The Morning After Wk 1: Zimmer's Debut

The trip to Cleveland served as a reminder - Cowboys are still a very good team.

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Sometimes, the room doesn’t read a situation very well.

These last nine months, you have been hearing the entire room filled with football enthusiasts assure you that the Cowboys have fallen off. That they are “taking a step back” and that they are “on their way down.” The team did not do enough in the offseason and therefore, since they didn’t win the offseason, they surely have no chance during the regular season.

But what if the entire room is wrong? Could “NFL groupthink” lead us astray? Could league projections undervalue a 12-win team because of the “one hour of darkness” against the Packers in the wild card game?

People are tired of waiting for the Cowboys to figure the playoffs out and have moved on to the next trendy up-and-comer. They are not anyone’s darling and perhaps are now actually a bit underrated. If Sunday in Cleveland demonstrates anything, it’s that the Dallas Cowboys are still going to be a factor in 2024.

Because they beat Cleveland in a very impressive way in Week 1, that should serve as a reminder to those of us who closely follow this team that they are probably better than we have given them credit for being.

In other words, to the dismay of those who were hoping for a significant step backward, as long as Dallas has CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons, Dak Prescott, DeMarcus Lawrence, and Zack Martin, they are going to be pretty good. If they then add some new standouts like perhaps a Tyler Guyton, DeMarvion Overshown, Caelen Carson, Cooper Beebe, and Marshawn Kneeland, well, maybe they are going to be really good.

As you know from our Weekend Preview piece, I think the Browns are “a QB away from being a Super Bowl contender” and maybe even a team that if DeShaun Watson can return to his Houston form, could challenge Kansas City over there.

They have All-Pro players in many spots and looked tremendous in 2023 with 11 wins and a No. 1 defense. That was no slouch, and they were properly favored in hosting the Cowboys.

Yet, Dallas was better everywhere, and frankly, it wasn’t terribly close. Sure, if someone chooses to merely read the box score, they will see first downs were equal, yardage was 265-230, and some can delude themselves into thinking that this was not a complete domination by Dallas. I dare say it should properly count as a big road win—something that has been missing from this team for a long while and that they never really had in 2023—when they went to play a physical and challenging playoff team at their place and knocked them right out. I guarantee that if they had lost that game, people would chirp about how this is another piece of evidence that Dallas can’t beat good teams. But watch, because the Cowboys won, the Browns will quickly be dismissed as a bad team because that is how sports talk works.

I believe that Sunday serves as a reminder to the league—but also to those of us who are maybe too close to the Jerry comedy tour—that Dallas has built a very strong roster and believes that if they play with a physical style and balance on both sides of the ball, they can contend. They want to be able to run the ball while passing for big numbers, but more importantly, on defense, they want to stop both of those options and do it with enough attitude that they get in their opponent’s heads.

Enter Mike Zimmer.

On Wednesday, we will examine his specific coverages, personnel, and tactics to drill down and see what the film tells us about his efforts to change the personality from Dan Quinn’s smaller finesse defense to one that can deal with heavyweights. But today, we reflect on this first seven-game schedule that is filled with physical football teams and tip our caps to his unit for setting a tone that suggests this group is bigger, meaner, and yes, still plenty fast to put an offense on its heels. And they hit hard enough that the opposing QB can never look comfortable for the entire proceedings.

Watson was under duress constantly. The Cowboys front was relentless and had him hearing footsteps. They were getting pressure from all directions and Zimmer was sprinkling in plenty of his old tricks. But, it isn’t just about a scheme. It is having plenty of butt-kickers at your disposal and those guys were getting after it in a heavy volume. James Foster cut up plenty of these looks today so I didn’t have to, but look at this 92 seconds that showed Watson getting worked over while throwing the ball horribly:

It was just spectacular work from a defense that amassed 23 pressures and six sacks, with a secondary behind it that was certainly not leaving much to throw at.

It helps Zimmer, of course, to have an unstoppable pass rusher at his disposal.

Micah Parsons was an absolute menace. Perhaps not watching him destroy a game in months led some of us to slightly downplay how difficult he is to deal with. Heck, Cleveland knows from playing T.J. Watt twice a season what this is all about, but I sense they won’t soon forget how much he affected everything they did. He was so good in this game that it is clear Zimmer can use him to build so many things. Sometimes, he is the focal point, and other times he is the decoy. But Parsons is surely a player who is at the top of his game, and, again, it is hard to see a team fall off when they have guys of his quality on this roster.

Trevon Diggs was back and looked the part of the ball-hawking corner that he has been since he entered the league. Again, with all the noise around this franchise, it was pretty quiet about the way Diggs was missed last year. Well, seeing him again coming off his ACL and covering ground and receivers was a pleasure. He, of course, continues to find the ball and picked off a pass because that is what he does as well as anyone. Don’t forget, DaRon Bland won’t be gone too long, either.

And then on offense, the standout was CeeDee Lamb. For a guy who missed camp to get his deal, Lamb appeared in top form against Cleveland.

The Browns put Denzel Ward on him, who was the highest-paid corner in NFL history a short time back and is a top shut-down corner. Well, Lamb was able to get work done in a way that suggests we are about to see another superb year, and that goal of getting QB and WR to read each other’s minds appears to be happening. They know what the other is thinking, and now this team is determined to get the ball to Lamb in every way possible with a diet of jet sweeps sprinkled in so that Lamb can boost that running game.

So the point is this: Parsons is 25. Trevon Diggs is 25. CeeDee Lamb is 25.

You think the Cowboys have fallen off when these top players are all 25 years old?

You must be kidding.

The timeline suggests that the core of this football team is not preparing to fall off or that a rebuild would be wise. The timeline, with a trio of studs at premium positions who were all born in 1998 and 1999, tells us that even if the football world is tired of talking about this group, the best might be yet to come. The dividends of hitting on the top picks in the 2020–2022 drafts—yes, Tyler Smith is 23—might be clues that the moping around and feeling sorry for themselves Cowboys fandom might have to deal with this team being close to figuring everything out.

But we know that much of that depends on the coaches and quarterback.

Yesterday was monumental in that the Cowboys finally did the only thing they really could do when they extended Dak Prescott through the 2028 season as the highest-paid player in NFL history and the first man to break the $60 million per season barrier. It comes with a great deal of risk—as Cleveland can attest—but it stabilizes things for this franchise substantially moving forward.

And to see him then play with great composure and put a winning performance out there hours after the news was a very good sign. You might say it was expected, but as I said on Friday, the Browns seldom allow an opposing QB to go in there and look solid. Prescott’s first half was quite on point, despite modest game numbers. The touchdown throw to Brandin Cooks against a Cover Zero blitz suggests a veteran QB who sees the game at a very high level. That was expert-level stuff.

This might be a good time to address those overall modest offensive numbers because I have already heard a bit too much of that from those who do not allow themselves to be happy when an underdog Cowboys team wins a tough road matchup by 16 points. No, the offense did not look very good in the second half and has plenty of things to clean up. But why would a coach risk showing anything extra when you are up by 24 points? The first time they touched the ball in the second half was with a 27-3 lead, and the game is over. You are starting two rookie offensive linemen, you are facing the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and the No. 1 defense in the league. Just don’t do anything stupid, and you are winning easily, and McCarthy did what winning coaches would do there: run the clock and get out of Dodge. So, if you are asking if I am concerned about the lack of 2nd half explosions from the offense, the answer is a resounding “no.”

And when KaVontae Turpin housed this beautiful punt return and put the Cowboys up 27-3, there was nothing left to do.

Turpin had a rough start to this game but is a threat to return one all the way when he is back there, and I was pretty shocked that it never happened in the 2023 regular season. But he wasted no time in 2024, making sure his name is now on the shortlist of guys who have done it. The views above show you that he certainly received a fair amount of assistance, and I will point out that our guy 42, Deuce Vaughn, is right there in the center of the action.

Are the special teams special?

The Turpin return was great, and so was the work of the amazing kicker, Brandon Aubrey. Aubrey continued his excellent work from his first year in the NFL by starting Year 2 with nothing but more of the same. He hit from 57, 40, 50, and 46 like it was nothing and then looked good from 66 right before halftime when Mike McCarthy and the officials disagreed about a clock reset.

At that point, the coach thought about authorizing an attempt from 71 yards but opted out because the threat of a Kick-6 to end the half would have been very silly. Denzel Ward returning a short FG against a kicking unit that has nobody on it who can run under a 4.7 is a very bad idea. You just should not risk that, despite everyone wanting to see it because Aubrey may have kicked the longest field goal in NFL history. He still might very soon because his range is exceptional, and his accuracy is just as good, it seems.

In closing, the Cowboys clobbered a good playoff team at their place as the offense looked solid, the defense looked incredible, and the special teams were excellent. Now, I know we are not allowed to enjoy things around here until the playoffs are conquered, but this one is going to be tough to complain about.

Although it is just one game and admittedly early, we might have to accept this pretty clear idea after Week 1: Dallas is probably going to be much better than everyone thought they would be.