The Cowboys and the 3-4 Defense: A Winning Proposition

but now that we have the right-types of athletes on the field I am. When you watch games you can see players with plenty of speed and athleticism at most positions, including, on our team Defensive Tackle. Rat is a great athlete and it shows at DT. When he played DE he was average, at best. The 3-4 enabled him to unleash his true abilities and now he’s a beast. Of course with Ware and Spencer outside and Jenkins and T-New out wide, all we are missing is a play-making, ball-hawking, game changing S. Maybe he’s already on our team. I hope so. But I have a feeling the Dallas Braintrust is going with a “what we have now is good enough to get by” type attitude. Yet I am also not foolish enough to think I know more than our coaching staff (or owner) about football and players. I trust them to evaluate personnel since that’s what they get paid to do.

to a QB than a 4-3 and I think thats why they have more success. In a 3-4 it’s much more difficult to ascertain where the rushers are coming from and the 3-4 has defensed the great Peyton Manning much better than the traditioanl 4-3 over his career and if you can confuse Manning at times, you’ll be able to confuse any qb.

had more to do with the fact that relatively few teams used it, so that it was difficult to game plan for (i.e. hard for the scout team to run in practice, etc.). Now that 40% of the league is running it, I guess we’ll see if that was the case.

The values aren’t Y/P or YPPA, but that’s what they’re labeled as.

Also, I would’ve put us as below-average in terms of 3rd down. I’m absolutely shocked to see that we were top 5.

I think the thing that is clear to me about the Dallas defense is that they need to improve on turnovers and the ability to stop offenses from getting those extra yards that while they may not lead to points, do affect field position and keep the ball out of our offense’s hands. As well as our defense played last year, can you imagine how it would look if our yards production matched how well our defense stops the other team from scoring (in other words if we were elite a stopping offense from moving the ball)?

We didn’t have to compete with nearly as many teams for player types then.

Now everyone is looking for NTs! Makes them much more difficult to get for a bargain.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the 3-4 the defense that Dallas struggled against the most last year. The GB and SD games come to mind.

This always struck me as odd, considering that they practice against it and their coach is one of the league’s recognized authorities on the scheme.

In the last decade, college teams seem to have moved from big strong linemen to smaller faster guys, perhaps as a reaction to the increased prevalence of spread offenses. This has made it even harder to find the good 4-3 linemen that can rush the passer, but easier to find the smallish DE that can switch to 3-4 OLB.

The Oilers were among the 1st teams to use it.

“The Chicago Bears and Washington Redskins are the only NFL teams which have never used the 3-4 as their base defense. However, with the 2010 hiring of Jim Haslett the Redskins are expected to adopt 3-4 for the 2010 season. Conversely, the Steelers have used the 3-4 as their base since 1982, the season after Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle Joe Greene and end L. C. Greenwood retired.

The 3-4 defense was originally devised by Bud Wilkinson at the University of Oklahoma in the 1940s. Chuck Fairbanks learned the defense from Wilkinson and is credited with importing it to the NFL. The 1972 Miami Dolphins were the first team to win a Super Bowl with the 3-4 defense, going undefeated and using number 53, Bob Mathison as a down lineman or rushing linebacker. When the Oakland Raiders defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XV, it marked the first Super Bowl in which both teams used the 3-4 as their base defense. Also notable, the 1986 New York Giants won Super Bowl XXI with a 3-4 defense and all-time great Lawrence Taylor as outside linebacker. By the mid-1990s, only a few teams used a 3-4 defense, most notably the Buffalo Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers."

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/article/2009-02-22/finding-players-who-fit-3-4-scheme-more-art-science

I think its the flexibility and unpredictability as a base Defence that is the reason.

In passing situations what do the cowboys do? They almost always switch to 4 down-lineman nickel package. IF 3-4 was better against the pass wouldn’t they stay in it?

And if you look at Rohpuri’s sporting news link above – they say the same thing about College D’s: they generally play against a spread offence with four rushers on the line – not from a 3-4 alignment.

While a lot of teams are using or are going to use the 3-4 defense, they are/will be using the “two-gap” version which is in my humble opinion not as good as the “one-gap” that only the Cowboys and Chargers run.

In the “one-gap” the downlinemen are responsible for only “one-gap” and thus have the freedom to “shoot their gap” and play in the backfield….hence, one of the reasons for the success of Jay Ratliff. In the “two-gap” defenses, the d-linemen are taught to let the Offensive linemen “fire out” at them, while they wait to see which gap the ball carrier might be coming thru. If it is a pass, then they can shed the blocks and get after the QB.

The advantage of the “two-gap” is the linebackers are free to make plays because the D-linemen are occupying the O-linemen.

The advantage of Wade’s “one-gap” is the fact that it is an “attacking” defense and allows smaller nose tackles to shine and forces the Offense to react to them very often.

Just a small point, but an important one!