Cowboys Pregame Three Thoughts: Wk 12
Dallas travels to meet back up with plenty of old friends in Washington for a divisional battle the home side needs.
Dan Quinn is back in our lives this weekend, and to be fair, I miss him. He has always seemed to be a guy who understands—most likely because Pete Carroll teaches this course like few others ever have—that football works well if the players want to fight for you.
There have been very few coaches in Dallas—since Jimmy Johnson—who have been able to command a room without threatening a hammer. But Quinn has always had the guys ready to fight for him and his causes.
Now, don’t be confused; that doesn’t mean he is a flawless coach, and it doesn’t mean he will win it all someday. But he was a miracle finish away from already winning his Super Bowl, and more importantly to readers of this missive, we had great times together.
I won’t fully recap the case against Dan Quinn, but I did in this piece back in May:
The “good” was really, really good.
During the three years (2021-2023) with Dan Quinn as coordinator, Dallas Ranked:
No. 1 in the NFL in Takeaways with 93.
No. 1 in the NFL in Defensive Touchdowns with 15.
No. 2 in the NFL in sacks per attempt at 8.4%.
No. 2 in the NFL in Defensive EPA.
No. 5 in the NFL in PPG Allowed with 19.9.
Then, there was the bad that went with it:
The 51 games don’t matter that much because those three playoff games that do.
2021 Wildcard home loss to San Francisco. In that game, Quinn’s defense generated 0 sacks and 1 takeaway.
2022 Divisional loss at San Francisco. In that game, the defense generated 2 1st quarter sacks and 0 takeaways.
2023 Wildcard home loss to Green Bay. In this famous game, the Cowboys defense managed 0 sacks and 0 takeaways.
Honestly, the defense alone was a disaster in the Green Bay game and also in the games against the "good teams" in 2023, which has many thinking DQ's defense was only strong against teams that stink. They played the 49ers (1 sack, 1 takeaway), Bills (1 sack, 0 takeaways), Dolphins (1 sack, 0 takeaways), and Packers (0 sacks, 0 takeaways) and were quickly exposed because they were playing a tiny defense that was throttled.
So, without even pointing out how badly they were destroyed against the run with their tiny defense, we can also look at how the sacks and takeaways dried up in those matchups. The correlation is pretty obvious, of course. If you cannot stop the run, why would you enjoy the benefits of an overwhelming pass rush?
Now, the counter, I suppose, is that the problems haven’t changed much on the Dallas defense without him. But this defense is absolutely Dan Quinn’s build, and without using resources to change it—with the many resources that ended up being allocated to the OL—they would probably find that Mike Zimmer didn’t have magic tricks like he might have hoped.
The Cowboys' defense needs plenty of work, and now Dan Quinn is the toast of a city that might be ready to win moving forward in Washington. The crazy thing there is that his defense in Washington can’t really stop the run, either.
It is a great story, but in my opinion, there is very little reason to wonder if Dallas let the next great head coach out of their facility last January.