Blogging The Boys
The Cowboys are very quickly being faced with a major conundrum: Matt Eberflus. It’s rare that a team fires a head coach – let alone an assistant – during their first year on the job. Yet, it’s becoming harder and harder to justify keeping Eberflus around. The Dallas defense has been utterly miserable all year, and their one moment offering hope – a Week 5 win over the winless Jets – quickly withered away in a demoralizing loss to the Panthers.
Brian Schottenheimer has made it clear he’s not even thinking about moving on from Eberflus. On Monday, he had this to say:
“I’ve been Matt. I’ve been a coordinator. And I’ve been where people are calling you out and saying you don’t know how to coach and, ‘Man, this guy is the worst coach in history…'”
“Matt Eberflus is a damn good football coach. We have to perform better. But I’ve been him, so part of me being in [defensive meetings] is to help as an asset, to tell him I believe in him. I understand what he’s going through. It sucks. It’s no fun. We’re gonna ride this thing out. And we’ll play better. We really will.”
That’s an admirable response from Schottenheimer, who is surely thinking the same thing Eberflus must be thinking: I didn’t build this roster, or decide to trade away the best player a week before the season. In fact, Eberflus accepted this job fully under the impression that an extension with Micah Parsons would happen, only to quickly find out that would not be the case.
It’s easy to find excuses for Eberflus, and it’s understandable why Schottenheimer is hesitant to fire his defensive coordinator just six games into the season. He’s also right about Eberflus being a good coach; his track record, which we profiled back when the hire was made, speaks for itself.
That said, Eberflus has fielded a miserable defense week in and week out this year. This most recent game in Carolina was possibly the worst, even if the statistics don’t say so. Take, for example, the fourth down conversion that sealed the win for the Panthers:
It’s fourth down and the Panthers need three yards to move the chains. Eberflus lines up three defensive linemen to one side and has Kenneth Murray mugging the A gap. On the boundary side, Trevon Diggs is right at the line of scrimmage, while DaRon Bland is giving a 12-yard cushion to Hunter Renfrow, lined up three yards beyond the line to gain.
When the ball is snapped, Murray drops into a shallow zone before drifting towards Renfrow, who runs a quick slant. Bland, meanwhile, backpedals for a second before triggering down on Renfrow as he breaks inside. Neither player is quick enough to stop what was an easy throw.
Here’s the problem: Eberflus was essentially daring the Panthers to run this exact play. The pre-snap alignment suggests exactly that, and the only other explanation for leaving Bland so...
