Blogging The Boys
The Dallas Cowboys picked a defensive coordinator on Thursday and went with Philadelphia Eagles passing game coordinator and defensive backs coach Christian Parker.
Many fans are excited because of two specific things beyond the on-field success that has happened under Parker’s watch (he was also in Denver when Pat Surtain was developing into a Defensive Player of the Year-level player): Parker is an outsider from the Cowboys organization and he is incredibly young.
With regards to the latter point, it isn’t just that he’s young. Parker is 34 years old, only a few years older than Dak Prescott to contextualize things, and as this is the case he is officially the youngest defensive coordinator in franchise history. Think about that!
This is a very clear zig where the Cowboys have already gone zag.
If you think that is hyperbole, consider the ages of the most recent Cowboys defensive coordinators upon their hiring:
We have to go back seven coordinators to find one under 50 and even then that was Rob Ryan who was almost there. And what’s more is that the majority were at least 60 years old.
The point of this discussion has nothing to do with age specifically and it is certainly not meant to say or imply that older coordinators cannot be successful. We are partly so excited about Christian Parker because he learned from Vic Fangio who is 67 to that point.
The exciting thing about this whole phenomenon is that Parker’s youth represents a path that the Cowboys have avoided for a very long time. No one is naive to believe that everything is suddenly going to be wildly different, but this is wildly different in an objective sense.
Time will tell if this really works out, but it is a breath of fresh air to say the least.
