The Dallas Cowboys having a bad defense through three games is easily the storyline of this early season for first-year head coach Brian Schottenheimer to navigate. The current situation of coming off a loss to defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus’ former team the Bears, and now prepping for a Packers team that features former Cowboy Micah Parsons on defense, has certainly not helped the issue go away whatsoever. They say everything is bigger in Texas, and always is with the Dallas Cowboys, and the way this defense has given
up a slew of big plays and points at will is a big deal right now.
The Cowboys defensive issues may feel familiar in some of the same ways all of their other recent defensive coordinators had their struggles at times. When the level of familiarity is closest to Mike Nolan’s one-and-done year in 2020 though, also working under a first year HC in Mike McCarthy, the Cowboys defense is flat out tough to watch on gameday right now. Any of the plays they made late in the second half against the Eagles in week one, after already allowing 21 points on three straight touchdown drives to start the game, feels like ages ago compared to their even bigger struggles against the Giants and Bears.
Be it Mike Nolan, Dan Quinn, Mike Zimmer, or now Eberflus, the Cowboys have had a lot of change in philosophies defensively. The two most recent coordinators in Quinn and Zimmer had their differences in how to play defense aggressively, create negative plays, take the ball away, and make plays which get opposing offenses off schedule. Quinn’s point of emphasis to achieve this was through the front seven, wanting to attack the quarterback first and foremost. Zimmer’s defense was less about adding extra numbers to the rush, but trusting his secondary with patented man coverage to make plays on the ball.
Eberflus’ defense has done none of these things. They have no discernable identity or starters playing well enough right now to really be schemed against by other offenses. Last Sunday, they became the first opponent playing against Bears QB Caleb Williams to not get home with at least one sack versus the second-year passer. They also gave up passing touchdowns of 35 and 65 yards in the first quarter, a week removed from allowing 29, 32, and 48 yard touchdowns against Russell Wilson and the Giants. The only other Giants touchdown this season is a 13 yard rush, and Wilson is now benched. The eye test does show that the Cowboys have been improved against the run between the tackles, but they still conceded 158 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns to the Eagles.
There is just nothing for this defense to hang it’s hat on right now, and it has Cowboys fans back in the feeling of hopelessness about this team, even after some initial good feelings being built by the compete they showed in Philadelphia and the way they pulled out a win at home against New York. The reason for this strong reaction against Eberflus’ defense, going beyond the obvious struggles they’ve had, may actually be more familiar to this fanbase despite this being year one of yet another new scheme. The timing of it also comes at the same time Dallas has finally made progress addressing this longstanding issue on the other side of the ball, which is classic Cowboys when it comes to figuring things out in one phase of the game, but paying too high a cost in another to sink their chances at contending. For example, see the Cowboys “needing” to ship away Micah Parsons in order to finally upgrade at defensive tackle with Kenny Clark, and now having a nonexistent pass rush.
This fundamental issue with Eberflus’ defense has been the static nature of it. Returning to Dallas for his second stint coaching on defense with the Cowboys, it seems Eberflus has arrived at the wrong time to bring his passive zone defense – not having the personnel for it aside for the moment. The Cowboys own offense is just now getting away from being described in a lot of these same ways, and struggling because of it. Using static formations without pre-snap motion, running unimaginative routes that don’t stress defenses in any of the ways the league’s best do, and not having creative ways to get the ball to their best players were constant issues dating all the way back through the Jason Garrett era and continued under Mike McCarthy.
This was so much of a problem that one of the main selling points for hiring Brian Schottenheimer, even though he was OC under McCarthy, was that he would have enough of a different approach to the offense that modernized it with these motions, route concepts, and a better run game. Through three games, Schottenheimer’s offense has achieved all of these things at various times, but it hasn’t been able to have the impact on the game it should thanks to the defense. In what became an afterthought before the afternoon was even over in Chicago, the Cowboys came out trying to control the tempo of the game and keep Williams and Ben Johnson’s offense on the sideline, but Javontae Williams’ fumble and back-to-back quick scores by the Bears wrecked this game plan.
The Cowboys defensive issues may very well be primarily about the players they don’t have out there, mainly DaRon Bland, and for last week Jadeveon Clowney, who expects to make his debut this Sunday night against the Packers. If this was fully the case though, there would be more optimism around the Cowboys just needing to get healthy on defense. This isn’t the case because Eberflus has not even put the players he does have available in the best positions to make plays.
Sam Williams and Dante Fowler are being used as nearly every-down defensive ends, and aren’t being moved around to change their point of attack and work against slower guards or centers. Malik Hooker and Donovan Wilson are being asked to play far too many coverage snaps. Marist Liufau hasn’t played more than 13.6% of the team’s defensive snaps in any game this season, even with Jack Sanborn and Kenneth Murray also giving up big plays in zone. Trevon Diggs has never been, and likely never will be, a plus cover player in zone, although unfortunately his few-and-far-between man reps haven’t been too much better. The Cowboys defense not only needs new players on the field, several of which are on the way just from their own injury list, they likely need an entirely new approach to be effective. The communication issues paired with players just naturally being out of position has given them no chance to stop big plays on any regular basis.
This new issue for the Cowboys defense, but old problem overall for this organization when it comes to the product on the field, has created a very early crossroads in Schottenheimer’s tenure. Just like McCarthy’s time before him was marked by having a one-and-done defensive coordinator in his first season, Schottenheimer must find a way to handle a slightly different dynamic with Eberflus. Nolan was a close to the vest hire for McCarthy, and moving on from him for Quinn showed a stronger commitment to actually fielding a better defense, even if the dynamic between McCarthy and a former head coach himself in Quinn wasn’t always perfect. Eberflus has already been in the good favor of the Cowboys front office thanks to his previous time as linebackers coach, and Schottenheimer himself was seen as close to a front office hire as possible for Jerry and Stephen Jones.
Schottenheimer has not pulled punches when it comes to publicly saying he’s in control and will do things his way, and has already shown this in a positive way scheming the offense, but how much he can do about his team’s porous defense is a major concern. The glimpses of Schotty’s offense being good enough for the Cowboys to play the style that’s led to winning seasons and playoff appearances under Prescott have been there, but the defense is nowhere close to helping this team achieve those goals. The Cowboys may not have made their financial commitment to Parsons before the season, but they do have a lot of former first-round picks stacked up along with recent draft picks of their own, and paid Bland who expects to return for this game. The Cowboys have every reason to expect this defense to at least be better enough to the point of giving them a chance to win, which they didn’t do against the Bears, and aren’t exactly expected to do against the Packers.
The Cowboys offense not having CeeDee Lamb will change the approach on offense for this game, but the goal of controlling the clock with their run game and distributing the ball to George Pickens, KaVontae Turpin, and Jake Ferguson should stay the same.
The goals for the Cowboys defense are a lot harder to define right now when line one is to play a different scheme entirely, something Eberflus has not shown any willingness to do. If Eberflus gets the same leash that past offensive-minded coaches with these same philosophies had in Dallas, the Cowboys cycle of wasting the primes of top players all over the field is destined to continue.
The Cowboys have bounced back from early season defensive struggles to field competitive teams before, but this time feels different because fans have seen where sticking with the same base calls and approach on offense goes for years on end. The same approach to defense is now getting the same results, and patience won’t be as high to stick with Eberflus’ approach.
On a staff with so many up and coming young coaches, Eberflus was supposed to be a steady presence with head coaching experience to take a lot of pressure off Schottenheimer in these ways with full control over the defense. Just three games in, he’s become the face of what can become a lost season in only a matter of weeks for these 2025 Cowboys, and the crux of the first tumultuous moment of Schottenheimer’s time as head coach.
