This is eventually...and mostly...about the Dallas Cowboys. But one quick anectdote to kick this epic off:
Over a year ago (05/11/2018), I related a story of how my family was endowed with a litter of kittens orphaned by a stray that had taken up residence underneath my next-door neighbors tool shed. If you are not familiar with the tale, you can get caught up here:
A Cat Lady Starter-Kit
Of the original 6 kittens, we kept one female; my favorite, Jinx, named after the GI Joe ninja character owing to her tendency to crawl up my leg and to my shoulder the moment I walked into the house from work each evening…like a little ninja. A little over a year into her life, we are sporadically treated to a period of 3 to 5 days of constant, unrelenting and incessant meowing (morning, afternoon, evening, and all night). New to the cat experience of the unfixed variety, I was not aware of how awkward this period of time can be.
If you have never owned a female cat, you might be a little lost at this juncture, so I’ll do my best to put that awkwardness into words: it begins with the meowing. It’s not your standard every day type of meow. There is a certain plaintiff pleading desperation to it. Imagine a meow with a little Janis Joplin or Adele to it; gravelly, husky, throaty. During this phase, if you don’t hear it, she’s sleeping….and, mind you, she does not sleep on our schedule.
Then you will notice that as you go to stroke her head, she will stand up on her hindfeet to meet your hand halfway to her and sinuously contort her whole body into your petting, as if she is petting your hand right back. If you stick around to pet her beyond that, things will escalate to
real extra
real fast.
What started as an innocent and harmless show of affection, will quickly morph into a proposition….and Jinx is not picky about gender or species. I don’t think she exactly knows what is supposed to happen next but there is no question she intuits something beyond petting should….and she really needs you to get to that something quick, fast and in a hurry.
She will turn her body around facing away from you. She will hunker her upper body down, digging in with her front paws, presumably for leverage. Considerately, she will hike her tail up to the side placing it out of the way, and elevates her posterior ever-so-slightly, aiming her “self-titled” body part right at you, periodically looking back and meowing as if to say, “Get on with it already!”
And just about every time (because no one, and I mean no one, enjoys my humor more than me) I’ll respond, “You are meowing up the wrong beanstalk, Pitty.”
If you guessed this is really about scheme fit, well done….
On paper, the Cowboys appear to be stacked and brimming with young and (notably) fast talent. But perhaps what should be more alarming to 31 other teams is just how well all the pieces fit together and in line with what these offensive and defensive coaches want to accomplish in every game. Moore has a bevy of weapons with both speed and power to push the ball down the field. Marinelli/Richard have one of the best collections of young and rangy talent they have ever had. It is the culmination of years of solid to great drafting, smart trades and free agent acquisition, and great deep scouting to add the occasional UDFA.
The offense wants to control the clock and establish a passing game through their ground game, occasionally testing the opposition deep off playaction…or at least, that has been the game plan since 2014. Clearly, Moore may have different ideas on how to employ what should be for the most part the same playbook. Moore will be more creative in how the offense is window-dressed, adding more pre-snap motion and formation shifts, but ultimately this will still be an Attacking Air-Coryell offense, with a smattering of Option/college concepts sprinkled in to exercise Dak’s strength as a potential runner and keep the opposing defenses honest and guessing.
Unique to this year is the fact that from the very beginning of the season the Cowboys will have a very nice collection of receivers capable of stretching opposing defenses. In years past, the Cowboys have had decent to great receivers, but most (if not all) lacked the requisite speed that demands respect on the deep-outside. If a defense doesn’t fear a QB’s ability to push the ball deep with their passing game, they tend to sit in single-high; 1 safety deep, with the majority of the team crowding the box to stop the run. If a defense respects your receivers speed and Dak is able to hurt teams this way early, slowly but surely that second safety will have to crawl back out of the box and split the deep-field with his cohort-Safety. This, of course, leads to more room for Zeke, Pollard and Dak (both as a passer and a runner) to operate.
Amari, Gallup, Cobb, Austin, and Devin Smith are among the fastest players on the team currently and perhaps the fastest collection of receivers the franchise has ever had. Whereas in the past the Cowboys may have had one player that could consistently beat single coverage deep, now they are short on receivers who can’t. This is key. Whereas before the opposition could take that one speedster away, now they have to account for every single one of them. And thus the Cowboys can now either use the run to setup the pass or use the pass to setup the run…something I would not be surprised to see more of from Moore dependent on the strengths of the opposing defense they face in a given week.
The defense is an (effort based) Attacking One-Gap. Recently, Demarcus Lawrence offered a succinct explanation of what that means:
“We play one-gap defense. A one-gap defense means we all got one job to do. Focus on your alignment, assignment, key technique. Do your job and everything else fits. So the runner or the quarterback shouldn’t be able to go nowhere. We stop the run on the way to the quarterback. It’s all about our intensity, get-off. We’re stopping the run on the way to the quarterback. If the quarterback keeps it, we kill him too. It’s really about just focusing on these little steps over and over. It’s E.D.D.’s (Every Day Drills). It translates to the game, and voila, that’s what you get.”
Marinelli gives each and every defender up front along with the linebackers one job and one island to defend with their football playing lives. When executed properly, the front 6/7 will hit the gaps like interlaced fingers, allowing nothing to escape, effectively choking-out the opposition.
Meanwhile, Kris “Killer” Richard in his second year appears to have put together the best iteration of a Dallas secondary we have seen in these parts since Darren Woodson prowled the back greens. As has been discussed ad nauseum, Kris looks for long and rangy defenders. Obviously, he likes his guys to have speed, but he places more of a premium on mentality and the ability to use good technique.
The thinking here is very simple: As a corner or defensive back you don’t necessarily have to be able to run with the receiver to shut him down. You only need to throw off his and the QB’s timing with good jams within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage and limit (if not completely close) the window the QB must throw through…obviously, that’s where length comes in handy.
The relationship between the defensive line/linebackers and secondary is simple: The longer the secondary can clog up windows, the longer the defensive line has to get to the opposing QB. The faster the defensive line gets to the QB, the less time the secondary has to run with the receivers. It is a symbiotic relationship.
If the offense can maintain long drives throughout the game and the defense can consistently serve up 3 & outs, the oppositions defense over time will become exhausted, which should lead to more scoring opportunities for the offense. If the Cowboys offense can capitalize and score in bunches, this puts pressure on the opposing offense to try and play catch up, which should lead to more sack/turnover opportunities for the defense. In short, this is the ideal scenario the Cowboys try to create in every contest.
We will all have to see it to truly believe it, but for the time being let’s exercise that atrophied muscle we haven’t used since our childhood:
Our….
(What follows is a closer inspection of each position group, which I will put in the responses below. Please hold your responses until you see my typical ender: "Thoughts?")
