Blogging The Boys
New Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker is generating a lot of excitement already, even though the 34-year old has never called a play in his coaching career. Despite that, it’s not hard to figure out what kind of system Parker will bring to the Cowboys.
A staunch disciple of Vic Fangio, Parker is expected to run the same scheme. He first worked under Fangio when the current Eagles defensive coordinator was the head coach in Denver. When Fangio was fired, one of his other disciples – current Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero – was put in charge of the defense. Even after Evero left for Carolina and Vance Joseph was brought in, head coach Sean Payton asked Joseph to lean on retained assistants like Parker to run the same Fangio principles.
In short, Parker has been coaching this scheme in some capacity for the past five years of his 13 year coaching career. Not every coach runs the exact same scheme as their mentor, and Parker will undoubtedly tweak some things in Dallas, but it’s safe to say the bones of this defense will be what Fangio has dominated with for multiple decades. So let’s take a deep dive into the core tenets of this defense.
The way Brian Schottenheimer conducted this search was fascinating. Of the four reported finalists, two of them (Jim Leonhard and Daronte Jones) had direct ties to Vance Joseph and Baylor head coach Dave Aranda, while the other two (Jonathan Gannon and Parker) had strong ties to Fangio. Joseph and Aranda have built their defensive careers on loaded boxes with exotic simulated pressures in front of middle-of-field-closed coverage shells. Fangio is known for very light boxes and middle-of-field-open coverage shells.
Yet both approaches put a premium on deception. Leonhard and Jones have predicated their defenses on crowding the line of scrimmage pre-snap and tricking the quarterback about who’s rushing him. Fangio takes a different approach, showing pretty much the same look every play but running very different concepts each time.
At the end of the day, though, Parker comes from a lineage where deception is everything. His goal is to show the offense one thing and do something completely different. This entire scheme is built on changing the picture after the ball is snapped, very similar philosophically to what both Dan Quinn and Mike Zimmer did in Dallas not too long ago. Everything that Parker will do as coordinator will start the question of how to best deceive the quarterback.
One of the ways Fangio deceives offenses is in the way he aligns the front. His philosophy is built on showing a light box – meaning one or two linebackers on the field – and daring teams to run the ball or throw into the middle of the field. They do that because they know they’ll occupy that area anyway, and Fangio is goading the offense into going exactly where they’ll have bodies.
In order to...
