Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer
Dallas Cowboys inside linebacker Sean Lee (50) calls defensive signals as New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning (10) calls the offense in the fourth quarter during the New York Giants vs. the Dallas Cowboys NFL football game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on Sunday, September 8, 2013. (Louis DeLuca/Dallas Morning News)
On Wednesday, we looked at the impressive numbers for the Cowboys offense. Now, we give Rod Marinelli's department a similar look. What is interesting about the current story of the Cowboys defense is how attached it is to the offense. This, of course, is part of football. The defense and the offense work together (with the special teams - all three phases) and are connected in a symbiotic relationship where the offense is largely thought of as one of the best tools the defense has.
This seems to make plenty of sense when it works. When it doesn't work, we generally arrive back at the starting point, which is, the only way to get better defensively is to improve the defense.
While that sounds obvious, we have literally spent the last year hearing how a running back was the best way to improve the defense. And, to the credit of those who made that dubious claim, it does work to a point. Unfortunately, that point is somewhere between being a playoff team and being a world champion.
You could make the case that the Cowboys defense was only "lit up" four times. And, in those four games - at Washington (432 yards), at Pittsburgh (448 yards), vs. Washington on Thanksgiving (505 yards), and the playoff game against Green Bay (413 yards), the Cowboys were still 3-1.
Unfortunately, the road to Super Bowl 51 required beating Green Bay's offense, Atlanta's offense, and then New England's offense. In other words, three of the top four offenses (Dallas is fifth) in the entire NFL. Also, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan, and Tom Brady - three likely top finalists for the MVP.
So, the if the bar has changed around here in the last 12 months - from "let's win the division and make the playoffs" to "we need a Super Bowl trophy immediately", then the objectives on defense need to change from "let's try to have a league-average defense" to "we need to figure out how to give ourselves a chance to beat the very best offenses in the league in the playoffs".
Easier said than done. But, first, let's evaluate where the defense finished in those big categories from the 2016 regular season:
POINTS PER GAME ALLOWED - 5TH
If you want to feel good about Marinelli's defense, look at these numbers. The 5-year window shows Rob Ryan's 2012, Monte Kiffin's disastrous 2013, and then three years of Marinelli. The ranks, in order, 24th, 26th, 15th, 16th, and now 5th. Again, of all of the stats you have, let's not lose sight of the beauty of scoring defense. There are many reasons that this happens - and plenty of them are offense related, of course, but if you are stopping your opponent and keeping them under 20 points per game, you are in great shape.
The four teams above the Cowboys are New England, New York Giants, Denver, and Seattle. Dallas was second to New England in first-half points allowed and then fell to 10th in the second half of games. Still, this is a very impressive job by Marinelli to build a defense that has never been in the bottom half of the league - even in the injury-marred 2015.
YARDS PER GAME ALLOWED - 14TH
If you are ever wondering why people hate to use raw yardage to evaluate your defense and why it frustrates so many that this is the archaic way to determine who is the "No. 1 defense", it is because raw yardage tells you almost nothing. No context on number of snaps or drives or penalties or starting field position or what part of the game or every other relevant detail in the name of this big pile of numbers.
That said, if we look at it, we see the Cowboys' ranking is not as impressive as the points allowed. Here, they rank 14th in 2016 and a five-year ranking of: 19th, 32nd, 19th, 17th, and 14th. It would seem that you can believe the Cowboys are more of a middle-of-the road defense than the fifth-best defense in the NFL that points suggests.
But, either way, Marinelli has done a great job over three years at consistently keeping the opponent at roughly 350 a game. This, is basically "break-even" in the NFL, which is all you can expect given how little the Cowboys have invested in their defense over the last five years (compared to the offense).
3RD DOWN DEFENSE - 15TH
This slipped a bit as the season went along, and by the end the Cowboys were exactly at league average on third downs. The NFL converted at 39.7 percent in 2016 and by the end, they pretty much sat right there.
Five-year rolling ranks: 23rd, 29th, 27th, 15th, and now 15th again. So, from that perspective, once again we congratulate Rod Marinelli for his fine work. But, we also note that the Cousins-Roethlisberger-Rodgers trio did pretty well on third down, so they will need some pass rush improvement.
TAKEAWAYS - 19TH
Twenty takeaways is an improvement from 2015. That doesn't take much since 2015 was the lowest takeaway total in the history of the NFL. So, the Cowboys nearly doubled that to 20, but still come in under the average of 22 and the playoff-team average of 23.
Five-year rolling rankings: 28th, 13th, 2nd, 32nd, and now 19th. So, it sure looks like there is no relation on a season-to-season basis. They do not go hunting for takeaways, but rather seem to play a protective style that bends but tries not to break. It is a choice, and they choose to let the turnovers come to them.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
We could go on and on with smaller stats. They do not face many possessions and almost nobody runs on them because of the offense. They get sacks at about a league average now, but nobody fears their players individually. In fact, it only took 6.5 sacks to lead the team.
They need more talent. It is pretty simple. What they have is working its tail off and squeezing its most potential, but they just need more special players.
The numbers are actually quite solid, but the talent level is just not where it needs to be. Several years of investing all big assets into the offense has worked well, but has left the defense with the scraps. Atlanta was able to fix its talent issues in two drafts and found six starters who are now leading its defense with youthful athleticism that actually seems to be pretty decent at causing problems here in the playoffs for Seattle and Green Bay.
Marinelli is great, but I do wonder if the Cowboys need a more aggressive defense to complement their offense moving forward. Attacking rather than "keeping things in front of them" would be my adjustment in 2017. Let's see what they decide this spring.
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