Dallas Cowboys need to steal this from the Saints’ playbook to beat the Baltimore Ravens in Brazil
The Dallas Cowboys face perhaps their toughest test of the season against Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry. But the New Orleans Saints already showed them a blueprint to slow them down.
The Dallas Cowboys head to Brazil for a massive matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, and there is one thing they need to steal from the New Orleans Saints’ playbook if they want to pull off the upset. The Ravens are the best rushing team in the NFL, ranking No. 1 in the league in success rate. Between Derrick Henry, a monster truck ready to run over your favorite defender, and Lamar Jackson, who can outrun and out-juke just about anybody in the league while also throwing the heck out of the football, this is a brutal defensive challenge for Dallas.
Jerry Jones went on the radio Friday morning and called this a bad matchup. How can you not agree?
The Cowboys need to take a page out of the Saints’ playbook
The Saints upset the Ravens in Week 2, and their game plan is worth studying. However, there’s a statistic people will miss. The Ravens actually had a 62% success rate against the Saints in that game. That is the second-highest success rate for any losing team since 2022, per Shawn Syed.
Go back and watch that film, and you see some good stuff from New Orleans, specifically in crucial high-leverage moments. You also see a Ravens offense that ran the ball well and moved it efficiently. That game came down to the margins. But one thing stood out: the way the Saints blitzed Lamar Jackson and the Ravens’ rushing attack.
From a passing perspective throughout Jackson’s career, he’s been pretty good throwing the football against the blitz. Even in that specific matchup, Jackson completed roughly 67% of his passes when the Saints sent extra rushers, connecting on 10 of 17 dropbacks. PFF even credited him with a big-time throw and didn’t turn the ball over.
But when the Saints blitzed the Ravens’ run downs, it worked out.
Kaden Ellis showed the Cowboys how to attack
Saints linebacker Kaden Ellis consistently got into the backfield, attacking Henry and Jackson and generating stops, or at least making them hesitate. That aligns with what Brian Schottenheimer talked about in his press conference: getting that knockback at the line of scrimmage to make Derrick Henry pause, because if he gets going, he is going to get you.
Ellis had four tackles, and that doesn’t tell the whole story of what he did. His PFF run defense grade was the highest on the Saints’ defense. Pete Werner, the other linebacker, had the second-highest run defense grade. That wasn’t them being passive, working the second level, and filling their assigned gaps. That was them coming downhill at the moment of the snap. You can see some examples in the post embedded below.
The Cowboys, frankly, do not have the defensive line play to generate consistent knockback in the trenches. They need to be more aggressive. I would like to see Jaishawn Barham blitz frequently, and I would like to see Dee Winters get involved in those blitz packages to catch Jackson and Henry in the backfield and stop them in their tracks.
Don’t wait for them to come to you, because that hasn’t worked out in the first two weeks. And the Ravens are certainly an even more dangerous rushing offense.
Change the defensive identity for one game
This might mean loading the box and getting Caleb Downs involved in run defense. If Ravens wide receiver Flowers does not play, Baltimore will likely go heavy with two-tight end and three-tight end sets. That could actually mask the absence of Malik Hooker and PJ Locke on the Cowboys’ defense, because Downs can play safety instead of putting Markquese Bell out there, which would open the door for the Ravens to exploit outside linebackers in coverage the way the Giants did in Week 1.
The Cowboys are a light box, split safety defense. But Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker might have to shy away from what he wants to run in favor of what he needs to run. Maybe for this game they take on a different identity. Maybe they blitz with extra bodies in the box, eliminate the run game, and force Jackson to beat them through the air. If Flowers is out that gets harder for Baltimore. Even more so with LT Ronnie Stanley ruled out.
And if Dallas is going to play Shavon Revel Jr. at cornerback, why not let him play more man coverage? It’s what he does best, after all. Why not have him disrupt the timing of routes with press coverage, doing what he does best? That fits the loaded-box approach.
I want to see the Cowboys defense look nothing like what they were in Weeks 1 and 2. That’s the biggest key to this game. We will learn a lot from Parker on this one. Is he willing to adapt or is he sticking to his scheme?
