Blogging The Boys
Through their first four games of the season, the Dallas Cowboys have won just one, lost two, and most recently tied 40-40 with the Green Bay Packers. There still aren’t many positive things to be said about a defense in its first year of Matt Eberflus’ scheme. The state of this team coming off a Scorigami-setting tie in primetime is very hard to piece together, because the offense was able to go toe to toe with every Packers scoring drive even without two (and at times three) starters on the offensive line, and no CeeDee Lamb.
The best thing the Cowboys have going for them is yet another number one offense being called by a new voice in Schottenheimer, which has instantly brought a new level of legitimacy to their offense as a whole with more matchup based game plans, motions, and formation complexity. The worst thing they have going for them is easily a defense still fishing for any concrete answers about their identity. Now sitting at 1-2-1 well behind the 4-0 Eagles, the time is now for the Cowboys to find out if they can get back to any semblance of complementary football with an offense that’s humming. To do so, the defense will literally have to crawl out of being ranked dead last in the league after Sunday night, but that doesn’t mean all hope has to already be lost.
As preposterous as it sounds, coming off a game where the Cowboys defense allowed five straight scoring drives from the start of the second half through overtime, not everything was as bad as it could have been for this defense in the tie. Coming off a loss to the Bears where the defensive effort felt much more like rock bottom, the bare minimum sign of any turnaround against the Packers had to be better play calls that put players in better positions to make plays. The Cowboys certainly didn’t do this against the Bears, but they also didn’t really do so against the Giants either, lucky to escape with an overtime victory 40-37 in week two. This created a concerning trend going into the Packers game, a team that made scoring 48 points in the last playoff meeting between these teams look horrifyingly easy in the 2023 Wild Card round. The Cowboys defensive game plan was much more layered on Sunday night though, closer resembling the effort they had in their other primetime game at the Eagles in week one.
The Cowboys still stuck with plenty of zone looks in that loss, but mixed in different blitzes to get to Jalen Hurts and effectively closed the running lanes on Saquon Barkley. Against the Packers, the Cowboys defense was even more multiple, playing both zone and man, rotating cornerback Trevon Diggs on and off the field, as well as linebacker Marist Liufau. They had Jadeveon Clowney make his team debut at defensive end, Juanyeh Thomas came off the bench for the injured Malik Hooker at safety, and DaRon...
