Dallas Cowboys looking for defensive improvements to provide for sweeter season
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones focused on the pie.
Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy is focusing on the pudding.
After making quarterback Dak Prescott the highest-paid player in the history of the franchise, and the second-highest in the NFL, with a four-year, $160 million contract, Jones said there was still enough pie left to improve the team and upgrade a historically bad Cowboys defense.
That was March 10, and two weeks later McCarthy met with the team’s beat writers to discuss the intersection of the pie and the pudding, so to speak.
If one believes that the proof is in the pudding, well, so far free agency has provided a lot of proof that the team was serious about its desire to address the defense. In fact, six of the team’s eight additions have so far been on that side of the ball.
“Look at our team from 2020 to 2021, the largest change is clearly on defense,” McCarthy said. “It’s something we felt was needed.”
The coach said the evaluation process began the day after the season was over. That was Monday, Jan. 4, and the first change came with the firing of defensive coordinator Mike Nolan on Friday, Jan. 8. By the following Monday, former Atlanta Falcons head coach Dan Quinn was installed as Nolan’s replacement.
McCarthy acknowledged that his defensive unit tried to do too much last season, and it led to confusion, communication breakdowns and arguably the worst showing in the 61 seasons of the franchise. The Cowboys gave up the most points, the most rushing yards and the second-most overall yardage in team history.
It didn’t help that McCarthy’s first offseason as head coach was stunted by the COVID-19 shutdowns that shifted critical in-person gatherings to virtual ones. And the season itself was marred by excessive injuries.
But of the five new head coaches last season, two of them — Kevin Stefanski in Cleveland and Ron Rivera in Washington — both made the playoffs while also dealing with new league protocols and key injuries.
Bottom line, there no excuses.
”We didn’t get it done,” McCarthy said. “We went in with too much volume. So there definitely was some miss on the understanding of what fits and what didn’t fit. So we didn’t hit the target.
“In the same breath, it’s not just one guy. We all need to be better — players, coaches, head coach, all the way through.”
While it wasn’t just on Nolan, there is no question that Quinn was brought in to correct the major flaw of the 2020 edition. Before his six-year run as Atlanta’s head coach, Quinn was defensive coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks team that made back-to-back trips to the Super Bowl in 2013 and 2014. His “Legion of Boom” defenses finished tops in the NFL with the fewest points and total yards allowed in both seasons.
“A chance to be in position to hire [Quinn] is a huge asset to our football operation,” McCarthy said. “It’s an opportunity for improvement.”
With their new coordinator in place, the Cowboys then began setting out to address the on-the-field personnel. Considering the team’s woes against the run, the Cowboys began looking for run-stuffers in free agency. The team was looking to get bigger. Literally.
They added two defensive tackles in Carlos Watkins (6-foot-3, 297 pounds) and Brent Urban (6-7, 300), a defensive end in Tarell Basham (6-4, 266) to go along with three safeties in Jayron Kearse (6-4, 215), Damontae Kazee (5-11, 190) and Keanu Neal (6-1, 216).
Size is important, but the Cowboys also want to be athletic and versatile as well. So the plan is to slide Neal, who played strong safety under Quinn in Atlanta, to outside linebacker.
“In my view, just in general terms, you can’t have enough 6-foot-4, 6-foot-5, 255-to 260-pound athletes on your football team,’’ McCarthy said. “It makes it better on offense, defense and special teams.”
McCarthy got the full effect of that size, up close and personal, when Kearse gave him a hug while the player visited The Star last week. “It’s embarrassing when you have another man who swallows you up,” said McCarthy, who himself is not a small. “That’s a tough task from where I am right now.”
Jokes aside, a large task lies ahead. McCarthy is expected to get this Cowboys team to shake off an extremely disappointing 6-10 season and get back to a place it hasn’t been to since 1995: the Super Bowl.
“There were points last year I thought, ‘What the hell did I come back to?,’” McCarthy said. “But it’s really just a privilege to stand here in front of you and get ready to build a team that can contend for a championship. It’s just a privilege in the pressure.”
And should that mission get realized, there will be enough cake for all.
