DQ Report, Week 8 - Unleashing the blitzes

The Cowboys have dialed up more blitzes in the last two games than ever before in '23.

Yesterday, we spent a lot of words asking the question, “what did the San Francisco game do to force the offense to change its ways?”

We discovered there were some significant adjustments to the philosophical sliders on the board. The Cowboys offense appears to be a different version of itself as we head into November.

Today, let’s wander down that same path with the defense.

I know that most of us are not nearly as concerned about the tough day the defense had in San Francisco and are not shocked they have bounced back with two impressive performances against both of the Los Angeles teams.

Dallas has a very good defense. We perhaps get carried away with “how good” because they certainly got their butts beat pretty soundly against the 49ers. It seems rather unlikely that generational defenses cave in for 42 points, so let’s get back to simply being the best version of yourself for 2023 and let the history books take care of themselves.

Without Trevon Diggs, and now with linebacker absences, how would Dan Quinn move the sliders up and down on his board to get the right defensive presence as the weather begins to turn?

He is bringing the heat.

The blitz, formerly a rarely used weapon in both Dallas and in the Seattle Cover 3, has emerged this season in Dallas’ defense. There is much to say here about the blitz, so let me try to unpeel this onion.

First, the NFL is seeing a massive uptick around the league in defensive excellence. Scoring is down, big plays are down, and the offensive NFL is normalizing (despite Miami hanging 70 on Denver) into a spot where defenses seem to have answers.

For a bit, it was a lot of coverage looks that were designed to slow down these things and that still needs to be considered. All of the split-safety coverages around the league – except in Dallas – is keeping everything in front of them and being willing to lose a man to stop the run to gain a man to stop the explosive pass. It makes intuitive sense in the era of Patrick Mahomes and Mike McDaniel/Tyreek Hill.

But, now, blitzing is up around the league. Way up. Some teams are turning it all the way past 50% which is crazy in the NFL. Minnesota right now blitzes 53% of the time with Brian Flores and Wink Martindale in New York is at 47%, as he is the football son of Rex Ryan, for sure.

In Dallas, Rod Marinelli hated the blitz. He was always upset at how that would weaken zone coverages. They were often in the bottom five teams in the NFL and the Cowboys would play passive “bend but don’t break” defenses.

Not anymore. I want you to take a look at this 5-year blitz rate average with the Cowboys defense vs the NFL averages.

As you can see, Dallas was always way below the lines of average and now are above the line. Again, we can’t tell if this is a move to compensate for injuries, a lesson learned in San Francisco, an agreement with league trends, or just something they thought would work well against the Los Angeles teams.