When Mike McCarthy first took over as coach of the Dallas Cowboys back in 2020, he brought with him an old friend to be his defensive coordinator. McCarthy in 2005 was the offensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers, who had as their coach Mike Nolan, who had previously been the defensive coordinator in Baltimore, Washington and New York (both the Jets and Giants). In 2020, McCarthy returned the favor by making Nolan his DC in Dallas.
To put it kindly, the Nolan Era was a disaster. Nolan hadn't coordinated a defense since 2014, and it showed. Dallas checked in 23rd in yards allowed and 28th in points allowed, 23rd in yards per play and 25th in points per drive. The Cowboys ranked 23rd in EPA per play allowed -- 21st against the pass and 27th against the run.
Very simply, they did not do anything well. They were particularly awful, though, at defending the run: The 2.41 yards allowed before contact per carry they allowed ranked 32nd (i.e. last) in the NFL, according to TruMedia. They stopped only 15.1% of opponent rushing attempts at or behind the line of scrimmage, the 28th-ranked share in the league. They yielded 5-plus yards on 40.2% of carries, which ranked 31st. Even when stacking the box, they couldn't stop the run, allowing 4.5 yards per carry with 8-man boxes, which also ranked 31st in the league.
Nolan was fired at the end of the season, and replaced by Dan Quinn. Dallas still struggled to defend the run during Quinn's three-year tenure, but mostly that was relative to how good the team was against the pass. The Cowboys had arguably the league's best pass rush from 2021 through 2023, and they led the league in both turnovers forced and defensive scores. There were blow-up games here and there, and they definitely were run roughshod over by opponents at times (the Bills game in 2023 stands out), but it was consistently a very, very good defense.
Fast forward to 2024. After Quinn took the coaching job in Washington, the Cowboys brought in another old friend to be their defensive coordinator. But this time, it was an old friend of Jerry Jones: former Vikings coach (and one-time Cowboys defensive coordinator) Mike Zimmer. There were initially high hopes that Zimmer could replicate some of the successes of the Quinn era while also making the team more disciplined and sounder against the run.
We're four weeks into the season, and to put it kindly, that has not happened. Zimmer has been out of the league for two years, and it shows. His unit looks not unlike the one he helped coach under Deion Sanders at Colorado last season. The Cowboys have played two of the most inept offenses in the NFL (Browns and Giants) and yet still rank 25th in yards allowed and 27th in points allowed, 25th in yards per play and 26th in points per drive. The Cowboys check in 25th in EPA per play allowed -- 18th against the pass and dead last against the run as they prepare to face the Steelers on Sunday night.
Very simply, they do not do anything well. They are particularly awful, though, against the run. They are getting absolutely clobbered on the ground allowing 1.87 yards before contact per carry -- fourth-worst in the NFL. They've stopped the third-smallest share of runs at or behind the line of scrimmage (15%) and have yielded 5-plus yards on 37.8% of carries, which ranked 23rd. Even when stacking the box, they can't stop the run, allowing a league-worst 4.9 yards per carry. Even their vaunted pass rush has gone by the wayside, as they now rank just 15th in pressure rate and 21st in sack rate.
Worse yet, they have significant personnel issues. They lost a ton of pieces from last year's defense, with Leighton Vander Esch retiring and four additional starters leaving in free agency, while six more depth pieces did as well. Plus, they lost 2022 second-round pick Sam Williams to a torn ACL and DaRon Bland to a stress fracture during the preseason, and last week they saw both Demarcus Lawrence (Lisfranc) and Micah Parsons (ankle) sustain injuries that will knock them out for a while as well.
Taking a look at last year's defensive depth chart really hammers home the attrition on that side of the ball. Players crossed out in red are no longer with the team due to either retirement (Vander Esch), leaving in free agency or trade. Players crossed out in yellow are still on the team but currently dealing with multi-week injury absences ranging from out for the season (Williams) to out for who knows how long (Parsons).
Getting Trevon Diggs and DeMarvion Overshown back from their respective injuries helps, but they're now down eight of last season's top 11 defensive linemen, including all of their top five edge rushers. They're without both of last season's starting perimeter cornerbacks and one of the starting safeties and a starting linebacker.
They're counting on guys like Mazi Smith (who has played maybe one good game in his career to date), Linval Joseph, and Carlos Watkins up front. They've had to thrust rookies Marist Liufau and Caelen Carson into starting roles early in their careers, and now Carson is already dealing with an injury. Last week, they had to turn to Vikings castoff Andrew Booth Jr. and practice squad player Amani Oruwariye to play significant snaps at corner while Bland and Carson are out. With the injuries to Parsons and Lawrence, fellow rookie Marshawn Kneeland will now also be something like a full-time player for at least the next few weeks.
Add in the fact that most of the guys that we know are good players are, for the most part, not playing up to their respective standards, and it's honestly not that much of a surprise that this defense has fallen so far, so fast. I'd say that the bigger surprise is that the Cowboys chose to go in this direction in the first place; but that wouldn't be true. Turning back to the past for solutions in the present is a consistent theme with the Cowboys (see: Elliott, Ezekiel) and it almost never works. They shouldn't have expected anything different here.