Leading into Sunday’s Week 2 game, the Bengals’ Ja’Marr Chase gave a scouting report on Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs that was less than flattering. While praising Diggs’s athleticism, speed, and ball skills, Chase specifically dinged the 2021 interception leader’s coverage techniques, calling him “a little hit or miss.”
In the end, though, it was Chase who was largely missing from the final box score. And it was a Diggs hit that made the Cowboys’ 20-17 last-second victory possible.
According to Pro Football Focus, Diggs was brilliant in coverage when he was against Chase, allowing last year’s Offensive Rookie of the Year just two catches for 14 yards. (Chase had five receptions for 54 yards total.)
But the talk in Cowboys Nation was Diggs’s solo tackle on a critical third-down play late in the game, forcing a Cincinnati punt and setting up Cooper Rush and the Dallas offense for the final game-winning drive.
“What impressed me so much on that one,” Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn said of Diggs Monday, “was just the aggressive nature to go finish. To me, that’s what a real competitor does: when it’s right there, at the moment, how are you going to go get it on? It was a 3rd-and-3, and in that space there is no room to give. You’ve got to go, defend them, and play it. That was one of my favorite plays in the game.”
Micah may be THAT GUY
But Diggs is the one that drives the Defense’s emotion
— Cowboys Nation (@CowboysNation) September 19, 2022
But it was a play that almost went off the rails for the Dallas defense before it even started. Quinn revealed that an equipment snafu caused a bit of a scramble on the sideline and in the huddle in the moments leading up to the ball being snapped.
“What you don’t know is on that third-down play, the headsets went off. So we were not able to call in a play like you normally would,” Quinn explained. “I saw [Cincinnati] scrambling, too. I knew both teams didn’t have the player-to-helmet communication.”
“Coach-to-coach ones still worked,” he continued. “This was specifically my communication to the helmet.”
That meant that safety Malik Hooker, who was wearing the green dot in place of the injured Jayron Kearse, was receiving no instructions from Quinn in the seconds just before the massively important third-down play with less than two minutes in regulation.
And Hooker was getting radio silence from his coordinator.
“‘It’s not working, it’s not working,’ Quinn recalled realizing. “We signaled, called it coach-to-coach, then he signaled to the guys. It was definitely later than normal.”
But the sideline got Quinn’s booth call relayed to Hooker in time for him and the defense to execute.
“It was the right call,” Quinn confirmed.
“That’s a good feeling to know that Malik knew he didn’t have me so he [looks to the sideline for] a call,” he continued. “Sometimes in practice I’ll do that where I don’t give them a call, so they just have to make the one I would do in this check. Somebody’s on the ball, I don’t give them a call, they’re looking at me, I don’t have one, and I’m like, ‘This is that time.’ That’s an example of how we would try to plan for when those moments happen.”
The DC admits his unit probably wouldn’t have been able to react so seamlessly at this time last year. Just another bonus to keeping the defense together for a second year under his command.
In fact, Quinn said the team practiced just such a scenario in this summer’s training camp, with head coach Mike McCarthy announcing, “Headsets; headsets are out,” and the sideline goes into what Quinn describes as 911 mode.
“Putting yourself into that moment, expecting there’s going to be some adversity that comes along is good,” said Quinn. “It was chaotic, but I knew we would get the call in.”
What no one could really know, though, as Bengals receiver Tyler Boyd hauled in the short pass from Joe Burrow, was whether Diggs, the only man standing between Boyd and the first-down marker, would make the solo tackle before he got there.
Diggs played it in textbook fashion, wrapping up Boyd and riding him to the turf for a one-yard gain, pinning Cincinnati deep and forcing a punt that ultimately put Dallas kicker Brett Maher in position to win the game with a 50-yard field goal.
“We just needed a stop,” Diggs told reporters afterward. But Diggs actually made two stops; he also held running back Joe Mixon to just three yards on the previous pass play.
“I was like, ‘Let me go make these plays and get the offense back on the field and let’s go win this thing,” he said. “The drive before, I had given up a catch. I was kind of mad about that. I wanted to go out there and make a play for my team.”
His team noticed, even if they were a bit surprised that the game’s biggest tackle came from the guy whose real specialty is interceptions.
“We even said that’s the hardest we’ve ever seen Diggs tackle,” linebacker Micah Parsons joked in the locker room. “He shot out like a cannon. I was proud of him, myself. When I saw that was 7, I was shocked for a second. But that was huge momentum. Way to get off the field, three and out.”
“Tackling… is one that we work on hard to make sure that part of our game comes to life. When we’re going through it, whether it’s on the edge, in the perimeter, in-line, we do a number of different types of tackles. I think it’s one of those things you always work on,” said Quinn. “Those were things we highlighted during the week. This is how low you have to tackle. This is what we have to get done. I was pleased to see that.”
And with the Giants’ bulldozing rusher Saquon Barkley on the docket for Monday night, the Cowboys will look to see more solid tackling from their defense.
They’ll also hope the headsets remain operational… even though they’ve shown Quinn they know how to handle a tech malfunction.
“That added a little bit of extra to make it little more fun.”
[pickup_prop id=”20296″]
[listicle id=702455]
[listicle id=702417]
[vertical-gallery id=702299]
[lawrence-newsletter]