Eberflus Report Wk6 - Defenseless Effort
Rico Dowdle and company had their way against Cowboys in a truly demoralizing way.
Wednesday is the day for us to evaluate the defense in this space. We now call it the “Eberflus Report.” Here we want to isolate the defense and try to look at the game purely from their perspective. What did they try to do against the threats from the opponent and how successful were they in carrying that out? We will also check in the tactical and strategic plot-lines of the game and get a feel for how well it worked out for that side of the ball. For those of you new here speak up if you don’t understand a concept and we will explain.
Here we go. Our objectives today will be:
Overall Defensive Evaluation - It was bad.
All Trends are pointing down for this group.
Historical days from scrimmage vs Dallas.
Identifying the Run Defense busts.
Film Study, Splash Plays and Playing Time
OVERALL DEFENSIVE EVALUATION
It has been asked in more than one place recently if the Cowboys are a sleeper team in 2025 because the offense is so powerful and the QB play has been so impressive.
My friends at Check the Mic with Steve Palazzolo & Sam Monson say it every week. If the Cowboys could somehow just have a league-average defense – not even a good one, just dead-bang average – how good could the Cowboys be as a team this season?
Unfortunately, in the words of Corey Seager, “I guess we’ll never know.”
The Cowboys defense is quickly approaching the status of hopeless and I usually don’t get that defeated by something in mid-October because we usually owe it to a team to let them diagnose and address their own issues. The season is a journey and it often takes a while to get to where you want to be. Often, we expect an evolution from where you start to what you become as the team looks for cures and then addresses them to fix what is wrong.
Hopeless is not an option because games are coming fast and furious. Changes must be made and solutions must be found.
But, the 2025 Cowboys seem to be going backwards.
After three weeks, we started to look at the results and wondered if the Cowboys had really done a nice job at improving their run defense. They were 17th in the league and allowing less than 110 yards per game on the ground and allowing just 3.7 per attempt. That was excellent and very much league-average. Yes, the pass defense was an issue, but maybe that was more about health of corners and what if the run defense stays where it was after the Chicago game and the pass defense could quickly escalate as DaRon Bland and Trevon Diggs get back to healthy?
Since that day, the Cowboys have allowed 164 to Green Bay, 144 to the Jets, and 216 to the Panthers. Dallas has allowed 524 yards rushing against to the tune of 5.5 per attempt. It was very much not fixed. And now, it looks like everything is broken.
If you are reading this today, I thank you. But, you might be a sicko to have the patience for the weekly evaluation of the Cowboys defense. This one has almost no positivity or bright side to it. They are a bad defense and it seems to not have bright spots right now. If forced to pick a defensive player who is playing well right now, I am not sure I can give you one. We have plenty of hope for Donovan Ezeiruaku and James Houston as pieces, but its not like they are able to get much accomplished right now. The whole thing looks broken and the only hope right now seems to be to stop playing games and start over in the spring.
But, we are so far away from that right now.
So, today, we are going to look at a brutally embarrassing defensive effort at Carolina where the Cowboys allowed Rico Dowdle into the record books. We detailed that plenty on Monday, but I did want to show you the list of players he joins below for “all-time performances against the Cowboys for yards from scrimmage.”