After a demoralizing 30-27 loss to the Carolina Panthers last Sunday, the Dallas Cowboys have plenty they need to clean up before this week’s matchup against the Washington Commanders. If the Cowboys want to beat their division rival, here are three players they should use more in this week’s game.
1) DE Donovan Ezeiruaku
Coming into the regular season, expectations were high for second-round pick Donovan Ezeiruaku. After the Cowboys traded Micah Parsons away a little over a week before their first game, many believed Ezeiruaku would step into a more significant role in Dallas’ defense.
The Boston College product totaled 16.5 sacks during his senior year at BC, the most in college football, so the hope was that he could replicate some of that production in a Parsons-less Cowboys defense.
Through the first four games of the season, that had not been the case. Ezeiruaku’s NFL career got off to a slow start, as the 22-year-old struggled to be an effective pass rush threat. In his first four NFL games, Ezeiruaku totaled just four pressures and three quarterback hits, recording a pass-rush grade below 60 three times.
It’s not easy to make an immediate impact as a pass rusher in the NFL, and Ezeiruaku was learning that the hard way. But then came Dallas’ matchup against the New York Jets, their best overall defensive performance of the season. Ezeiruaku played a big part in that success, putting together his best individual game of his NFL career to date.
The second-round pick followed that up with another solid showing against the Panthers on Sunday, finishing the day as Dallas’ highest-graded pass rusher. Ezeiruaku was also arguably Dallas’ best defensive end against the run against Carolina, showing the ability to do more than be just a pass-rush threat. In Dallas’ last two games, Ezeiruaku has totaled seven pressures, five QB hits, and two hurries, surpassing his totals from the first four games combined.
Six games into his NFL career, Ezeiruaku seems to be coming into his own. The Cowboys should reward their rookie pass rusher for his recent success on Sunday, giving him and James Houston a majority of the snaps on the edge.
Getty Images
2) LB Shemar James/Marist Liufau
I’ll continue to beat this drum every week until a change is made, but Kenneth Murray is not a starting-caliber NFL linebacker. For some reason, the Cowboys seem to keep thinking he is, and week after week, Murray is at the center of Dallas’ issues on defense.
Whether he’s making bad reads against the run and completely eliminating himself from a play, or does not know his assignment and causes communication issues, Murray’s tenure as a Cowboy has been a disaster.
Murray was so bad last week against Carolina that the Cowboys may finally be forced to make a significant change at the linebacker spot. While their younger options at the linebacker spot, Shemar James and Marist Liufau, aren’t All-Pros by any means, they absolutely cannot put on display a worse product than Murray has six games into the season.
Assuming Jack Sanborn is not active, if the Cowboys don’t enter Sunday’s matchup against the Commanders with James and Liufau as their two top linebackers, it would be coaching malpractice.
See More:
