, a pass rusher who was getting some early round buzz during the draft process.
In addition, there is a new face in charge of the Dallas defense. With Mike McCarthy coming in as the new head coach, Mike Nolan has been tabbed to handle the defensive coordinator position. He replaces a tandem in a sense, as last year Rod Marinelli served as the defensive coordinator in addition to coaching the defensive line, while Kris Richard was the passing game coordinator/secondary coach/defensive play-caller. In recent weeks Richard’s coaching style has come into question. First former safety George Iloka relayed a tale where Richard refused to let the safety try and disguise a coverage pre-snap, and later a private DB trainer relayed how Richard was very rigid in the technical side of the game.
In Nolan, the Cowboys are getting a DC who wants to be more complex in nature, rather than what the Dallas defense looked like under Marinelli/Richard, where talent seemed to be the emphasis rather than scheme. As Nolan himself said when he was hired, “If you give yourself too much of doing one thing, that’s easy for the best quarterbacks to dissect and take advantage of. You have to have a good mix between man and zone. … You don’t want to create so much volume that you really don’t have an identity, but you have to have some kind of variety in order to be successful.”
Time will tell if this schematic diversity will lead to another bump in defensive performance like the Cowboys enjoyed from 2018 to 2019.