Sturm: Revealing the Cowboys' defensive coverages: Part 1

Sturm: Revealing the Cowboys' defensive coverages: Part 1
By Bob Sturm

The following is a little project I have been working on during summer vacation. I have been asked over the years to help identify the Cowboys pass coverages and what they run as a base coverage. This, of course, evolves over the years, but if you ask five different Cowboys experts, you will generally get five different answers.

Now, it is important for us to recognize that no team runs the same coverage all day. That would be suicide at the NFL level against the offenses that are attacking them. You need uncertainty to help win a battle on defense in the league. You have to cause the quarterback some concern about "what you are in" on defense.

There is a lot to consider when looking at coverages, but before we go to California at the end of the week, I wanted to give you the raw data. I will do it by releasing this in four posts. One post for each four-game segment of the year. I went through every play of the 2015 defense and charted their coverages and cataloged them. At the end, I will give you the full season, but I think it is more useful to see what they ran on a game-to-game basis, since different offenses need to be attacked and defended in different ways. It would be foolish to think you should treat every opponent exactly the same.
So, here are the first four opponents. I tried to notate the circumstances and personnel issues for each game and then offer a summary of what we saw from their coverages.

Week 1 - New York Giants
No McClain, No Hardy -- Game 1 of 4 game suspensions. The defense really played well against the Giants. It was possibly the best game of the season for JJ Wilcox. Tyrone Crawford was excellent. Hardly gave up anything. Eli Manning repeatedly tried to attack Tyler Patmon with Odell Beckham from the slot, with limited success. Randy Gregory looked great against rookie Erick Flowers at LT, but rolled his ankle badly and was lost for months. One sack and no takeaways, however there were two "near takeaways" where JJ Wilcox broke up a pass that looked like a fumble.
Coverages: 34 pass plays - 13 in Cover 1, 8 in Cover 3, 2 in 2-Man and 11 in Cover 2 (Zone) - with 4 of those in Tampa 2 - all 3rd down. Defense played great, but still needed an amazing screw up by Tom Coughlin with clock management to survive and an equally amazing drive by Romo late in the game. Jeremy Mincey with a horrendous personal foul late. The offense was sputtering all night, but came to life to save the game.

WEEK 2 - AT PHILADELPHIA
No McClain, No Hardy - Game 2 of 4 game suspensions. No Gregory. This was an absolutely stunning defensive performance that focused on stopping DeMarco Murray and the Eagles outside zone runs. It also helped that once again the Eagles had very poor QB play as the Cowboys challenged them with a lot of Cover 1 man coverage to get Barry Church up against the run. Church was outstanding, but not nearly as great as Sean Lee who might have had his best game of his career. Lee was sitting on and attacking run play after run play to the edge. Terrell McClain and Jeremy Mincey were lost during this game. Davon Coleman dressed. Repeatedly, Bradford tried to challenge Tyler Patmon again in man coverage and repeatedly, Patmon was up for it. The team played the entire 62 snaps in primarily nickel defense.
Coverages: 42 pass plays - 22 in Cover 1, 1 in Cover 3, 1 in 2-Man, and 18 in Cover 2 with most all of those coming late when the Cowboys were sitting on their lead. This was also a game where the team received a blocked punt for a touchdown. Again, there were all sorts of good things from this game. Sean Lee had an end zone interception, JJ Wilcox had a center field interception, and the team had three takeaways, dominated 3rd downs (2 for 11), and allowed only 4.1 yards per play. So good.

WEEK 3 - ATLANTA
No McClain, No Hardy - Game 3 of 4 game suspensions. No Gregory, No Mincey, No Terrell McClain (put right on IR). This means that the defense was at a distinct personnel disadvantage for much of the game with issues like Ryan Russell starting in his first NFL action. Additionally, Davon Coleman and Ken Bishop played inside with Russell and Jack Crawford on the outside quite a bit. On top of all of this, Sean Lee was hurt pretty badly on the 1st play of the 3rd Quarter and wasn't the same for a long time after that. Cowboys forced 3 3-and-outs in the first 4 drives and did very well overall until a short field after a Weeden interception gave a TD and then a blitz here Devontae Freeman was matched up with Jack Crawford and that went very badly before halftime. However, the team was still up 28-17. The 2nd half featured 3 Falcons drives and all were long touchdown drives. The Cowboys tried Cover 1 against Julio Jones and he destroyed them and Tyler Patmon on this. Then, the running game of the Falcons showed no mercy in the 2nd half and the game went in the wrong direction very quickly. Almost no splash plays, no takeaways, and just a Sean Lee sack on a blitz on the first drive of the game. 438 yards against and nothing close to a stop in the entire 2nd half. This is where the safety play was pretty disappointing with Wilcox further and further from where they needed him.

Coverages: 41 pass plays - 14 in Cover 1, 15 in Cover 3, 7 in 2-Man, and 5 in Cover 2. The Cowboys are starting to see more and more pick plays and rub routes from playing so much man coverage and also teams are now trying to find Patmon to take advantage of the Orlando Scandrick injury. Overall, it sure seemed the worst performance of the year followed the best by just 7 days.

WEEK 4 - NEW ORLEANS
No McClain, No Hardy - Game 4 of a 4 Game suspension. No Gregory, Russell scratched. Cowboys started Gachkar at the SAM, but with the Saints keeping them in nickel, that wasn't vital. Yet, Lee was hurt on the 2nd drive of the game and Gachkar had to play the remainder of the game at WILL, with Damien Wilson now at SAM. Once again, the Cowboys did a pretty decent job of limiting the Saints offense early as most of the damage that Drew Brees was able to get was underneath as he paired his RBs with Cowboys backup LBs. Tyler Patmon and Gachkar both had near takeaways as Patmon dropped an INT and Gachkar's strip was ruled knee down on Mark Ingram. As the game went on, Brees was getting a better and better feel for things and he rolled up another 438 yards of total offense and would have won in regulation if not for a missed FG after a rather easy drive down the field that included finding Patmon in a Cover 1 and going after him.

David Irving made his debut and made some flash plays quickly. Corey White played for the first significant time. Jeff Heath started doing more and more at FS in certain sub packages. Wilber started playing nickel DE. Overtime was two very similar plays that included a pick play on a RB that took out Gachkar and then on the next play Damien Wilson lost CJ Spiller down the sideline for a wheel route TD where Barry Church showed he was no better at FS than Wilcox.

Coverages: 44 pass plays - 21 in Cover 1, 9 in Cover 3, 1 in 2-Man, and 13 in Cover 2 (with 2 instances of Tampa 2). Damien Wilson was pretty good at times against the run. Gachkar was pretty solid. DeMarcus Lawrence was great. Morris Claiborne fought hard in man coverage.

Through 4 Games - Coverages in 161 pass plays: 70 in Cover 1, 33 in Cover 3, 11 in 2-Man, and 47 in Cover 2.

Bob Sturm: Revealing the Cowboys' defensive coverages: Part 2
By Bob Sturm

Let's continue our series today with Part 2 of our comprehensive defensive study. To review: I have been asked over the years to help identify the Cowboys pass coverages and what they run as a base coverage. This, of course, evolves over the years, but if you ask five different Cowboys experts, you will generally get five different answers.

Now, it is important for us to recognize that no team runs the same coverage all day. That would be suicide at the NFL level against the offenses that are attacking them. You need uncertainty to help win a battle on defense in the league. You have to cause the QB some concern about "what you are in" on defense.

There is a lot to consider when looking at coverages, but before we go to California at the end of the week, I wanted to get you the raw data. I will do it by releasing this in four posts. One post for each four-game segment of the year. I went through every play of the 2015 defense and charted their coverages and cataloged them. At the end, I will give you the full season, but I think it is more useful to see what they ran on a game to game basis, since different offenses need to be attacked and defended in different ways. It would be foolish to think you should treat every opponent exactly the same.

So, here are the next four opponents. I tried to notate the circumstances and personnel issues for each game and then offer a summary of what we saw from their coverages:

WEEK 5 - NEW ENGLAND
No Gregory -- Otherwise this is the full defense as planned in training camp. Greg Hardy and Rolando McClain play their first action of the year and are used liberally to start. The game featured the Cowboys taking off a linemen to allow most of the game in the dime defense to feature a 3-2 in front of it with Hardy, Crawford, and Lawrence as the front with Lee and McClain behind it. The Cowboys rushed all five at times with this alignment and actually were quite impressive with 5 first half sacks. Hardy was very effective off the RDE spot. In the second half, the Cover 1 spread out attack ran into repeated pick plays and rub routes which put the Cowboys in space. In particular, 24 Claiborne was attacked repeatedly down the field and 42 Church underneath trying to deal with Dion Lewis. Also, Claiborne and the secondary were exposed with the edge contain on multiple run plays leading to issues. As the game went on and the offense proved hopeless, the Patriots started to figure out the Cowboys defense and put on a clinic starting with about five minutes left in the second quarter. It ended up being a bloodbath. Byron Jones was locked on Gronkowski all day and did a fine job against a much bigger opponent. J.J. Wilcox was again late on many plays and is now so deep that there is no chance he is going to jump a play in front of him. Is he being coached this way?

COVERAGES -- The Cowboys were in 32 pass situations against Tom Brady and basically ran Cover 1 all day with actually man coverage across the board, and then as many as three shallow robbers underneath trying to take away Brady's initial quick pass offense. Twenty times in Cover 1, 6 instances of Cover 3 (all in 1st half), and 6 of Cover 2.

Through 5 Games -- Coverages in 193 pass plays: 90 in Cover 1, 39 in Cover 3, 11 in 2-Man, and 53 in Cover 2.

WEEK 6 - AT NEW YORK
Gregory is back so pretty much all hands on deck for this second meeting with the Giants. They did scratch Tyler Patmon for Corey White as they try to figure out how to live without Orlando Scandrick on the fly. This game was one of the best defensive performances from the Cowboys all season, but it might be partially because the Giants were never too aggressive on offense. The Giants ran the ball, they completed a few big plays at big moments, but for the most part were nothing to write home about at all.

The issues started to creep up though that would be the theme of the season -- no takeaways, although they had a chance or two again (Byron Jones INT), and the offense sabotaging them to no end (and a KO return for a touchdown to Dwayne Harris). It was remarkable how badly the offense and Matt Cassel played in the second half and that means the defense would get more and more frustrated as they felt the game slipping away. They did great on total yardage (less than 300), great on third downs, and yet there was very little to show for it. Jack Crawford did well, Byron Jones was great. Rolando McClain started to look very poor. And the safety position had all sorts of mixing and matching with 27/42 broken up for Byron Jones high and than a small amount of Jeff Heath.

COVERAGES -- The Cowboys were in 28 pass situations against Eli Manning and it was almost completely Single-high safety to try to get that extra man down against the run and to flood the intermediate zones. 14 times in Cover 1, 11 times in Cover 3, and 3 times in Cover 2 zone.

Through 6 Games -- Coverages in 221 pass plays -- 104 in Cover 1, 50 in Cover 3, 11 in 2-Man, and 56 in Cover 2.

WEEK 7 - SEATTLE
All hands are available in this one. This is a pivotal home game in which the Cowboys are going to be an substantial underdog. Unfortunately, they did not play that way and their conservative offensive style and lack of any sort of playmaking made this a very frustrating day for the defense. They really battled their rear ends off and got really big performances from many. Greg Hardy might have played his best game for the Cowboys - he was great and also grabbed an interception on an exceptional play. Byron Jones was good again. DeMarcus Lawrence was very good. They did a wonderful job against the Seattle running game limiting them to 3.6 yards per carry all day. And Seattle's passing game was nothing special for the most part. The Cowboys defense played about as hard and as well as they possibly could. They even blocked a FG in the fourth Quarter to fight their tails off to the end when Seattle finally broke through.

It did appear that the Cowboys wanted to run a ton of single-high Cover 1 and Cover 3 on this day. Seattle started sniffing out the Cover 3 and were attacking it as you would expect Seattle would given that this is basically a coverage that they have created and perfected. The second quarter TD drive -- their only one of the day -- was a clinic on this with a lot of the attack centered on Claiborne and a little on Church underneath. Rolando McClain was horrendous and looked like he should be replaced throughout the day. Maybe hurt, but just substandard play all afternoon.

COVERAGES -- The Cowboys faced 30 pass situations against Russell Wilson and the Seahawks and were in a Cover 1 or Cover 3 on 29 of those 30. They had one Cover 2 late in the 1st half. Otherwise, Cover 1 -- 15, Cover 3 -- 14. So, it was a very vanilla day where the 2nd safety was up to stop Marshawn Lynch. It worked pretty well, too.

Season totals through 7 games -- Coverages in 251 pass plays: 119 in Cover 1 (47.4%), 64 in Cover 3 (25.4%), 11 in 2-Man (4.3%), and 57 in Cover 2 (22.7%).

WEEK 8 - PHILADELPHIA
A rematch of the week 2 battle where the Cowboys looked like world beaters on defense. They absolutely dominated the first game and then started this game with all sorts of effectiveness. This game was more of the same early, but for numbers reasons, the Cowboys pretty much stayed in Cover 1 for the majority of the game. When you play Cover 1 (usually with a LB as a robber), you make things pretty easy for an offense to work against. They know what you are doing and they have also watched the Saints and Patriots (Giants and Seahawks, too) just run rub routes over and over until someone gets free on a high percentage shallow cross. It happened a lot on this particular occasion and the Cowboys did not find success as the game wore on. Sam Bradford looked about as good as he ever has against the Cowboys in this game.

The Cowboys did great against third downs, but no takeaways and no real stops as the Eagles racked up 459 yards and 8 explosives (plays of 20 yards or more) which probably was the most the Cowboys gave up all season long.

Sean Lee was lost early in the third quarter with a concussion and the game went down hill from there. Andrew Gachkar and Anthony Hitchens were repeatedly attacked. Gachkar also looked to struggle with run fits on a few occasions. Wilcox with another poor angle on the winning touchdown. No real pass rush to speak of.

COVERAGES -- The Cowboys were in pass coverage on 41 occasions. It was mostly Cover 1 (28), with some Cover 3 mixed in on 3rd down (especially) - 9, and Cover 2 - 4.

Season totals through 8 games -- Coverages in 292 pass plays: 147 in Cover 1 (50.3%), 73 in Cover 3 (25%), 11 in 2-Man (3.7%), and 61 in Cover 2 (20.9%).

Tomorrow, we will see how the defense began to evolve into November in Part 3.