How early is too early to hit the panic button? September football is notoriously the season for overreactions. Last year, the Ravens started 0-2 and ended up winning 12 games. The Saints started 2-0, with the best offense in the league over that span, and finished 5-12 with an interim head coach.
First-year head coaches are usually offered a honeymoon phase, too, especially when their best player is traded away a week before the season kicks off. Yet here we are, three weeks into the year, and the Brian Schottenheimer era is hitting a point of critical mass.
After last week’s defensive meltdown versus Russell Wilson – who, consequently, looked miserable against the Chiefs defense on Sunday night – Schottenheimer spoke positively about the Dallas defense. He proclaimed that, while the defensive performance was unacceptable, the fixes were easy. They were communication issues, he said, and pledged to have them solved before their Week 3 matchup in Chicago against the winless Bears.
Well, that didn’t work.
The Cowboys got their faces melted off by Caleb Williams, Ben Johnson, and a Bears offense that had looked inept for 98% of their first two weeks of the season. After the game, Schottenheimer was notably less positive when discussing the defense.
Of course, it is still early. The Cowboys changed up defensive schemes yet again, bringing in Matt Eberflus to run the defense after getting fired by the Bears last year. On top of that, they’ve had numerous injuries on that side of the ball: DeMarvion Overshown won’t return until late November, likely, and DaRon Bland missed his second straight game. Trevon Diggs, who is still getting back into shape after another season-ending knee injury last year, was a game-time decision to play Sunday after having a knee injury pop up earlier in the week.
And, of course, there’s the whole Micah Parsons factor. Not that Parsons would have solved the myriad of busted coverages this week, but he certainly would have helped the pass rush, which became the first team to never sack Williams in his young career.
None of those very real issues are the fault of Schottenheimer or Eberflus. Yet, there are still very serious problems the coaches need to address.
Diggs was responsible for a few busted coverages. Kaiir Elam, who’s completely healthy, was too. The safety duo of Malik Hooker and Donovan Wilson – the latter of whom is a team captain – has been pretty subpar since Week 1. There’s also been no cohesion between all these players, despite Eberflus’ scheme being known for its simplicity relative to, say, a Mike Zimmer defense. That falls squarely on Eberflus.
Which brings up the question of how much longer should he get the excuse of “it’s a new season”? Schottenheimer has already promised that changes are coming, and that these changes will come in the form of both scheme and personnel changes. So how much is changing with the scheme Eberflus has run almost exclusively since his last go around in Dallas?
The bigger question is how long his leash should be if he’s already needing to tweak his long-established scheme. And that question is what really reflects on Schottenheimer. His offense was not its best against the Bears, but the unexpected loss of CeeDee Lamb absolutely played a part in it. That, on top of injuries to Cooper Beebe and Tyler Booker, provide a sort of handicap to the offense right now.
The defense has been next level bad, though. It sounds as if Schottenheimer is starting to apply pressure to Eberflus after effectively trusting his coordinator to fix the issue himself and then being let down. It should also be noted that, while Schottenheimer ultimately signed off on Eberflus being added to the coaching staff, the real connective tissue between Eberflus and Dallas was Jerry Jones; Schottenheimer and Eberflus have never coached together until this year.
Whether or not it was an arranged marriage, the spotlight is now on Schottenheimer to get it right. We already knew the Cowboys couldn’t be real contenders if their defense played like it did in Week 2, but with all the injuries on offense now, Eberflus has to turn things around to avoid an outright losing season.
The way that Schottenheimer handles things from here on out will be very telling about whether or not he has real staying power as a head coach in this league.
0 CommentsSee More:
