It still blows my mind how this team doesn't run a 3-4 defense

We signed Brett Urban a few years ago. That is the kind of DE we need to be targeting.
 
All of this wouldn matter would we just for once focus the DT position with a true 1 Tech. If we had a couple of decent run stuffers up front all of this wouldnt matter.
 
plasticman said:
The success of a 3-4 pass rush is predicated on the surprise element of that 4th pass rusher. He could come out of nowhere. The defense is looking to confuse the O-line and their blocking scheme.
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Defenses have also evolved to do this better out of a 4-3. You look at the best modern day 3-4 pass rushers and there is zero question about who is rushing and who is dropping into coverage. Pittsburgh is going to rush TJ Watt 99 times out of 100. The Cowboys are not going to move to a 3-4 and start dropping Micah Parsons into coverage a third of the time the way the would do an Anthony Spencer back in the day. It wasnt even uncommon for DWare to get 100+ coverage snaps a season.

A 4-3 crowd the LOS approach disguises who is rushing just as good if not better than the 3-4 looks do, plus you have better athletes on the field to get after the QB. This is a big reason why the 3-4 is starting to die out and is really more of a run defense front.
 
WRT Osa being a good 3-4 DE, the DEs you want in the classic 3-4 are not just big, they're also very tall or long. Think of Spears. You want your 3-4 DE to line head-up on the tackles and keep the tackle out of their chest, so they can defend 2 gaps. You don't want a DE who gets engulfed.

Osa is short, but he's got really long arms, so I wouldn't categorically write him off. But he gets engulfed right now as a one-gap player, and you'd be putting him in more of those bad situations as a two-gap player. He could probably make it work, cause good football players are good football players, but it's not his best fit.

The holy grail of the old school 3-4 was the "pressure five" - the DE who could cover two gaps in run defense and also get to the the QB on passing plays. Those dudes were unicorns. They were never big sack guys, because they had to run straight through a tackle on their pass rush, but they could give the defense pressure without blitzing and they freed up the rush LBs even further. Most of your good 3-4 defenses had one - off my head, I'm thinking of players like Justin Smith with the Niners, Aaron Smith with the Steelers, Richard Seymour, or Haloti Ngata.
 
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thunderpimp91 said:
Defenses have also evolved to do this better out of a 4-3. You look at the best modern day 3-4 pass rushers and there is zero question about who is rushing and who is dropping into coverage. Pittsburgh is going to rush TJ Watt 99 times out of 100. The Cowboys are not going to move to a 3-4 and start dropping Micah Parsons into coverage a third of the time the way the would do an Anthony Spencer back in the day. It wasnt even uncommon for DWare to get 100+ coverage snaps a season.

A 4-3 crowd the LOS approach disguises who is rushing just as good if not better than the 3-4 looks do, plus you have better athletes on the field to get after the QB. This is a big reason why the 3-4 is starting to die out and is really more of a run defense front.
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A couple of points here. 1)The 3-4 is not dying out, quite the opposite approximately 50% of teams use it as their base (and mainly the better DEFS i.e. Eagles, Ravens, Vikings etc) 2) If you can get 2 big-time OLB's it is very hard to predict who will do what. With someone like Parsons, he should not be rushing 99% of the time, but instead be more selective.

We will have to wait another year, but eventually I believe it will become clear this is the way to go, instead of this 'quick twitch' DEF that just simply is not built for play-off success. You have to stop the run first and players like Parsons and Ezeiruaku would thrive in a 3-4. We need someone to get in Jerry's ear and convince him about this.
 
Majic said:
A couple of points here. 1)The 3-4 is not dying out, quite the opposite approximately 50% of teams use it as their base (and mainly the better DEFS i.e. Eagles, Ravens, Vikings etc) 2) If you can get 2 big-time OLB's it is very hard to predict who will do what. With someone like Parsons, he should not be rushing 99% of the time, but instead be more selective.

We will have to wait another year, but eventually I believe it will become clear this is the way to go, instead of this 'quick twitch' DEF that just simply is not built for play-off success. You have to stop the run first and players like Parsons and Ezeiruaku would thrive in a 3-4. We need someone to get in Jerry's ear and convince him about this.
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I say the 3-4 is dying out because even teams that run the 3-4 are using it less and less as 5 db formations have dominated snap counts. Even the 4-3 is dying out to some extent, but teams have still mimicked the 3rd LB in those 5db sets with other players. Also not sure that I would consider Philly or Minnesota a 3-4 defense...especially Philly. I only really see a few true 3-4 teams in the league right now....Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Carolina, Tampa....I might be missing a few? Denver, but they run a few different fronts, I think Minnesota is in a similar situation.
 
atlantacowboy said:
DE's in a 3-4 aren't the guys racking up the sacks. It's the OLBs that make the pass rush in that defense. The point of the poster was that our DT's are the right size for 3-4 DE's. Aside from the 7th rounder, we don't have a fat boy run stuffer.
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It's why Bruce Smith and JJ Watts were special..........
 
thunderpimp91 said:
I say the 3-4 is dying out because even teams that run the 3-4 are using it less and less as 5 db formations have dominated snap counts. Even the 4-3 is dying out to some extent, but teams have still mimicked the 3rd LB in those 5db sets with other players. Also not sure that I would consider Philly or Minnesota a 3-4 defense...especially Philly. I only really see a few true 3-4 teams in the league right now....Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Carolina, Tampa....I might be missing a few? Denver, but they run a few different fronts, I think Minnesota is in a similar situation.
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I know we talked about this already but again, some or most of the best run defending teams runs a base 3-4 defense. I know you and a few others have the 3-4 designed to stop the run. Well, if that's true, why does it appear some are diluting its relevancy?
 
Hawkeye0202 said:
It's why Bruce Smith and JJ Watts were special..........
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The Bills ran a 4-3 defense during the Smith era. He was huge for his era at DE. JJ Watt is a totally different kind of player. He was always projected as a 3-4 OLB. One of the reasons given for drafting Taco over him was that he didn't have prototypical size for a 4-3 DE.
 
beware_d-ware said:
The old school Parcells 3-4 died off when spread offenses made 11 base personnel the norm. It forced one of the inside backers off the field, and moved DLs between gaps for better pass rushing rather than playing them head-up for better gap control. Some teams still use 3-4'ish fronts and concepts, but no one runs the pure "350 lb nose tackle", "300 lb picket fence DE" type defense any more.

The defense that I'm surprised hasn't caught on more is the 5-1 "penny". The McVay style mid-zone rushing attack rules the NFL right now, and Belichick shut it down in the Super Bowl by just deploying heavy fronts and mugging all the gaps they wanted to cut back in. But he still kept 2 deep safeties to limit big passing plays. The NFL is a copycat league, so I really expected that look to show up more afterwards. But it's really just remained a wrinkle.
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this is a really informative post, and i learned quite a bit. thanks
 
Hawkeye0202 said:
I know we talked about this already but again, some or most of the best run defending teams runs a base 3-4 defense. I know you and a few others have the 3-4 designed to stop the run. Well, if that's true, why does it appear some are diluting its relevancy?
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From my perspective it really comes down to two reason....

1) A higher importance put on pass defense around the league...this will be an interesting one to watch though as the run game seems to be back in a big way. Could we see more 3-4 looks for this reason??? The league tends to go in cycles so its very possible.
2) The higher percentage of nickel / other 5-6 DB defenses. Its just a lot easier to transition from a base defense to your nickle/dime packages from a 4-3. The difference is typically just subbing out a LB for another CB....maybe getting you 1T off the field in certain packages. Those 3-4 guys up front either need to be extremely versatile or you have to consistently be subbing guys in/out, which has become more of an issue as offensive tempos have picked up over the last 10 years or so. With the 3-4 when going to nickel really every single player on your front seven is either being subbed out or changing positions. NT off the field, DEs bump down to DTs, OLBs bump to DEs, MLBs split and work in more traditional 4-3 MLB/WLB roles.
 
thunderpimp91 said:
From my perspective it really comes down to two reason....

1) A higher importance put on pass defense around the league...this will be an interesting one to watch though as the run game seems to be back in a big way. Could we see more 3-4 looks for this reason??? The league tends to go in cycles so its very possible.
2) The higher percentage of nickel / other 5-6 DB defenses. Its just a lot easier to transition from a base defense to your nickle/dime packages from a 4-3. The difference is typically just subbing out a LB for another CB....maybe getting you 1T off the field in certain packages. Those 3-4 guys up front either need to be extremely versatile or you have to consistently be subbing guys in/out, which has become more of an issue as offensive tempos have picked up over the last 10 years or so. With the 3-4 when going to nickel really every single player on your front seven is either being subbed out or changing positions. NT off the field, DEs bump down to DTs, OLBs bump to DEs, MLBs split and work in more traditional 4-3 MLB/WLB roles.
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Which of these is closer to what Eberflus runs or ran as DC for the Colts or maybe a better question is which one we have currently have best personnel to run,
 
Hawkeye0202 said:
Which of these is closer to what Eberflus runs or ran as DC for the Colts or maybe a better question is which one we have currently have best personnel to run,
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Eberflus runs a 4-3, but he been known to show some 3-4 fronts at times. I would love to see them mix some 3-4 looks in certain situations, but I'm also not sure if they really have the interior players to pull it off.

If someone can step up and play the nose effectively you might be able to get away with having Solomon Thomas and OSA as 3-4 DEs if its a very limited basis? I don't think it should be a full base defense, but a package with Fowler/Parsons at OLB and Murray/Overshown on the inside would be very interesting if/when Overshown is healthy again.

I really hope we see some variety in packages from Eberflus this year. I'm a little hesitant to say they have a great starting 11 on defense, but they certainly have some unique players and strong depth at certain positions to be creative with.
 
Zekeats said:
They will still put out 3 guys who weigh less than 280 lbs and one who looks like he barely tips the scale at 300. That will never stop the run and we will continue to get gashed up the middle. If you stack 3 300lb+ interior lineman and have Micah and the 2nd rounder on the outside and Murray and Overshown in the middle this team would not only stop the run but it would allow all that speed to shine and make plays. It's a joke, the worst offseason move this team made was resigning a shrimp at DT to 20+ million a year.
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You are totally correct. Williams, The Podcaster, Donovan E and Fowler are all really OLBs. Then again this is the Cowboys
 
Zekeats said:
They will still put out 3 guys who weigh less than 280 lbs and one who looks like he barely tips the scale at 300. That will never stop the run and we will continue to get gashed up the middle. If you stack 3 300lb+ interior lineman and have Micah and the 2nd rounder on the outside and Murray and Overshown in the middle this team would not only stop the run but it would allow all that speed to shine and make plays. It's a joke, the worst offseason move this team made was resigning a shrimp at DT to 20+ million a year.
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The reason Dallas can't stop the run is Overshown can't stay healthy and they don't value drafting pedigree at MLB.
They need another beefy DT and the CBs are weak in run support. Dallas CBs suck at tackling.
 
gtb1943 said:
no one spreads more hate in their posts than you do
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He is one of the sheep that follows the team. He actually believe in the way the team is run. He will defend Jerry and Dak. Two of the biggest problems with the team.
 
Zekeats said:
They will still put out 3 guys who weigh less than 280 lbs and one who looks like he barely tips the scale at 300. That will never stop the run and we will continue to get gashed up the middle. If you stack 3 300lb+ interior lineman and have Micah and the 2nd rounder on the outside and Murray and Overshown in the middle this team would not only stop the run but it would allow all that speed to shine and make plays. It's a joke, the worst offseason move this team made was resigning a shrimp at DT to 20+ million a year.
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3-4 defenses SUCK.

Why would you want that type of defense?
 
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