News: SAEN: The case of the disappearing pass rush

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IRVING – The Dallas Cowboys’ disappearing pass rush is a big reason why the defense have allowed as many points (68) in the last six quarters as it did in the club’s first 3½ games.

Despite injuries, the Cowboys’ pass rush came out of the gate strong, recording 14 sacks to start the season.

But over the past six quarters, Dallas has zero sacks.

Coach Jason Garrett said the drought has a lot to do with the quarterbacks the club faced the last two weeks in losing 30-21 to Philip Rivers’ San Diego Chargers and 51-48 to Peyton Manning’s Denver Broncos.

“One of the challenges when you play against Peyton Manning and also a couple of weeks ago against Philip Rivers, those guys are really smart, they’re also quick getting the ball out of their hand,” Garrett said. “We saw that on tape. I think Peyton Manning is the least-sacked quarterback in the history of the NFL. He has a really good feel for where the pressure is, where his quick options are and how to get the ball out of his hand.

“So we tried to be a little more aggressive on the back end and play more man coverage and try to eliminate some of his quick options. But still he found the good answers. It’s hard on those guys to get to him. It’s been that way for a long, long time.”

But isn’t it fair to say that defensive end DeMarcus Ware is struggling?

“DeMarcus gets a lot of attention,” Garrett said. “In terms of getting to the quarterback, again I go back to the previous answer: Peyton Manning gets the ball out of his hand fairly quickly. He just does an outstanding job of that. He recognizes where you can go within the coverage really quickly. He gets the ball out and in a lot of ways doesn’t give those guys the chance to get started.

“I thought DeMarcus did a good job pressuring him in a couple of things. The interception that (Manning) throws to Mo Claiborne had a lot to do with DeMarcus kind of being in his face. He kind of couldn’t get into that throw as much as he would have liked. A couple of other throws, there was a third-down play they didn’t convert where DeMarcus had some presence in the pocket.

“So again the challenge was he was getting the ball out quickly. You got to keep coming and he showed up in the run game. He made some plays, a couple of tackles for losses. So you just got to keep playing. He’s not going to have five sacks a week. It’s impossible to think that. He does get attention. But he’s doing a lot of positive things for our team.”

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