Tag: Malik Hooker

Cowboys defender with two years left on $21 million deal may no longer fit

Cowboys safety Malik Hooker might be on the chopping block in 2025, says @ReidDHanson.

Matt Eberflus is the Dallas Cowboys new defensive coordinator and with him comes a new defensive scheme. As a former Cowboys coach, Eberflus isn’t foreign around these parts. His scheme is much more straight forward than that of Dan Quinn or Mike Zimmer. He stunts less, blitzes less, and disguises his coverages less.

For safeties like Donovan Wilson and Malik Hooker it means a higher proportion of split safety looks. This impacts both players since most of those two players’ careers have been spent in some form of single-high secondaries. By most predictions, Wilson won’t be able to play in the box as often as before and Hooker won’t be able to play centerfield as often as before.

Hooker’s ability to effectively play as a single-high safety made him a valuable commodity for the Dallas defense over the years. His range and consistency made him a top player at one of the NFL’s most demanding roles.

With more split safety looks on the horizon, Hooker’s top skill, his range, loses some of its value. Split-safety looks like Cover 2, 2-man and Quarters don’t require the same extraordinary range as a Cover 1 or Cover 3 scheme. As such, the role is easier to fill and doesn’t require a high investment cost.

Hooker signed a three-year, $21 million extension in 2023 that runs through 2026. At a cap cost of $7.5 million in 2025, Hooker is one of the top-10 cap hits and certainly qualifies as a high investment cost (per OTC).

The Cowboys got a taste of Hooker playing more diverse coverage roles in 2024 when Zimmer increased the amount of 2-high looks Dallas played mixing and matching Wilson and Hooker in the process. It didn’t turn out well. Both safeties posted their lowest graded qualifying seasons of their respective careers in 2024.

In previous seasons in Dallas, Hooker was a player most teams avoided. He was rarely targeted and routinely ranked among the best safeties in yardage allowed. Playing in a less demanding split safety role more in 2024, Hooker appeared to regress, giving up more yards than ever before in Dallas. Not focusing on his area of expertise, as demanding as that expertise may be, was a bad thing for Hooker and possibly a sign of things to come in 2025.

Like Wilson, his counterpart, Hooker’s return to the Cowboys in 2025 is far from assured. He’s an expensive player coming off a down year. Significant costs could be saved by letting him go if the Cowboys think they can adequately replace his production.

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Cover 1, Cover 3, Cover your eyes: Cowboys defensive flip hasn’t worked

The Cowboys are doing something funny with their safeties and it isn’t working. | From @ReidDHanson

Most will agree, the Cowboys’ biggest shake up of the 2024 offseason was their change at defensive coordinator. Gone was Dan Quinn. After coaching the Dallas defense for three successful seasons, Quinn earned a head coaching job in our nation’s capital. Replacing him at the helm was long time coordinator Mike Zimmer. Zimmer brought with him his infamously demanding defensive scheme, a nonsense attitude and an acceptance for timely split safety looks.

While the Cowboys were still expected to lean on man coverage in 2024, they were also expected to show more two-high safety looks. Zimmer was known to disguise coverage frequently and split his safeties over the top from time to time. It was a departure from his predecessor who both preferred single high safety formations and didn’t put much value is disguises.

2024 has proven to be surprising but not quite in the way many imagined. Zimmer has indeed disguised coverages, rolling safeties and linebackers at the last second to catch passers off guard, but he hasn’t moved Dallas off the single-high safety reliance.

https://x.com/fball_insights/status/1848828006363529723

Between Cover 1 and Cover 3, the Cowboys play a combined 61% of their snaps in single high. While that may be down from the seasons prior, it still represents their two most popular coverages seven weeks into 2024.

It’s understandable since the Cowboys have two fairly different safeties starting on their defense. Malik Hooker, traditionally their free safety, has been one of the better centerfielders in the NFL. In his last two seasons under Quinn, he ranked inside the top 15 of the 88+ safeties Pro Football Focus graded. Donovan Wilson, their primary box safety, didn’t grade as well by PFF but since the majority of his splash plays come near the line of scrimmage with him running downfield, his positioning seemed appropriate as well.

Under Zimmer that has changed somewhat.

Hooker’s snap percentage at deep safety has dropped from 84 percent under Quinn to 66 percent under Zimmer. Wilson’s snap percentage at deep safety has jumped from 38 percent under Quinn to 57 percent under Zimmer. While the slight increase in split safety looks accounts for some of that, the two players can be seen routinely playing each other’s roles throughout a game.

Hooker can often be seen sneaking up into a box role while Wilson positions himself back as the single high. What would have been a unicorn moment in 2023 now looks commonplace on the Cowboys defense in 2024 and it’s hard to understand why.

Deception is one thing, but these are typically pre-snap alignments, so the intention is stated at the start. This is just a case of role swapping and based on early returns it isn’t working out great. Based on PFF grades Wilson is having the lowest graded season of his career in 2024. He’s flashed a nice play here and there, but most will agree it’s been a pretty poor season for the man who’s on the books for $7,370,575 this season.

Hooker is having a season to forget too. The former first-round pick is also having the lowest graded season of his career and is having a hard time justifying his more modest $3,985,296 cap hit as well.

It seems the two players were better when they were focused on their respective expertise. Maybe run fit discipline led to change or maybe it was matchups that has Zimmer playing mix and match with his two playmakers but whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem to be worth it.

The Cowboys are still leaning heavily on single high safety looks under Zimmer but where the new defensive coordinator differs from his predecessor is which safety he uses where. That may not be a good thing.

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Ravens vs. Cowboys: Top photos from 28-25 win at AT&T Stadium

We’re looking at the top photos from the Baltimore Ravens 28-25 win over the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium

For one week, we thought John Harbaugh’s team would be entering the 2024 regular season.

All-world running back Derrick Henry ran for 151 yards and two touchdowns, MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson logged a passing and rushing score, and the Baltimore Ravens held on for a 28-25 victory over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday after blowing a 22-point fourth-quarter lead.

Baltimore (1-2) scored touchdowns on their first two drives, while the Cowboys (1-2) have allowed 120 points in their past three home games.

With the final results, here are the top photos from Sunday’s massive win.

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Cowboy questions the discipline of Commanders HC Dan Quinn

One Cowboy defender thinks they’ll be more disciplined without Dan Quinn.

Commanders’ new head coach, Dan Quinn, is being targeted again in Dallas this week.

Last week, Commanders Wire told of how one writer expressed that he thought “Quinn overspent on a pair of Cowboys free agents in Dorance Armstrong and Tyler Biadasz and signed a 33-year-old tight end in Zach Ertz who’s played only 17 games the last two seasons…Any of those moves could blow up in Quinn’s face, but there’s one marquee signing that already looks like a flop: running back Austin Ekeler.”

A few days later, additional arrows were sent Quinn’s way again from the Dallas area. This time it was Cowboys safety Malik Hooker. Hooker appearing on the “All Facts, No Brakes” podcast with Keyshawn Johnson, stated that playing under Quinn and now with the Cowboys’ new defensive coordinator won’t be much different when it involves the schemes.

What made headlines in Dallas was Hooker saying that with the defensive players the Cowboys were returning, he didn’t see it being the new coaches’ job to change the scheme. He added he thought the difference would be in the discipline of Zimmer vs. Quinn.

But Hooker first began quite complimentary of Quinn. “I love DQ; we still talk to this day. He’s a big reason why I am still in Dallas to this day. There is a certain way you have to coach certain guys. I feel like because of how player-oriented DQ was, guys would relate to him, and he wouldn’t have to coach a certain way that Zim does now.”

“Mike Zimmer will give you a couple of chances to mess up. If you keep messing up and can’t get it right, (he) is going to get somebody else in there,” Hooker said when describing the newest Cowboys DC.

“Dan Quinn, on the other hand, is more player-oriented. If something wasn’t going right or we kept messing up, he’d level it down make it easier for everyone to go out there and do what they were going to do.”

“I would say the biggest difference is the discipline that we are going to have this year,” added Hooker.

Zimmer returns to the Cowboys for a second term as their defensive coordinator after serving as the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.

Cowboys’ Malik Hooker rips teammate Micah Parsons over podcast, Parsons fires back

From @ToddBrock24f7: Hooker questioned Parsons’s off-the-field hobbies that take his focus away from the team. Parsons fired back in a since-deleted tweet.

There’s been plenty of blame tossed around for the state the Cowboys currently find themselves in. For the playoff beatdown at the hands of the Packers that still stings. For the radio silence the front office maintained during free agency, when other teams were signing veteran players to improve their rosters. For the lack of movement in getting new deals done with their biggest superstars, leading to questions about the long-term vision for the club. For trotting out the entire coaching staff on one-year contracts, cranking the hot seats all the way to high with months still to go before the season opener.

Yes, lots of fingers pointed in every which direction.

But now they’re being pointed inside the locker room.

Cowboys safety Malik Hooker had some thoughts when he was asked recently about players- like, specifically, Hooker’s defensive teammate Micah Parsons- spending so much time and energy during the season cultivating their personal brands off the field through platforms like podcasts.

“My advice for Micah would be: just know we’re all right and being where your feet are,” he said, ironically, on an episode of Keyshawn Johnson’s All Facts No Brakes podcast. “Because if we’re at work, and the run game’s terrible, but you’re doing a podcast every week and you know the run game is terrible, then what are you really caring about? Are you caring about the crowd that ‘s watching your podcast? Or caring about the success of our team and the Super Bowl that we’re trying to reach?”

“I ain’t trying to get you in trouble,” Johnson had nonchalantly prefaced his question, knowing full well that almost anything Hooker said would cause a stir.

Hooker’s answer definitely touched off a firestorm. And it started with Parsons personally posting a reply to his teammate.

In a since-deleted post on X, Parsons wrote:

“Just wish you said this to me but instead on some podcast! And you got my number family! @MalikHooker24 and you my locker mate! So you coulda said this any day! And you do realize I shoot the podcast on our off day! I why [sic] ain’t we talking about everyone preparations and focus leading up to the game week? I mean I can point out a lot of other things but I’m just not!”

Hooker’s larger point is a valid one, a sentiment shared and voiced by plenty of fans, analysts, observers, and even many close to today’s game. The optics are often not good when a player of Parsons’s stature is so visibly involved in creating a brand away from the gridiron, no matter how locked in he is during practice, in team meetings, and on gameday.

When your job is to win football games, devoting any energy at all to a show-business side hustle will invariably rub some the wrong way, especially after a high-profile loss.

But Parsons isn’t wrong, either. Recording his podcast on the team’s off day really isn’t detracting from his defensive preparation. And if Hooker had an issue with it, one would hope that conversation might have more appropriately come up in a private setting, or that he at least would not have called out a teammate by name on someone else’s show.

“But also, people got to remember Micah’s young,” Hooker continued, in the rest of his answer that will get far less airplay than the original shot across the bow. “He’s still trying to find his way, he’s still trying to grow into who he’s trying to be. So I give him grace.”

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“Micah’s still a big kid,” Hooker went on. “And you can’t fault a big kid for trying to expand, as well as experiencing stuff that they ain’t really been through. Micah’s only been in the league four years. There’s still experiences, stuff he ain’t been through. He ain’t ever been through real adversity yet. He hasn’t seen that. So I feel like, over time, over these next couple years of experiencing adversity, you’ll see him start to change how approaches stuff like that, like the podcast and stuff like that.”

The two will no doubt hash things out- if they haven’t already- and put this kerfuffle to bed long before they meet up again in Oxnard.

But in the meantime, it’s simply more fodder for the sky-is-falling crowd who are just waiting for things in Dallas to implode during this already-tumultuous offseason.

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Cowboys rewarded for cautious behavior as NFL safety market crumbles

The safety position is being devalued across the NFL with teams now following a blueprint the Cowboys have been using for years. | From @ReidDHanson

The Cowboys have been known to approach the safety position with a degree of trepidation. The team that once used a top-10 pick on a hard-hitting safety named Roy Williams, is now the team that prefers to disperse a smaller investment across multiple players. This polyamorous approach spreads the investment and the risk, and has brought on a fair share of criticism to the team in the process.

But given the state of the safety position in the league today, the Cowboys may actually be ahead of the curve. Across the NFL teams are parting ways with their high-priced safeties.

Names like Justin Simmons, Kevin Byard and Jamal Adams have all been released this offseason. Over $100 million has been shed already, per Nick Korte from Over the Cap. It marks the biggest positional purge this season by a hefty margin and illustrates the changing attitudes and volatile nature of the safety position today.

Just last year the Cowboys re-signed their homegrown safety Donovan Wilson to a three-year, $21 million deal. Modest in comparison to other megadeals across the league, the Cowboys were able to retain a top playmaker without committing too far into the future.

After Wilson, Dallas signed former Colts first-round pick Malik Hooker to an extension. He inked a similarly cap friendly three-year, $21 million deal last August. Their rehab-and-revive plan paid off with Hooker locking down the centerfielder job. They didn’t need a draft pick or big money to make it happen. They just needed patience.

Perhaps the best illustration of all was with the safety before both of them, Jayron Kearse. Kearse, an NFL journeyman, was signed as a depth piece in 2021. He proved to be an invaluable leader almost immediately, carving out an important role as Dan Quinn’s box safety and demanding a new deal in the process. Instead of falling into the same trap so many other teams have fallen into, Dallas handled Kearse conservatively. Signing him to a two-year, $10 million deal, they paid the player modestly without committing too far into the future.

By most accounts Kearse regressed in 2023, struggling in many of the same areas he thrived only two years prior. His regression could have been disastrous to Dallas if he was signed to a long-term deal. But the Cowboys only locked him in for two seasons, reducing the negative impact and giving them a clean out in 2024.

The volatility of Kearse’s play from season to season is not uncommon for the safety position. Players routinely go from Pro Bowlers to roster cuts overnight. For the safety position, the lesser the commitment is often the better commitment. Scheme changes only add to the unstable nature of the position. As coaches change, so change the scheme demands and overall fit.

It’s important to point out it’s not just the volatile performers getting the pink slip these days, but consistent top performing safeties as well. With the NFL playing more split safety schemes there’s less reliance on a single player to hold down the fort and more of a group dynamic in play. With less demanding schemes in play, lower-skilled players can adequately fill many of the needs.

Based on recent moves, the Cowboys appear to value safety play but commit resources cautiously. Since 2016, they’ve only drafted one safety (Israel Mukuamu, sixth round, 2021) and when they sign safeties, they typically keep the commitment at two to three seasons.

Dallas’ approach to the safety position allows them to stay nimble and make adjustments as needed. It’s a blueprint the rest of the NFL seems to be copying and a sign of the times in the secondary.

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Cowboys safeties underachieved, but should rebound in 2024

The Cowboys safety group appeared to regress in 2023 but there’s reason to believe the volatile position will bounce back in 2024. | From @ReidDHanson

The Cowboys went into the 2023 season with what appeared to be their best safety group in over a decade. Donovan Wilson, Malik Hooker and Jayron Kease formed a versatile and proven trio in Dallas the season prior. It seemed after years of neglect the Cowboys finally had assets on the backend and not liabilities.

But like what has happened many times before in Dallas, performance at the position proved unstable, and the Cowboys trio fell short of their expectations. It’s something the franchise has seen before and likely a big reason why they’ve made such a half-hearted effort in filling it over the years.

In the past they saw players like Ken Hamlin and Gerald Sensabaugh follow up good years with bad years. Both played well enough to earn new contracts in Dallas (Hamlin even went to the Pro Bowl in 2007) and both, soon after, fell flat. It cultivated a distrust in the position and as a result cursed it to a revolving door of personnel.

Kearse, a free agent in March, is not expected to be back with the club in 2024. 2023 was his worst season in Dallas as he struggled in both phases of the game, frequently committing back-breaking penalties along the way. It was the polar opposite of his 2021 season when he established himself as one of Dan Quinn’s most versatile weapons on the defense.

Wilson was already known as a high variance player. He takes big swings and often gets big-swing results. He has good games and bad games but last season there appeared to be a little more bad than good.

Hooker was the toughest evaluation. As the Cowboys’ primary free safety, Hooker plays on the backend most of the day. His evaluation requires All-22 copy since he’s not even on the screen in a typical broadcast.

Hooker’s value was as a deterrent. The All-22 showed he was often in good position to make passers look elsewhere and the numbers back it up. In 16 games, he was only targeted 23 times. That’s the lowest number of targets since he joined the Cowboys. The completion percentage against was just 56.5% which is also his lowest since joining Dallas.

Yet Hooker’s yards/target and passer rating allowed, both went up and became his worst since joining the Cowboys.  Hooker was the only Dallas safety to grade in PFF’s top-50, but he wasn’t as impactful as he’d been the season before.

This high variance play isn’t unique to the Cowboys. Since defensive coordinators change, coverage schemes change. And since coverages change, players change. It’s not uncommon to see a one-time Pro Bowl safety bounce around the league year after year. The position itself is volatile and the demands are ever-changing.

Cowboys-Commanders final injury report for Week 18: Illness on Dallas side, IR a plenty for Washington

Washington will be without four players while Dallas has seven designated as questionable ahead of the final matchup of the 2023 regular season. | From @KDDrummondNFL

The final regular season game is less than 48 hours away now, and the Dallas Cowboys are set to fly into the Washington Metro area, better known as the DMV. The team will be greeted by bad weather on Saturday that’s expected to clear out before the game, but the winter vibe hit the Cowboys before they left Texas.

Five players are on the injury report due to illness, including starting center Tyler Biadasz and starting safety Malik Hooker. They are two of seven questionable Cowboys, although none have been ruled out. Dallas will look to clinch their second NFC East championship in three years on Sunday when they take on a Washington club that will be without several key players.

The Commanders placed three players on injured reserve this week, including slot corner Kendall Fuller. DT Johnathan Allen was also ruled out of the contest as both starters are dealing with knee injuries. Washington also has three additional players marked as questionable.

Here’s a look at the week of practice and game designations for all parties entering the Week 18 tilt.

Week 15 Final Injury Report: Cowboys rule out Hankins, Bills Hyde while illness threatens others

A look at the final roll call of the walking wounded ahead of Sunday’s tilt between two of the best from their respective conferences. | From @KDDrummondNFL

The Dallas Cowboys knew they were going to be without their key run stopper when they travel in Week 15. Friday’s game designations just made it official. The Cowboys will be without defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins, who suffered a high ankle sprain in Sunday’s win over the Philadelphia Eagles. That leaves them a bit shorthanded in trying to stop the Bills ground attack, from an offense that appears to be really healthy.

Despite having three key members on this week’s injury report, none of them received a game designation and that includes quarterback Josh Allen who is nursing a right shoulder injury. Meanwhile the Bills will be without two of their own key defenders while also having a third questionable. Dallas has two members of their starting secondary questionable as both Stephon Gilmore (illness) and safety Malik Hooker (ankle) received the designation.

Gilmore is one of four Cowboys dealing with a sickness that started going through the team last week and led to Micah Parsons receiving a late-week designation before koickoff against Philly. He played through that and carries no designation itno this game. For a full accounting of all of the players listed with nicks, bruises, coughs or sniffles throughout the week, check out the countdown below.

Cowboys make late add to injury report; Malik Hooker says he’ll ‘absolutely’ go

From @ToddBrock24f7: Hooker was added to the report with an unspecified illness but is expected to play. The safety himself confirmed it with a famous GIF.

Cowboys safety Malik Hooker was a very late add to the team’s Week 1 injury report, showing up Saturday afternoon with an unspecified illness designation that left him classified as questionable to play.

On the surface, that news would be quite concerning, considering that fellow safety Donovan Wilson is already listed as doubtful for the season opener against the Giants.

Nevertheless, the team called the move “procedural,” stating that Hooker, the seventh-year veteran, was still expected to go versus the divisional rivals from New York.

Hooker himself made a more ironclad promise to Cowboys fans via social media.

The GIF, of course, comes from Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, when Bulls superstar Michael Jordan played through a nasty bout of… something… to score 38 points in 44 minutes, including the tie-breaking three-pointer in the waning seconds. His heroic performance in the win has gone down in history as “The Flu Game,” although it’s been revealed recently that it was more likely a case of food poisoning.

Either way, it’s become the go-to inspiration for every athlete who’s feeling under the weather on gameday yet hopes to soldier on and help deliver a win anyway.

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Hooker left no doubt about the meaning of his post shortly thereafter.

“Absolutely” was his one-word response to Dallas Morning News reporter Michael Gehlken’s post in which Gehlken offered, “Have a feeling we’ll see Cowboys S Malik Hooker on Sunday night…”

In a bit of fortuitous scheduling, the Cowboys’ primetime Sunday night kickoff even gives MH several extra hours to rest up and channel his inner MJ.

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