Rebuilding the defense will take time, cannot be accomplished in just one off season, especially with all this unsigned in-house fa's. No matter the scheme, it all comes down to the talent within it. Many have overrated our defensive players for years. Defense needs a few stars, enough with building the offense, they have plenty of talent. It makes sense to have size up front to protect our linebackers more as they are more run and hit types. Team tackling has to get better as does creating more impact plays, defensive turnovers.
Who knows if Nolan is the right DC to turn it around, but let;s give me the talent to find out. It will be interesting to see how they start the rebuilding year 1: what holdovers stay, as they are going to not be able to replace everyone right away? Which area do they prioritize first; DL or DB? Will they use Fa to find quality players or just continue signing low budget value types?
- The Byron jones and Robert Quinn are gonna be clearly the biggest ones in terms of the in-house, unsigned FAs,.. as there’s no assurance that either one will be back.
Me thinks the Cowboys are gonna throw an offer to both – but it will be nothing that they can double on the open market.
And that will cause both to depart – and leave 2 huge departures.
They may not want to pay Jones as among the top tier CBs are making – why ? they simply don’t see him quite on their level and will never make that jump to creating turnovers with Byron here.
But should he depart (which all early indications suggest he will) we’d have to fill his vacancy with an immediate rookie starter (likely either 1st or 2nd round) – as I don’t see the ultra -conservative Stephen jones going after a 32 year vet and ex-pro bowler Chris Harris ( Broncos CB)
And just in case anyone suggesting Jordan Lewis should be the starter to replace jones, should be slapped back to the real world.
- Quinn was lighting off the edge. Few tackles could deal with his 1st step explosiveness and at least Marinelli scheme allowed him to fly off edge at will.
By far our best pass rusher in 2019, period.
But Quinn is also due to be age 30 in May. and Stephen Jones has known to be not so keen on signing age 30+ guys to big money contracts. Since Quinn looking for his
last NFL contract to be a big one, could he out-price himself away from the Cowboys ?
- With Nolan vs Marinelli (vs Richard?) Defense.
I’m with you on a top defense having a strong interior of the defense – I even heard Belichek make mentioned of that some years back.
But it becomes more of a challenge give Maliek likely to leave in FA, and Hill far from being ready - much less a promising candidate to start at 3 tech role this year.
and we don't have that imposing brute strength and bulky top run stuffer at 1 tech.
Quite simple, we have to bring much more a physical brand of ball, a more bigger brand of muscle and disruption -and that just has to start happening upfront.
Especially in the interior. Also I’m not counting on just DLaw alone, and there are times that our war daddy disappears down the stretch – and in big playoff games.
Thus we have to have bookend big threats at both DE spots. Quinn stepped up big time and gave us that. But again he could be gone this time around.
