Dallas City News

The Cowboys are gearing up for their home opener following a huge win against the Browns on the road, and they’re surely hoping for better results on offense this time around. While last week’s paltry offensive numbers were a direct result of the elite defense they faced in Cleveland, this week’s challenge won’t be much easier against a Saints team that has had one of the longest runs of defensive dominance in the league right now.

The story of the Saints’ current defensive run goes back to someone who is persona non grata in Dallas: Rob Ryan. Following his firing in Dallas, Ryan got scooped up by the Saints to be their defensive coordinator. Similar to his stint in Dallas, though, Ryan’s run didn’t last long. He was fired 10 games into his third season in New Orleans and was replaced by senior defensive assistant Dennis Allen, who had rejoined the team that year after being fired as the Raiders head coach the prior season.

When the Saints come marching in this week, though, Allen will be the man leading them as the head coach. His journey has been an interesting one, but it’s one that he’s earned every step of the way. In the six games Allen coached as interim defensive coordinator in that 2015 season, without time to overhaul the scheme or add new players, the Saints went from allowing 31.5 points per game to giving up just 26.8 points per game.

That was enough for Allen to be retained as the full-time defensive coordinator, giving him a chance to implement his own schemes in New Orleans. Allen’s first season saw some growing pains, though the team still improved from 32nd in defensive DVOA under Ryan to 28th. After that, though, New Orleans enjoyed six straight years of being in the top 10.

When Sean Payton stepped down from the head coach role after the 2021 season, Allen’s defense had just finished second in defensive DVOA for two straight years. That dominance played a part in Allen’s promotion to head coach, and he chose to continue calling the plays on defense. New Orleans finished ninth in DVOA that first year with Allen as the head coach, and they took another step back last year, finishing 15th.

However, any presumptions that Allen’s defensive dominance is coming to an end is ill-advised. Nearly half of the Saints’ top contributors on defense last year were either on their first or second season in the NFL, marking a youth transition for the unit. The fact that they remained in the upper half of the league in efficiency speaks to the consistency of Allen’s scheme.

The defense that Allen runs isn’t all that different from what the Browns run, either. Like Cleveland defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, Allen coached under Gregg Williams for a lengthy portion of his career, and he’s incorporated much of Williams’ tendencies into his own.

Allen’s defense makes extensive use of players filling a variety of roles instead of showing a bunch of different formations. He thrives on moving players’ responsibilities around without necessarily changing the picture of what the defense looks like. Much of this is accomplished through stunts and twists on the defensive line – Allen’s Saints were jockeying with Dan Quinn’s Cowboys the last three years for highest rate of stunts in the league – and match coverage techniques in the secondary.

In short, this allows the Saints to come up to the line each play and show almost the same thing every play while running vastly different concepts each time. Allen doesn’t blitz all that much, instead creating chaos through the unpredictable nature of his schemes, forcing quarterbacks to do all their mental work after the ball is snapped.

The key to beating this defense, historically, has been offenses with high IQ quarterbacks and a variety of different weapons to attack with. That is why the Cowboys stand a good chance in this game; Dak Prescott has often been lauded for his work in identifying coverages both pre- and post-snap, and the Cowboys have some unique weapons in CeeDee Lamb, Brandin Cooks, KaVontae Turpin, Deuce Vaughn, and Hunter Luepke, who may be getting more playing time this week with Jake Ferguson on the mend.

That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, though. Allen’s defense has been really good for a long time – an unprecedented level of defensive consistency in the modern NFL – and that’s no accident. Prescott and the rest of this group will need to bring their A game to have a chance of beating this defense Sunday.