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The 1977 Dallas Cowboys Do It With Defense

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When you look at the 1977 Dallas Cowboys season you might think that it was the offense that carried them on the way to a Super Bowl win. The Cowboys ranked 2nd in the NFL in scoring, while being 8th in defense. The Dallas offense had first-team All-Pros in wide receiver Drew Pearson and tight end Billy Jo Dupree. They drafted Heisman winner Tony Dorsett, and 35-year-old Roger Staubach was still steady at quarterback.

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But it was the defense that owned every key moment of the Dallas season. They were anchored up front by end Harvey Martin, who would win Defensive Player of the Year. Other All-Pros included tackle Randy White and safeties Charley Waters and Cliff Harris. The defense keyed a Week 1 road win over the Minnesota Vikings, the defending NFC champ. The Cowboys intercepted Fran Tarkenton three times and won 16-10 in overtime. It was the start of an 8-0 start and a 12-2 regular season.

The Chicago Bears had never made the playoffs in the Super Bowl era and with a 3-5 start, it didn’t look like anything would change. But they’d played well in splitting consecutive games against traditional NFC powers in the Rams and Vikings. Walter Payton ran for over 120 yards both times. Then Payton carried the Bears to wins in their final six games. The future Hall of Fame running back ran for over 1,800 yards, nearly a third better than the closest player, and he won the MVP, while lifting his team to the playoffs.

Chicago’s magic ride got a dose of reality when the Cowboys shut down Payton, got three interceptions from Waters and rolled to a 37-7 win. The Dallas defense did the same to Minnesota in the NFC Championship Game, locking down Chuck Foreman, recovering three fumbles and winning 23-6.

It was a year of change in the AFC. Denver burst onto the scene thanks their own defense, known as “Orange Crush.” They had four first-team All-Pros, including future ESPN analyst Tom Jackson at linebacker. Denver went 12-2, but would have to back it up in the playoffs by going through the AFC establishment, then the Pittsburgh Steelers and Oakland Raiders.

The Steelers were not a great team and when they lost at Cincinnati in Week 13, it looked like their run in the AFC Central was over. But Cincinnati lost in Houston the next week and Pittsburgh’s win in San Diego gave them the division title at 9-5. They hung with Denver into the fourth quarter of their playoff game, but Terry Bradshaw threw three interceptions and the Broncos scored 13 late points and won 34-21.

Oakland was almost as good as last year’s Super Bowl champ, with the league’ s best offense. They’d gone 11-3 and split their two games with Denver. The Broncos got a key break in the AFC Championship Game. Leading 7-3, it appeared running back Rob Lytle fumbled on the goal line and Oakland recovered. The call was missed, the Broncos scored and they had enough of a margin to ward off two fourth quarter touchdown passes from Ken Stabler to Dave Casper.  Denver won 20-17.

Dallas and Denver met in New Orleans and the Cowboy defense ended the year just as they’d begun. They forced eight turnovers, Martin and White were named co-MVPs and when wide receiver Butch  Johnson laid out in the end zone for a spectacular 45-yard-touchdown reception, the Cowboys had a 20-3 lead in the third quarter and won 27-10. There was no doubt who the best team in the NFL was.

Are The Dallas Cowboys Dead?

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Turmoil is again in the air with the Dallas Cowboys, as they sit at 3-5 with their playoff hopes already on life support at the halfway point of the regular season. Whether Jerry Jones the owner should fire Jerry Jones the GM is a topic on sports talk shows, not just in Big D, but nationwide. The ‘Boys have a game with equally turmoil-ridden Philadelphia coming up Sunday. With the Cowboys-Eagles game in the prime Fox time slot at 4:25 PM EST, the discussion of where to go from here will get even more attention.

As for what Dallas should do in the future, we’ll leave that for another time. For now, TheSportsNotebook is interested in this question—what’s been the problem with the 2012 Cowboys and is there still time to fix it and make the playoffs?

If you review the Cowboys’ core statistical production, the problems jump out loud and clear. The first, and most transparent is the interceptions. Tony Romo’s offense has thrown 13 picks, and only the hapless Kansas City quarterbacks have thrown more.

Then let’s move to the pass coverage. The Dallas secondary is terrible at ballhawking, the worst in the NFC for interceptions of their own. This is made worse by the fact they rank 23rd in yards-per-pass allowed. The pass defense isn’t without its strengths—they do an excellent job minimizing completion percentage, but their negative numbers tell us that opposing quarterbacks can throw the down the field with a high degree of success and a low degree of fear. In today’s NFL that’s a recipe for disaster.

What about the pass rush? Surely, a 3-4 scheme with Demarcus Ware at outside linebacker can collapse pockets and make some big plays of their own, right? You’d think so, but it hasn’t worked out that way. In spite of a good year from Ware, who has nine sacks, the Cowboys as a whole are 20th when it comes to knocking down opposing quarterbacks.

If you’ve got any notions of Dallas using their running game to keep opposing QBs off the field and reduce their own interceptions, think again. The Cowboys don’t run the ball very often, and are terrible when they try, ranking near the bottom of the NFL in yards-per-attempt and total carries. The foot injury to Demarco Murray hasn’t helped, although even he’s healthy, head coach Jason Garrett still likes to get pass-happy.

As we piece this data together into a portrait of the team, it looks pretty ugly. We have a team that doesn’t rush the passer, whose secondary gets beat down the field and can’t make an interception, combined with an interception-prone quarterback of their own and a running game that can’t take the heat off. Oh, and the punt return coverage is the worst in the NFL, with other facets of special teams being mediocre to poor. Sorry I didn’t mention that.

Maybe the relevant question is how in the hell did this team win three games already? The fact Dallas has been competitive in losses to Atlanta, the New York Giants and Baltimore obscure the reality that a lot of teams in the NFL can play close games on a week-to-week basis. Dallas’ complete body of work tells us they have done nothing that suggests that can start turning these games into wins.

The hope Dallas fans have is that Romo can start playing better football, the pass rush can improve and a secondary that’s still young, with rookie corner Morris Claiborne will get better in the second half. Those are very reasonable things to hope for, even if they do have to be tempered by the injury problems at inside linebacker, where Dan Connor is banged up and Sean Lee lost for the year. So let’s move to the next question, which is whether there’s still time to make a run.

For the sake of this discussion let’s lock up five NFC playoff berths—New York, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco and give one wild-card spot to Green Bay. The Packers have injury problems and tough road games coming on the far side of their bye week on Sunday, so that might not be a guarantee. But with Green Bay at 6-3, I don’t think a Dallas fan wants to invest too much hope at this time of chasing them down. So we’ll assume that the final wild-card spot is all that’s left.

The main competitors for that spot would be Seattle (5-4), Minnesota (5-4), Tampa Bay (4-4) and Detroit (4-4). From a tiebreaker standpoint, Dallas has lost to Seattle and beaten Tampa Bay. The Seahawks look like a pretty good bet to get to 9-7, so the Cowboys probably need to be thinking in terms of winning 10 games—which means winning seven of the last eight.

If we presume the team makes the reasonable improvements noted just above, that’s actually not as far-fetched as it might seem. Dallas’ schedule is very friendly in the second half. In the coming five weeks, they play Philadelphia twice, Washington, Cleveland and go on the road to Cincinnati. The next time Dallas plays a genuinely tough opponent will be December 16 against Pittsburgh, and that’s at home. Then the Cowboys close with New Orleans and a road trip to Washington. We see at least one team, and usually more, get hot in the second half every year. If Dallas is that team, reeling off seven wins against this slate is doable and pending what happens with the tiebreaker situation it might only take six.

We can conclude that while Dallas’ playoff hopes are in critical condition, and they’ve probably played even worse than their record to date, there’s still a narrow window by which they can get better and take advantage of a soft schedule down the stretch. The biggest test case will come Sunday in Philadelphia.

NFL Week 4 Recap: How Long Can Philly Live On The Edge?

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The Philadelphia Eagles are the only NFC East team that hasn’t gotten a rush of positive publicity at some point in the first four weeks of the NFL season. The Redskins are riding the wave of RG3 hype. The Cowboys played their brilliant opening game in New York. And the Giants hammered Carolina with several second-stringers in the lineup. Philadelphia, meanwhile, turns the ball over, barely escapes games and its quarterback and head coach both are under the gun. But it’s Philadelphia that’s alone atop the NFC East with a 3-1 record, while their rivals are all 2-2.

Philly’s win over New York on Sunday night brought together the possibilities and the problems that exist for this team and showcased them to a national NBC audience. The Eagles did a lot of good things—they ran the ball well with LeSean McCoy, who got 123 yards on the ground. The stopped the Giants from doing the same. They got error-free football from Michael Vick and let Eli Manning make the game’s defining mistake, a horrible first-down pass into the end zone that was easily intercepted and swung the momentum Philadelphia’s way.

But the Birds also failed to execute inside the 10-yard line, and had to survive a final missed field goal attempt by the Giants to escape with a 19-17 win.

You find yourself asking that if, on a night when Philly did so much of what they need to do in terms of taking care of the ball, when they won the battle in the trenches, when they had the homefield in a matchup that usually favors them, and still can only escape with a last-second win, how much longer they can survive. But in the NFL survival is all that matters and its Philadelphia that’s in sole possession of first place.

Dallas might have joined Philly at the top, but Tony Romo turned in a complete disaster of a performance last night at home against Chicago. In spite of the Bears not getting consistent pressure, Romo still threw five interceptions, two of which were returned for touchdowns. Right now, Romo is coming in for a lot of heat. I think we should make sure to remember this the next time Romo plays a flawless game, like he did against the Giants in Week 1, and everyone gets carried away on a Super Bowl bandwagon for Dallas.

Both extremes are a part of the quarterback’s package and until Dallas finds a replacement who can be consistent and still have a high ceiling—not exactly an easy find—it’s going to be this way.

We know Robert Griffin III has a high ceiling and he’s got the intangibles of clutch performance going for him. In spite of being beaten down as a Redskins fan for the better part of twenty years, in spite of watching the team blow a 21-6 lead, when RG3 got the ball back with a chance to drive it for the winning field goal, I was completely convinced he would do it. And when he did it on a scramble where he cut back to the inside of the field to take a hit for the sake of five extra yards, I was going nuts (in a good way). It turned out those yards were needed because Billy Cundiff barely made the game-winning field goal.

Washington’s still got significant defensive problems, but they’ve got a running game going with Alfredo Morris and RG3 has given them the hope that any game can be won.

Around the rest of the league as we wrap up NFL Week 4…

NFC NORTH: Minnesota needed two special-teams touchdowns to beat Detroit, but the Vikings are carving themselves an identity as a team that will run the ball, play mistake-free and execute on special-teams. There’s a limit to how far you can go with that formula, but that limit is considerably higher than any expectations anyone had for the Vikes coming into this year. Kudos to Leslie Frazier, who’s showing he can get it done as a head coach.

NFC SOUTH: I know Atlanta’s 4-0 and at the end of the day that’s all that matters. But this team is getting way too pass-happy, and neglecting Michael Turner, even as he ran for 103 yards on 13 carries in the home win over Carolina. The Panther defense was very comfortable teeing off on Matt Ryan and sacked him seven times. If Atlanta doesn’t get more balance, this will be another Falcon team that piles up wins and Fantasy points in the regular season, but comes up short of the Super Bowl.

NFC WEST: St. Louis’ win over Seattle wasn’t dazzling, as Russell Wilson threw three interceptions and the Seahawks undoubtedly had trouble refocusing after their bizarre win over Green Bay the previous Monday. But the Rams, like the Vikings, are showing they can within a certain formula that centers on letting the opponent beat themselves.

AFC EAST: As much you have to be impressed with New England’s newfound running game—Brandon Bolden and Stevan Ridley both went over 100 yards in Buffalo—the bigger story has to be the implosion of both the Bills and Jets. Buffalo was unable to generate a pass rush in spite of New England’s offensive line problems and in spite of Buffalo’s massive offseason expenditure on Mario Williams. The loss per se isn’t devastating, but giving up 35 straight points on your homefield says something about where you’re at as a football team, and it’s not at playoff-level. And the Jets are simply a train wreck, even at 2-2.

AFC NORTH: Cincinnati has slowly gained steam since their opening week disaster against Baltimore, and with a 27-10 triumph over Jacksonville, the Bengals are 3-1 and tied with the Ravens for first place. The Cincy pass rush had its second straight big game, sacking Blaine Gabbert six times and they ran the ball efficiently behind BenJarvus Green-Ellis.

AFC SOUTH: Chris Johnson finally had a breakout game for Tennessee, running for 141 yards against Houston, and the Titan defense did a credible job in slowing down Arian Foster. Then the quarterbacking situation becomes a disaster. Jake Locker left with an early injury and Matt Hasselbeck threw a pair of pick-6s. Tennessee played well enough to be closer than the 38-14 final, but the turnovers did them in.

AFC WEST: San Diego might be 3-1, but this division is still about deciding what you think of Denver. Peyton Manning showed his old brilliance in carving up Oakland for 30/38 for 338 yards, and no interceptions. Yes, the Oakland secondary is bad and the pass rush non-existent, but we also needed to see that Peyton could still dominate a defense like that. We’ve seen he’ll have problems against teams like Houston or Atlanta.

The truth of who will win the AFC West though, lies between the extremes of the Raiders on one side and the Texans/Falcons on the other and that’s where Peyton’s Broncos are still an unknown quantity.

NFL Team Previews: Dallas Cowboys

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Somewhere along the line the Dallas Cowboys morphed into the Minnesota Vikings—a team that was competitive every year, had seasons where they looked the part of a legitimate Super Bowl threat and were always a good bet to win on a week-to-week basis, but also a team that never translated that into sustained postseason success. The Cowboys have been .500 or better in seven of the last eight years and they’ve won two of the last five NFC East titles, but they’ve also never advanced past the second round of the playoffs since their last Super Bowl year in 1995. Will 2012 be different? TheSportsNotebook breaks down the Cowboys…

OFFENSE: Tony Romo takes a lot of heat for a quarterback who’s got a 66% completion percentage, a 31-10 TD/INT ratio and threw for over 4,100 yards. That comes with the territory as an NFL quarterback—it might not be fair, but at least you’re well paid for the trouble. More disconcerting to the Cowboys is that the heat Romo takes isn’t limited to fans and media. Opposing defenses have little difficulty getting to the quarterback up the middle, thanks to a poor interior of the offensive line. There’s nothing wrong on the edges—Tyron Smith is a terrific 21-year-old left tackle and Doug Free is rock solid on the right side, but when you face defensive lines like the Giants and Eagles, you have to protect up the gut and Dallas can’t do that.

This has further implications for the running game, making it difficult for Demarco Murray or Felix Jones to run between the tackles. The durability of both backs is a question mark, but when healthy they do make a nice combination with Murray taking most of the load and Jones providing an explosive change-of-pace.  The receivers are a similar combo of question marks and potential. If Miles Austin can get back to his 2010 self, if Dez Bryant can put his personal problems behind him and if Jason Witten can get healthy (he’ll miss Wednesday’s opener against the Giants with a knee injury, but it doesn’t look like a long-term problem)then this can be a good group. But the question themselves pose the problem, as does the lack of depth.

DEFENSE: The secondary has been the Cowboy bugaboo for a few years now and they finally went out and got quality fixes on the corners. The team signed Brandon Carr in free agency, a top-caliber corner in his own right and then they used the fifth pick in the draft to take Morris Claiborne out of LSU. Claiborne is in the opening night lineup and I fully expect his impact to be immediate.

When you have two corners who can lock down, you create a lot of freedom for your linebackers and is there any linebacker more dangerous than Demarcus Ware? With 19.5 sacks last year Ware is a good a player—regardless of position—that there is in the sport and his presence overshadows the fact that Anthony Spencer on the other edge is a pretty good football player in his own right. The Cowboys have two Penn State products on the inside in Sean Lee, a top-shelf player, and Dan Connor, who is more pedestrian.

Jay Ratliff holds down the nose and the 31-year-old vet might be a little undersized, but he gets it done. And Jason Hatcher posted 4.5 sacks last year, a nice number for an end in a 3-4 and it marks him as a threat if opposing protection schemes focus too much on Ware and Spence. The weaknesses of this defense are clear—strong safety is horrific and free safety Gerald Sensenbaugh is vulnerable.

LAS VEGAS OVER/UNDER WIN PROJECTION: 8.5—I’m not sure if I’ll pick the Cowboys to make the playoffs, but I will pick them to win at least nine games and possibly more, so the Over is an easy call here