Cowboys/Saints Tape Review: Why was the run defense so atrocious?

KRLD-FM / 105.3 The Fan

It was one of the ugliest home games the Cowboys have played since... well, their last home game in January. Broaddus watched the tape from Cowboys/Saints and breaks down, among other things, why the run defense was so unbelievably bad in this loss.

Transcript

00:00McCarthy, he said something interesting.

00:17It's never as bad as it seems and never as good as it seems.

00:22He said that.

00:23Yeah.

00:24Yeah.

00:25One of the 15 cliches he said in the first four seconds.

00:26He had a bunch of cliches today.

00:27You guys have more questions about the offense or defense today?

00:31Defense.

00:32Defense.

00:33What way?

00:34I mean, how bad was this defensive line?

00:36What was it when it came to not being able to stop the run, especially along the edges,

00:41which is where the Saints had their success?

00:43Yeah.

00:44There's people that, I know that John Oening and I kind of got into it a little bit of

00:47some discussion about, you know, I felt like that the edges weren't particularly good and

00:51John was arguing that the tackles weren't particularly good and the run fits weren't

00:55good.

00:56You know, I think there's some of that to, I think there's really kind of some blame

01:02to go all around with the run defense and the way they play.

01:05I felt like though that there were times where the Saints did a really nice job of making

01:12you feel like that you were going to be single blocked and then it turned into double team

01:17blocks.

01:18And then when it turned into double team blocks, then guys were able to get off of those double

01:23team blocks and then get to other blocks.

01:27And this was one of those games where the defensive tackles, and I think John's right

01:32in this way, did you no favors in this football game.

01:35They were awful.

01:36Yeah.

01:37They, you know, when it comes to if, and I said this in the crosstalk and some other

01:41things in some discussions we had, if this run defense is going to be any good at all,

01:47it's going to have to be because the linebackers go make plays.

01:51And your linebackers had absolutely no chance really to make plays yesterday when it came

01:56to play and run defense.

01:57Now, the, the ability of the Saints to come off the football, to use what I was talking

02:03about, the 21 personnel, the 22 personnel, they, they were able to secure edges and then

02:09they were also able to take their guards and centers and then get them up on your, onto

02:15your linebackers.

02:16And you played eight, you know, in this game you played 88% of the time you played a, you

02:21played your base defense and that's, that was most in the league by far.

02:25Well, we have a game tonight, but I don't expect the Atlanta or Philadelphia to play

02:30base defense the entire game.

02:32That's to be fair, the Saints are playing basically every play with the fullback or

02:36an extra tight end.

02:37Exactly.

02:38So you were just matching up.

02:39It was a matchup.

02:40Yeah.

02:41You were trying to match up the best you could and where the Saints were able to make things

02:47happen were, was inside when they were, when they got those, we talked about McCoy, the

02:52center in the way that he was able to play Ruiz, the way he was able to play, you know,

02:57Patrick, the other guard, they just basically said that they, they took care of your triangle

03:04inside.

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