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RAINER SABIN The Dallas Morning News Staff Writer
rsabin@dallasnews.com
IRVING — In the afterglow of the Cowboys’ victory over Seattle on Sunday, a group of defenders celebrated. They exulted as the media crashed the party.
Reporters with recorders and microphones surrounded locker stalls occupied by cornerback Orlando Scandrick, safety Barry Church and linebacker Justin Durant. Each has yet to make a Pro Bowl. None of them are big attractions. And yet they are perfect ambassadors for a defense that lacks star power and has performed well in spite of its absence.
“We have good football players,” Scandrick said. “This team has good football players. This team had a reputation for having underachievers and not getting the best out of football players. Now we don’t have the big names and we’re getting the best out of the names we do have. And the guys who are supposedly not big names are playing lights out.”
They are doing so for a defense maligned throughout the offseason and predicted to be even worse than the raggedy bunch ranked last in the NFL in 2013 and responsible for surrendering the third-most yards in league history.
The doomsayers couldn’t imagine that ramshackle unit improving once it bid farewell to defensive linemen DeMarcus Ware and Jason Hatcher in March before losing linebacker Sean Lee to a season-ending knee injury in May. It seemed unfathomable because Ware, Hatcher and Lee were the defense’s top talents and most visible leaders. A noticeable void was created. But instead of a a few individuals filling it, a group of them did.
“Before we had guys who were unbelievable players, but we relied on them to make the play instead of making it ourselves,” Church said. “Now I feel like everybody is accountable for this team and guys are going out there and making plays.”
Just look at the team’s stats. Only linebacker Rolando McClain tops the Cowboys in two categories — tackles and interceptions. Tyrone Crawford leads in quarterback pressures, Henry Melton in sacks and Brandon Carr in pass breakups.
The collectivism embodied by this defense is captured in the slogan stitched on the polo shirt coordinator Rod Marinelli was wearing Sunday. Below the Cowboys’ star on the left breast, it said “22 men.” These are the players — the starters and their backups — that Marinelli plans to rely on during each game.
“They’re the guys that suit up,” he said. “We’re not using 11. We’re using 22.”
Beyond the egalitarian message of Marinelli’s rallying cry is its pragmatism. He likes to use a rotation of players to keep his defenders fresh. No Cowboys defender has averaged more than 59.5 snaps per game, a manageable workload made possible, in part, by an offense that has kept the ball for the lengthy periods. This season, teams have run 338 plays against Dallas — the seventh-lowest total in the NFL. In turn, only six teams have allowed fewer offensive points than Dallas, which conceded the second-highest sum last season. The Cowboys have also proved opportunistic, forcing 10 turnovers — a figure exceeded by only nine other teams.
“Twenty-two men buying into a system by a heck of a defensive coordinator that puts us in the right position to make plays with guys just showing max effort,” said cornerback Brandon Carr. “Accountability is there, which hasn’t been there in the past. Whenever your number is called, you have to go out there and make the play. It’s 22 men.”
Added Church, “I didn’t feel that in the past. I felt like we had great players, but I felt we relied solely on those great players. I feel like now it’s more of a team, now it’s more each player is playing for each other. And if that keeps going the way it’s going, the sky is the limit.”
At the very least, the positive results should continue. A defense few thought could succeed without Ware, Hatcher and Lee is defying expectations because players have a sense of ownership they say didn’t exist in an environment where they’d been eclipsed by the stars around them.
“We’re just a bunch of hungry dogs,” Melton said. “We have a lot of fun together. Looking around, there’s a lot of guys who want to win and make plays.”
And as the Cowboys are discovering, the whole is proving greater than the sum of its parts
RAINER SABIN The Dallas Morning News Staff Writer
rsabin@dallasnews.com
IRVING — In the afterglow of the Cowboys’ victory over Seattle on Sunday, a group of defenders celebrated. They exulted as the media crashed the party.
Reporters with recorders and microphones surrounded locker stalls occupied by cornerback Orlando Scandrick, safety Barry Church and linebacker Justin Durant. Each has yet to make a Pro Bowl. None of them are big attractions. And yet they are perfect ambassadors for a defense that lacks star power and has performed well in spite of its absence.
“We have good football players,” Scandrick said. “This team has good football players. This team had a reputation for having underachievers and not getting the best out of football players. Now we don’t have the big names and we’re getting the best out of the names we do have. And the guys who are supposedly not big names are playing lights out.”
They are doing so for a defense maligned throughout the offseason and predicted to be even worse than the raggedy bunch ranked last in the NFL in 2013 and responsible for surrendering the third-most yards in league history.
The doomsayers couldn’t imagine that ramshackle unit improving once it bid farewell to defensive linemen DeMarcus Ware and Jason Hatcher in March before losing linebacker Sean Lee to a season-ending knee injury in May. It seemed unfathomable because Ware, Hatcher and Lee were the defense’s top talents and most visible leaders. A noticeable void was created. But instead of a a few individuals filling it, a group of them did.
“Before we had guys who were unbelievable players, but we relied on them to make the play instead of making it ourselves,” Church said. “Now I feel like everybody is accountable for this team and guys are going out there and making plays.”
Just look at the team’s stats. Only linebacker Rolando McClain tops the Cowboys in two categories — tackles and interceptions. Tyrone Crawford leads in quarterback pressures, Henry Melton in sacks and Brandon Carr in pass breakups.
The collectivism embodied by this defense is captured in the slogan stitched on the polo shirt coordinator Rod Marinelli was wearing Sunday. Below the Cowboys’ star on the left breast, it said “22 men.” These are the players — the starters and their backups — that Marinelli plans to rely on during each game.
“They’re the guys that suit up,” he said. “We’re not using 11. We’re using 22.”
Beyond the egalitarian message of Marinelli’s rallying cry is its pragmatism. He likes to use a rotation of players to keep his defenders fresh. No Cowboys defender has averaged more than 59.5 snaps per game, a manageable workload made possible, in part, by an offense that has kept the ball for the lengthy periods. This season, teams have run 338 plays against Dallas — the seventh-lowest total in the NFL. In turn, only six teams have allowed fewer offensive points than Dallas, which conceded the second-highest sum last season. The Cowboys have also proved opportunistic, forcing 10 turnovers — a figure exceeded by only nine other teams.
“Twenty-two men buying into a system by a heck of a defensive coordinator that puts us in the right position to make plays with guys just showing max effort,” said cornerback Brandon Carr. “Accountability is there, which hasn’t been there in the past. Whenever your number is called, you have to go out there and make the play. It’s 22 men.”
Added Church, “I didn’t feel that in the past. I felt like we had great players, but I felt we relied solely on those great players. I feel like now it’s more of a team, now it’s more each player is playing for each other. And if that keeps going the way it’s going, the sky is the limit.”
At the very least, the positive results should continue. A defense few thought could succeed without Ware, Hatcher and Lee is defying expectations because players have a sense of ownership they say didn’t exist in an environment where they’d been eclipsed by the stars around them.
“We’re just a bunch of hungry dogs,” Melton said. “We have a lot of fun together. Looking around, there’s a lot of guys who want to win and make plays.”
And as the Cowboys are discovering, the whole is proving greater than the sum of its parts
That's pretty fucked up confession.
