New York Giants Week 13: Revisiting the Dallas Cowboys Defense

The New York Giants offense is coming off a miserable performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. For the second time this season, the Giants will face the Dallas Cowboys.

The last time these two teams faced off this season was in week four, and the Cowboys won 20-15, but both of these teams are vastly different.

In the last matchup, the Cowboys played more conservatively than usual, blitzing on 31.7% of passing down snaps, their fifth-lowest percentage of the season.

I expect that percentage to pick up regardless of Tommy DeVito or Drew Lock starting this week.

The Giants have done nothing at quarterback to make a team fear their passing game and for the remainder of the season, I would expect teams to play extra aggressively against them.

By stacking the box and playing aggressively, the defense will be in a better position to defend the run and will essentially dare the Giants to throw the ball.

Last week, the Buccaneers blitzed on 44% of passing downs – up from their season average of 30.6%.

The reason for that is simple, the Giants cannot make you pay.

The last time these two teams played was the Giants’ worst rushing performance of the season by a large margin with just 26 rushing yards on 24 carries, a 1.1-yard average.

This is schematically still a traditional Mike Zimmer defense that stacks the box 29.7% of the time and plays mostly cover 3, cover 4, and cover 1 when they play man coverage.

A stacked box means that the defense has eight or more players in the box, giving the defense more available players to defend the run and making it easier to disguise coverages and pressures.

Many defenses that stack the box dare opposing offenses to throw the ball, and with the athletes in the box that the Cowboys have, like Micah Parsons, DeMarvion Overshown, Jourdan Lewis, and Donovan Wilson, it’s easy to get out in space and play coverage once teams drop back.

Parsons has become almost exclusively used as a pass-rusher this year but his presence and ability to occasionally drop back into coverage helps open this defense up.

The Giants’ offense has been pedestrian for the entirety of the season, averaging just 14.8 points per game, the lowest in the NFL by 1.6 points.

It needs to be a priority for the Giants to get the ball into the flats quickly and pick up easy yardage with the occasional deep shot with six or seven blockers.

The Giants’ offensive line has been playing simply bad football lately. It needs to figure out how to deal with uber-aggressive defenses trying to get to the quarterback.

It’s not easy for this offense to do anything right now, but the Cowboys also have the second-worst scoring defense in the NFL, making this a battle of the worst units in the NFL.