Examining the Pass Defense

[Yakuza Rich]

As many of you may already know, nearly 80% of the games in the NFL are dictated by who wins the passing game battle. It's not about throwing up gaudy yardage in the passing game, it's about effectiveness and efficiency of the passing game.

Obviously, the Cowboys have not had much of an issue with throwing the ball on offense when Romo is the starter. However, the Cowboys continually struggle to defend the pass and that prevents the team from reaching the promise land.

For me, I wanted to look more into what exactly constitutes an elite pass defense. I'm trying to put aside theory as well as overly simplistic analysis like 'a lower QB rating.' I wanted to look more precisely as to what are the common threads of an elite pass defense.

First, I defined an elite pass defense as any team that ranked in the top-4 in Football Outsiders' Pass Defense ranking. This considered various measurements along with adjusting it for strength of schedule.

I then looked at a bunch of various statistics and put them in a table. Here's a link to that table:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iFKLB5mubDG8DrnbU0Q06W209eYlORhfXeO0-CToJ-M/edit?usp=sharing

After compiling the data, I started to see one trend...there is a difference in the game from 2012 to present day versus 2011 and prior. So I split the data into 3 year ranges (2009-2011 and 2012-2014).

Here's some ideas I have seen:


- Since 2012, in order to become an elite pass defense you need to make more INT's. Prior to 2012, the league was slightly more about sacking the QB and keeping the completion % lower. I think this makes sense because it appears that QB's across the league are throwing shorter pass patterns and throwing the ball more often. So the completion % goes up, the sack rates go down and there are more opportunities to get an interception.


- If you're in a 4-3 a higher percentage of the interceptions on an elite pass defense will come from the corners than they would in a 3-4. I was a little surprised by this.


- It does appear that in post-2011, safety play and being able to make picks from the safety position is much more important. Even in the 4-3 where you may not get as many INT's from your safeties as you would in a 3-4...it is pretty apparent that your safeties had better be good enough in coverage and that puts the corners in a better position to make plays.


- If you look at the defensive rankings of the elite pass defenses against the #1 WR, #2 WR, #3 WR, TE and RB....the trend now (post-2011) is that you better be in the top-9 in defending the #1 WR and at least 2 of the 3 (#3 WR, TE or RB).

My thinking on this is that the #1 WR is too dangerous of a threat to not be able to defend and not being able to defend the #3 WR or TE or RB allows the QB to have too easy of a time making shorter, but productive throws.


- It's nice to defend the run, but it's really not that critical in defending the pass.


- Being able to cause fumbles has no real bearing on pass defense. You have to make picks these days.


- Nice to prevent TD passes, but not really a big thing when it comes to creating an elite pass defense.


- Starting field position is starting to become much more relevant to the elite pass defenses. Perhaps this is a sign of tackling (poor special teams tackling could lead to worst starting field position) or perhaps this indicates a lack of depth (poor special teams due to lack of depth at the DB position). Perhaps this is due to it becoming very difficult to stop today's offenses and essentially you need to get INT's and you need more opportunities to get INT's.



For the Cowboys, we are pretty much the opposite of these elite pass defenses and their characteristics. We only have 2 interceptions all year long and 1 of those was from Sean Lee (the other from Wilcox). Last season the Cowboys only had 4 interceptions from their CB's. They did have 5 interceptions from Wilcox and Church. It appears that the number you're looking for from your safeties is at least 6 and it's usually better to have them split evenly because it's a sign that both guys are threats in the passing game.


This year we are 27th against #1 WR, 9th against #2 WR, 32nd against #3 WR, 5th against TE's and 24th against RB's.

Last season we were 14th against #1 WR, 29th against #2 WR, 3rd against #3 WR, 11th against TE and 12th against the RB's.


So, looking at that we have a major drop-off in defending #1 WR's and we improved against the #2 WR's. But, those can work together because if your #1 WR is working well, then there's little reason to throw to the #2 WR and vice versa. The Cowboys essentially improved defending the #2 WR which does not greatly reflect an elite pass defense.

I think it's pretty obvious we miss Scandrick in that regard as well as when we see that the defense is the worst in the league in defending the #3 WR (or 'other WR').

It's nice to see the team defend the TE better. To me, this points to Wilcox not being the problem. He was often covering the TE's last season and did a solid job (11th). This season they've given B. Jones more responsibility while Wilcox is the #2 in command and they are now ranked 5th in defending the TE's.

The RB's are often the linebacker and SS responsibility. The team has been without Ro. McClain and he did have some TE responsibility last year. Of course, the gaffe against Spiller in the Saints game probably hurt the defense's ranking against the RB tremendously.


To me, this will be an interesting game to watch if Church is indeed out. I would assume that would move Jones to FS and Wilcox to SS. I think they are far more capable interception makers of the ball with far more range and that may help the corners quite a bit. And with McClain getting his sea legs back, perhaps the defense will start to defend the RB's better.






YR

 

[xwalker]

As many of you may already know, nearly 80% of the games in the NFL are dictated by who wins the passing game battle. It's not about throwing up gaudy yardage in the passing game, it's about effectiveness and efficiency of the passing game.

Nice work.

- Since 2012, in order to become an elite pass defense you need to make more INT's. Prior to 2012, the league was slightly more about sacking the QB and keeping the completion % lower. I think this makes sense because it appears that QB's across the league are throwing shorter pass patterns and throwing the ball more often. So the completion % goes up, the sack rates go down and there are more opportunities to get an interception.

- Being able to cause fumbles has no real bearing on pass defense. You have to make picks these days.

- Nice to prevent TD passes, but not really a big thing when it comes to creating an elite pass defense.

Some of these conclusions seem to be just a reverse engineering of what goes in the Football Outsiders equation for calculating their elite pass defense ranking. For example forcing fumbles does not show up as important in your calculations because it is likely not important in their calculation that generated the elite pass defense rankings in the 1st place.

- It's nice to defend the run, but it's really not that critical in defending the pass.

This is where things go horribly wrong.

The issue is that yards are not a good measurement of the value of the running game. For example 2 offenses can play the same defense with both offenses having 50 rushing yards; however, if the defense played 8 in the box against 1 offense and 7 in the box against the other offense, then the offense that faced 8 in the box had an advantage in the passing game because of their running game. It was the threat of the running game not the actual yards gained that was the difference between the running games for the two offenses. The stats (using yardage) makes it appear the running games are identical; however, that is far from correct.

Yards also don't show the value of situational running such as 3rd and short or short yardage on the goal line; however, having success in those areas takes pressure off of the passing game keeping the passing game out of lower percentage situations.

The 7 vs 8 men in the box concept is just a simple example. There are many other ways that the threat of a strong running game helps the passing game even when it does not show up in the stats. The Cowboys for example like to rush and worry about defending the run while rushing; however, against teams with at really strong running game they will have 1 or both DEs hold up their rush at times to play the run. You'll see this most at the LDE position where the DE will go with a bull rush instead of trying to beat the OT around the corner because going wide up-field takes the DE out of a good run contain position.

It would be basically impossible to ever statistically determine the value of the threat of the running game because it would be very difficult to measure when defenses adjusted to play a stronger run defense and therefore a weaker pass defense. As indicated previously, when looking at rushing yards you don't know if they were gained against a defense playing max run contain or playing max pass defense or any combination between those two extremes.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Some of these conclusions seem to be just a reverse engineering of what goes in the Football Outsiders equation for calculating their elite pass defense ranking. For example forcing fumbles does not show up as important in your calculations because it is likely not important in their calculation that generated the elite pass defense rankings in the 1st place.

To be clear, I was trying to determine if there are ANY correlations or trends that go into elite pass defenses. Obviously, causing fumbles is not really part of the pass. So, I wanted to examine that perhaps if there is some sort of correlation. Maybe causing fumbles is part of the turnover battle in itself. My thinking was possibly that if a team causes and recovers fumbles, the opponent's drives stop and then they have to pass the ball more to get back into the game. Maybe there is something with strip fumbles of the QB and how that impacts the passing game.

As some may know, I am a statistician by trade and one of the things we say is that there is no such thing as 'wasted research' because even if you don't come up with a huge revelation...at least you can say 'well, we looked at it and found nothing.'

So with fumbles/drive...there's just nothing there which I think is safe to say most people would assume to be the case.

This is where things go horribly wrong.

The issue is that yards are not a good measurement of the value of the running game. For example 2 offenses can play the same defense with both offenses having 50 rushing yards; however, if the defense played 8 in the box against 1 offense and 7 in the box against the other offense, then the offense that faced 8 in the box had an advantage in the passing game because of their running game. It was the threat of the running game not the actual yards gained that was the difference between the running games for the two offenses. The stats (using yardage) makes it appear the running games are identical; however, that is far from correct.

Yards also don't show the value of situational running such as 3rd and short or short yardage on the goal line; however, having success in those areas takes pressure off of the passing game keeping the passing game out of lower percentage situations.

The 7 vs 8 men in the box concept is just a simple example. There are many other ways that the threat of a strong running game helps the passing game even when it does not show up in the stats. The Cowboys for example like to rush and worry about defending the run while rushing; however, against teams with at really strong running game they will have 1 or both DEs hold up their rush at times to play the run. You'll see this most at the LDE position where the DE will go with a bull rush instead of trying to beat the OT around the corner because going wide up-field takes the DE out of a good run contain position.

It would be basically impossible to ever statistically determine the value of the threat of the running game because it would be very difficult to measure when defenses adjusted to play a stronger run defense and therefore a weaker pass defense. As indicated previously, when looking at rushing yards you don't know if they were gained against a defense playing max run contain or playing max pass defense or any combination between those two extremes.

The rushing data rankings are based on FO.com's rushing DVOA which includes down and distance, how much was gained and the running offense's production.

As you may know, I'm a believer in the running game to a larger degree than most statisticians because they tend to ignore how it burns out the defense as the year goes on. And in the case of Romo (and the Air Coryell offense), it would behoove us to have a strong running game and to stick with the run. Romo is more adept at throwing the ball on intermediate and long pass patterns...the running game opens that up. And Romo is extremely productive and efficient on the play action pass which requires a threat of a run to get the LB's and safeties to cheat up towards the LOS. And as I've said a million times...the stats clearly show that Romo's effectiveness drops once he starts throwing more than 35 passes and his 'sweet spot' is on pass attempts 25-35.

But, that is one particular QB and one particular offensive system (as well as the receivers and their abilities). When we look at a group of elite pass defenses, being able to defend the run well isn't exactly necessary.

So, I'm not too worried about us giving up rushing yards at this point and I'm more concerned about how well we defend #1 WR's, getting interceptions (particularly from our safeties) and then stopping at least 2 of the 3 peripheral receivers (#3 WR, TE or RB).








YR

 

[JoeyBoy718]

Good stuff. I agree that INTs are important because, as you said, QBs are dumping it off a lot these days which results in a higher completion % and fewer sacks because they get rid of it sooner. That doesn't mean QBs are getting better. Weeden's QB rating would've made him the GOAT 15 years ago but he was one of the worst QBs in the game this season. If the QB is gonna throw it 55 times a game, we need to at least make a few INTs.

I'm also surprised that we're so bad at covering the other team's #1 WR. I think Claiborne was very impressive this season against the elite WRs we faced. We faced possibly the two best WRs in three of our games (OBJ twice and Julio). They didn't do too much against us mainly because of Claiborne. And of course Jones has done a great job against some of the elite TEs we've faced this season (Graham is coming this weekend).

 

[Macnalty]

As many of you may already know, nearly 80% of the games in the NFL are dictated by who wins the passing game battle. It's not about throwing up gaudy yardage in the passing game, it's about effectiveness and efficiency of the passing game.

Obviously, the Cowboys have not had much of an issue with throwing the ball on offense when Romo is the starter. However, the Cowboys continually struggle to defend the pass and that prevents the team from reaching the promise land.

For me, I wanted to look more into what exactly constitutes an elite pass defense. I'm trying to put aside theory as well as overly simplistic analysis like 'a lower QB rating.' I wanted to look more precisely as to what are the common threads of an elite pass defense.

First, I defined an elite pass defense as any team that ranked in the top-4 in Football Outsiders' Pass Defense ranking. This considered various measurements along with adjusting it for strength of schedule.

I then looked at a bunch of various statistics and put them in a table. Here's a link to that table:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iFKLB5mubDG8DrnbU0Q06W209eYlORhfXeO0-CToJ-M/edit?usp=sharing

After compiling the data, I started to see one trend...there is a difference in the game from 2012 to present day versus 2011 and prior. So I split the data into 3 year ranges (2009-2011 and 2012-2014).

Here's some ideas I have seen:


- Since 2012, in order to become an elite pass defense you need to make more INT's. Prior to 2012, the league was slightly more about sacking the QB and keeping the completion % lower. I think this makes sense because it appears that QB's across the league are throwing shorter pass patterns and throwing the ball more often. So the completion % goes up, the sack rates go down and there are more opportunities to get an interception.


- If you're in a 4-3 a higher percentage of the interceptions on an elite pass defense will come from the corners than they would in a 3-4. I was a little surprised by this.


- It does appear that in post-2011, safety play and being able to make picks from the safety position is much more important. Even in the 4-3 where you may not get as many INT's from your safeties as you would in a 3-4...it is pretty apparent that your safeties had better be good enough in coverage and that puts the corners in a better position to make plays.


- If you look at the defensive rankings of the elite pass defenses against the #1 WR, #2 WR, #3 WR, TE and RB....the trend now (post-2011) is that you better be in the top-9 in defending the #1 WR and at least 2 of the 3 (#3 WR, TE or RB).

My thinking on this is that the #1 WR is too dangerous of a threat to not be able to defend and not being able to defend the #3 WR or TE or RB allows the QB to have too easy of a time making shorter, but productive throws.


- It's nice to defend the run, but it's really not that critical in defending the pass.


- Being able to cause fumbles has no real bearing on pass defense. You have to make picks these days.


- Nice to prevent TD passes, but not really a big thing when it comes to creating an elite pass defense.


- Starting field position is starting to become much more relevant to the elite pass defenses. Perhaps this is a sign of tackling (poor special teams tackling could lead to worst starting field position) or perhaps this indicates a lack of depth (poor special teams due to lack of depth at the DB position). Perhaps this is due to it becoming very difficult to stop today's offenses and essentially you need to get INT's and you need more opportunities to get INT's.



For the Cowboys, we are pretty much the opposite of these elite pass defenses and their characteristics. We only have 2 interceptions all year long and 1 of those was from Sean Lee (the other from Wilcox). Last season the Cowboys only had 4 interceptions from their CB's. They did have 5 interceptions from Wilcox and Church. It appears that the number you're looking for from your safeties is at least 6 and it's usually better to have them split evenly because it's a sign that both guys are threats in the passing game.


This year we are 27th against #1 WR, 9th against #2 WR, 32nd against #3 WR, 5th against TE's and 24th against RB's.

Last season we were 14th against #1 WR, 29th against #2 WR, 3rd against #3 WR, 11th against TE and 12th against the RB's.


So, looking at that we have a major drop-off in defending #1 WR's and we improved against the #2 WR's. But, those can work together because if your #1 WR is working well, then there's little reason to throw to the #2 WR and vice versa. The Cowboys essentially improved defending the #2 WR which does not greatly reflect an elite pass defense.

I think it's pretty obvious we miss Scandrick in that regard as well as when we see that the defense is the worst in the league in defending the #3 WR (or 'other WR').

It's nice to see the team defend the TE better. To me, this points to Wilcox not being the problem. He was often covering the TE's last season and did a solid job (11th). This season they've given B. Jones more responsibility while Wilcox is the #2 in command and they are now ranked 5th in defending the TE's.

The RB's are often the linebacker and SS responsibility. The team has been without Ro. McClain and he did have some TE responsibility last year. Of course, the gaffe against Spiller in the Saints game probably hurt the defense's ranking against the RB tremendously.


To me, this will be an interesting game to watch if Church is indeed out. I would assume that would move Jones to FS and Wilcox to SS. I think they are far more capable interception makers of the ball with far more range and that may help the corners quite a bit. And with McClain getting his sea legs back, perhaps the defense will start to defend the RB's better.






YR

Wow nice piece of work, I know this took some time. Disagree with some conclusions but understand your logic.

 

[xwalker]

To be clear, I was trying to determine if there are ANY correlations or trends that go into elite pass defenses. Obviously, causing fumbles is not really part of the pass. So, I wanted to examine that perhaps if there is some sort of correlation. Maybe causing fumbles is part of the turnover battle in itself. My thinking was possibly that if a team causes and recovers fumbles, the opponent's drives stop and then they have to pass the ball more to get back into the game. Maybe there is something with strip fumbles of the QB and how that impacts the passing game.

As some may know, I am a statistician by trade and one of the things we say is that there is no such thing as 'wasted research' because even if you don't come up with a huge revelation...at least you can say 'well, we looked at it and found nothing.'

So with fumbles/drive...there's just nothing there which I think is safe to say most people would assume to be the case.




The rushing data rankings are based on FO.com's rushing DVOA which includes down and distance, how much was gained and the running offense's production.

As you may know, I'm a believer in the running game to a larger degree than most statisticians because they tend to ignore how it burns out the defense as the year goes on. And in the case of Romo (and the Air Coryell offense), it would behoove us to have a strong running game and to stick with the run. Romo is more adept at throwing the ball on intermediate and long pass patterns...the running game opens that up. And Romo is extremely productive and efficient on the play action pass which requires a threat of a run to get the LB's and safeties to cheat up towards the LOS. And as I've said a million times...the stats clearly show that Romo's effectiveness drops once he starts throwing more than 35 passes and his 'sweet spot' is on pass attempts 25-35.

But, that is one particular QB and one particular offensive system (as well as the receivers and their abilities). When we look at a group of elite pass defenses, being able to defend the run well isn't exactly necessary.

So, I'm not too worried about us giving up rushing yards at this point and I'm more concerned about how well we defend #1 WR's, getting interceptions (particularly from our safeties) and then stopping at least 2 of the 3 peripheral receivers (#3 WR, TE or RB).








YR

Again, it a leap to make any conclusions about the running game's importance from the available stats.

The team with the better passing differential likely wins; however, it it almost impossible to know how much the threat of the running game helps the passing game because total rushing yards is basically a worthless stat in this discussion. Taking down/distance into consideration might help but it's still very difficult to measure the effect of a strong running threat because defenses adjust to limit rushing making total rushing yards of little value as a stat.

If passing was 100 to 1 more important than rushing then defenses would evolve into pass rushers and CBs with no LBs, Safeties or big DTs.

Just watching teams and games should make the importance of rushing obvious without even looking at the stats. As you indicated, giving Romo a better rushing attack made his job easier. We all saw how that worked. We also saw in game like the one against the Falcons how their rushing attack was a huge weapon that forced the Cowboys to move resources from pass defense to run defense.

I do love the work that you put into this exercise.

 

[texbumthelife]

I didn't realize interceptions being important was a new thing? I think it's always been critical that your defensive backfield be adept at getting take-aways, namely interceptions. It's only been further highlighted as the NFL had evolved back towards quick, West Coast passing style offenses.

As Walker said though, defending the run is fairly significant to your ability to defend the pass. If you don't have to commit a safety to the run game, as we usually do, that's another guy with eyes on the QB. Just makes sense.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Good stuff. I agree that INTs are important because, as you said, QBs are dumping it off a lot these days which results in a higher completion % and fewer sacks because they get rid of it sooner. That doesn't mean QBs are getting better. Weeden's QB rating would've made him the GOAT 15 years ago but he was one of the worst QBs in the game this season. If the QB is gonna throw it 55 times a game, we need to at least make a few INTs.

I'm also surprised that we're so bad at covering the other team's #1 WR. I think Claiborne was very impressive this season against the elite WRs we faced. We faced possibly the two best WRs in three of our games (OBJ twice and Julio). They didn't do too much against us mainly because of Claiborne. And of course Jones has done a great job against some of the elite TEs we've faced this season (Graham is coming this weekend).

Teams are moving their WR to the slot to matchup with Church/Patmon/White. I was hoping return of Lee and the addition of Jones as well as experience in the system would shore up the center of the field but we still leave people wide open in the middle of the field.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I didn't realize interceptions being important was a new thing? I think it's always been critical that your defensive backfield be adept at getting take-aways, namely interceptions. It's only been further highlighted as the NFL had evolved back towards quick, West Coast passing style offenses.

As Walker said though, defending the run is fairly significant to your ability to defend the pass. If you don't have to commit a safety to the run game, as we usually do, that's another guy with eyes on the QB. Just makes sense.

I think his point was that it is more important now than ever before because it is harder to get negative plays as people get rid of the ball quickly league-wide.

 

[conner01]

Great work
Stats are great but can be misleading

 

[Yakuza Rich]

I didn't realize interceptions being important was a new thing? I think it's always been critical that your defensive backfield be adept at getting take-aways, namely interceptions. It's only been further highlighted as the NFL had evolved back towards quick, West Coast passing style offenses.

As Walker said though, defending the run is fairly significant to your ability to defend the pass. If you don't have to commit a safety to the run game, as we usually do, that's another guy with eyes on the QB. Just makes sense.

Look at the chart and you see that since 2011 the INT rates and INT/drive have gone up quite a bit from pre-2012.

I think it has always been important to a degree, but I think now it is becoming hyper-important.





YR

 

[Zman5]

T And Romo is extremely productive and efficient on the play action pass which requires a threat of a run to get the LB's and safeties to cheat up towards the LOS. And as I've said a million times...the stats clearly show that Romo's effectiveness drops once he starts throwing more than 35 passes and his 'sweet spot' is on pass attempts 25-35.




YR

This has been proven to be a myth. Few years back, we were like 29th in rush attempts and 20 something in rush offense yet Romo was top 3 QB when passing from play action.

You can be a lousy running team that doesn't run much yet still be effective a play action team.

 

[burmafrd]

It has always been a mystery to me that the cowboys do not more often take advantage of the fact that Tony does as good a job as any QB in the NFL at selling the run fake part of the play action pass.

One thing to remember about stats is how easy they are to manipulate.

If the pass differential was as important as YR believes then the way coaches and coordinators do their jobs would be very different then it is.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

This has been proven to be a myth. Few years back, we were like 29th in rush attempts and 20 something in rush offense yet Romo was top 3 QB when passing from play action.

You can be a lousy running team that doesn't run much yet still be effective a play action team.

Who is to say he wouldn't have been more effective had we ran the ball well? Your scenario could simply mean that teams cheated to stop the run and it worked but play action was still successful because they were cheating to the LOS.

 

[Zman5]

Who is to say he wouldn't have been more effective had we ran the ball well? Your scenario could simply mean that teams cheated to stop the run and it worked but play action was still successful because they were cheating to the LOS.

What's that have to do with what I posted? Did I post running well will or will not make play action work better?

YR posted play action required a running threat in order to be successful and I posted that Romo was very successful at play action even though we really didn't have a running threat that year.

 

[Beast_from_East]

As many of you may already know, nearly 80% of the games in the NFL are dictated by who wins the passing game battle. It's not about throwing up gaudy yardage in the passing game, it's about effectiveness and efficiency of the passing game.

Obviously, the Cowboys have not had much of an issue with throwing the ball on offense when Romo is the starter. However, the Cowboys continually struggle to defend the pass and that prevents the team from reaching the promise land.

For me, I wanted to look more into what exactly constitutes an elite pass defense. I'm trying to put aside theory as well as overly simplistic analysis like 'a lower QB rating.' I wanted to look more precisely as to what are the common threads of an elite pass defense.

First, I defined an elite pass defense as any team that ranked in the top-4 in Football Outsiders' Pass Defense ranking. This considered various measurements along with adjusting it for strength of schedule.

I then looked at a bunch of various statistics and put them in a table. Here's a link to that table:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iFKLB5mubDG8DrnbU0Q06W209eYlORhfXeO0-CToJ-M/edit?usp=sharing

After compiling the data, I started to see one trend...there is a difference in the game from 2012 to present day versus 2011 and prior. So I split the data into 3 year ranges (2009-2011 and 2012-2014).

Here's some ideas I have seen:


- Since 2012, in order to become an elite pass defense you need to make more INT's. Prior to 2012, the league was slightly more about sacking the QB and keeping the completion % lower. I think this makes sense because it appears that QB's across the league are throwing shorter pass patterns and throwing the ball more often. So the completion % goes up, the sack rates go down and there are more opportunities to get an interception.


- If you're in a 4-3 a higher percentage of the interceptions on an elite pass defense will come from the corners than they would in a 3-4. I was a little surprised by this.


- It does appear that in post-2011, safety play and being able to make picks from the safety position is much more important. Even in the 4-3 where you may not get as many INT's from your safeties as you would in a 3-4...it is pretty apparent that your safeties had better be good enough in coverage and that puts the corners in a better position to make plays.


- If you look at the defensive rankings of the elite pass defenses against the #1 WR, #2 WR, #3 WR, TE and RB....the trend now (post-2011) is that you better be in the top-9 in defending the #1 WR and at least 2 of the 3 (#3 WR, TE or RB).

My thinking on this is that the #1 WR is too dangerous of a threat to not be able to defend and not being able to defend the #3 WR or TE or RB allows the QB to have too easy of a time making shorter, but productive throws.


- It's nice to defend the run, but it's really not that critical in defending the pass.


- Being able to cause fumbles has no real bearing on pass defense. You have to make picks these days.


- Nice to prevent TD passes, but not really a big thing when it comes to creating an elite pass defense.


- Starting field position is starting to become much more relevant to the elite pass defenses. Perhaps this is a sign of tackling (poor special teams tackling could lead to worst starting field position) or perhaps this indicates a lack of depth (poor special teams due to lack of depth at the DB position). Perhaps this is due to it becoming very difficult to stop today's offenses and essentially you need to get INT's and you need more opportunities to get INT's.



For the Cowboys, we are pretty much the opposite of these elite pass defenses and their characteristics. We only have 2 interceptions all year long and 1 of those was from Sean Lee (the other from Wilcox). Last season the Cowboys only had 4 interceptions from their CB's. They did have 5 interceptions from Wilcox and Church. It appears that the number you're looking for from your safeties is at least 6 and it's usually better to have them split evenly because it's a sign that both guys are threats in the passing game.


This year we are 27th against #1 WR, 9th against #2 WR, 32nd against #3 WR, 5th against TE's and 24th against RB's.

Last season we were 14th against #1 WR, 29th against #2 WR, 3rd against #3 WR, 11th against TE and 12th against the RB's.


So, looking at that we have a major drop-off in defending #1 WR's and we improved against the #2 WR's. But, those can work together because if your #1 WR is working well, then there's little reason to throw to the #2 WR and vice versa. The Cowboys essentially improved defending the #2 WR which does not greatly reflect an elite pass defense.

I think it's pretty obvious we miss Scandrick in that regard as well as when we see that the defense is the worst in the league in defending the #3 WR (or 'other WR').

It's nice to see the team defend the TE better. To me, this points to Wilcox not being the problem. He was often covering the TE's last season and did a solid job (11th). This season they've given B. Jones more responsibility while Wilcox is the #2 in command and they are now ranked 5th in defending the TE's.

The RB's are often the linebacker and SS responsibility. The team has been without Ro. McClain and he did have some TE responsibility last year. Of course, the gaffe against Spiller in the Saints game probably hurt the defense's ranking against the RB tremendously.


To me, this will be an interesting game to watch if Church is indeed out. I would assume that would move Jones to FS and Wilcox to SS. I think they are far more capable interception makers of the ball with far more range and that may help the corners quite a bit. And with McClain getting his sea legs back, perhaps the defense will start to defend the RB's better.






YR

Great work...............you are 100% correct about the INTs, there is probably no other stat more important for a defense (besides scoring obviously)

Just look at how the winning percentage of a QB goes down as the number of picks he throws goes up................not a coincidence.

 

[Galian Beast]

I was stunned not to see our first round draft pick Byron Jones not in the starting lineup. I wonder what the coaches will say when Byron Jones dominates at the free safety position as soon as they put him in there. What excuse will they have for not starting him this whole season.

Byron Jones has only 257 snaps. Compared to JJ Wilcox who has 437 snaps. Tyler Patmon has 243 snaps. They've rewarded these safeties who have not gotten turnovers with too much playing time. They rewarded Carr by bringing him back at an absolutely ridiculous rate when they knew he was not a good player.

You cut Carr after this year and you draft a corner in the first round.

Scandrick - Jones - Wilcox - Rookie CB

 

[Galian Beast]

We've only seen 31 snaps with Randy Gregory. That's barely enough for one game.

Can't forget that this guy is a rookie and is coming off an injury, but when you combine this guy at full steam with Hardy, Crawford, and Lawrence, we should hopefully see an evolution of our pass rush which will have an immediate impact on our pass defense.

 

[ConstantReboot]

I was stunned not to see our first round draft pick Byron Jones not in the starting lineup. I wonder what the coaches will say when Byron Jones dominates at the free safety position as soon as they put him in there. What excuse will they have for not starting him this whole season.

Byron Jones has only 257 snaps. Compared to JJ Wilcox who has 437 snaps. Tyler Patmon has 243 snaps. They've rewarded these safeties who have not gotten turnovers with too much playing time. They rewarded Carr by bringing him back at an absolutely ridiculous rate when they knew he was not a good player.

You cut Carr after this year and you draft a corner in the first round.

Scandrick - Jones - Wilcox - Rookie CB

Carr gets 10 million this year without even lifting a finger. He was rated as the 2nd worst corner last year in 2014. Yet got paid top 10 money for his position.

Now compare this to Murray's contract. Cowboys offered him 6 million per. year. Eagles up that offer by giving 2 million more per. year at 8 million.

If we had signed Murray to equal to what the Eagles gave him he would have stayed as a Cowboy. Which ultimately means that we would not have any drama with Randle and we probably would have a much more productive running game. Quite possibly Romo would not have gotten hurt either because we would have left Murray in there during that situation to either pass protect or run the ball. Either way, we would not have spread it out with an empty backfield on 1st down which was the case why Romo got injured. IF (thats a big IF) injury to Romo didn't occur we probably would not be in this predicament and our season would not be in danger of tanking.

Too bad that Murray left for a measly 2 million more per. year. Yet were stuck with Carr who gets paid 10 million despite his lack of productivity.

 

[Bay10]

Did #94 play Sunday?