Dallas Cowboys: Where's The Beef?

The Dallas Cowboys are in their sixth full season of employing the 3-4 defense, previously installed by former head coach Bill Parcells. It has occurred to me over the last five off-seasons that the Cowboys are the only team utilizing this alignment that offer up nose guards who barely tip the scales at 300 pounds.

In 2005 Parcells made the transition to the 3-4 a top priority following a lousy 2004 campaign that saw Dallas miss the playoffs after actually qualifying for the post season in 2003, Parcells’ first season on the job in Big D. Players such as DeMarcus Ware, Marcus Spears, Chris Canty and Jay Ratliff arrived to begin filling out the necessary pieces of the front seven in a scheme that Dallas had never run before. Jason Ferguson was among veteran players brought in to play nose guard that same off-season.

Since the transition to the 3-4 in Dallas, the results have been mixed at best. Talent has never been lacking from this group but when examining numerous  3-4 defenses in the NFL, and there are many at this point, one has to ask this question about the Cowboys’ particular defensive line: where’s the beef?

See, the Cowboys have as good a crop of defensive ends for this scheme as any team in the league. But ends are not nose guards … not in this scheme. Since only three linemen play in the 3-4 and are matched up against five offensive linemen, somewhere there has to be an awfully big guy in order to make this apparent mismatch work. This is the nose guard.

In Dallas’ case, Ferguson played pretty well overall for a couple of seasons, ending after the season opener against the New York Giants at Texas Stadium in 2007. Injured and immediately placed on injured reserve, Ratliff was then moved over to take that spot in the middle of the line, presumably because of his high motor and athleticism. I remember feeling that night, despite a fun win over the G-Men, that the season was in big trouble, especially down the stretch. Why? No size up front.

Having said that, the Cowboys would go on to win the NFC East and also clinch home-field advantage for the NFC Playoffs with a record of 13-3, but this where the fun seemed to end in several ways. The Cowboys failed to win as much as a single playoff game that post-season and failed to even qualify for the playoffs in 2008. You can point directly to a defense that has given up historically long runs over the past few years as evidence.

When comparing the Dallas 3-4 defense to other 3-4 alignments around the league, one thing really jumps out as a key difference. The nose guards, in particular, are much bigger on teams that have both won Super Bowls over the last decade and also those that have created many more turnovers and have consistently made the playoffs.

The New England Patriots won three championships in four season with guys like Ted Washington (6-5, 365) and Vince Wilfork (6-2, 325) eating up the middle. The Baltimore Ravens won their only Super Bowl following the 2000 season with Tony Siragusa (6-3, 340) and Sam Adams (6-3, 350) manning the middle. And let’s face it: the 2000 Ravens did not win because of their offensive firepower. They won because nobody could move the ball on first and second down.

More recently we can look to a couple of Pittsburgh Steelers teams that won championships despite having arguably greater weaknesses than any other Super Bowl winner ever. They might not have been very convincing in most regards but they do have Casey Hampton (6-1, 325) in the middle of their defensive line…and no, the Steelers did not win and remain a contender to this day because of their offense.

Even Wade Phillips, while defensive coordinator in San Diego, had massive Jamal Williams (6-3, 348) playing the middle of that defense which created lots of interceptions and kept the Chargers in the thick of the AFC Playoff picture for several season late last decade.

The idea that playing small in the middle of the 3-4 situation in Dallas is just not effective. This unit has talent and usually plays very hard. It can sometimes be close to dominant. It can also fold like a children’s blanket late in the season which it has pretty much always done even dating back to Parcells’ last couple of seasons with the Cowboys.

The only exception I can think of is the final two games of the 2009 regular season when this unit posted back to back shutouts against Washington and Philadelphia, both sporting offenses that just weren’t very good.

The Cowboys certainly hit a home run by trading up to acquire wide receiver Dez Bryant in the first round of the 2010 NFL Draft. But then came the second round when Dallas was in position to select Terrance “Mount” Cody out of Alabama. Passing on him, they went with inside linebacker prospect Sean Lee out of Penn State obviously expecting him to replace aging Keith Brooking sooner than later. I hope Lee can fill the large holes that are commonly present when teams run the ball against Dallas because they are still there…and apparently they’ll remain there for some time.

So again I ask this question: where’s the beef?