Reading the New Defense returns for its third season at Footballguys.com. The column examines how new defensive coordinators affect individual defensive players' fantasy prospects for the upcoming season.
Eleven NFL defenses have new coordinators in 2024. While three of them offer general scheme consistency year over year, eight more promise significant changes to their new environs in 2025. Two of these coordinators' track records suggest they will change between even- and odd-front nomenclature.
Previous installments: Falcons | Saints | Bears
Wayward Stars?
The Cowboys led the NFL in scoring offense in 1980 en route to the NFC Championship Game. Thereafter, Fleer published a trading card titled “Big ‘O' in Big ‘D'.” The ‘O' presumably stood for “offense,” but the photo depicted an apparent fumble by the offense. Did the ‘O' stand for “oops?”
After a disappointing season, ownership and head coach Mike McCarthy could not agree on terms to run it back in 2025. McCarthy coordinated a pretty big offense. His defense let him down.
Dan Quinn had coordinated the Cowboys' defense for three years with great success. He departed for Washington's top job for the 2024 season. McCarthy, formerly the Packers' head coach, replaced him with an old NFC North foe. The game had passed former Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer by, and the Cowboys fell from fifth in total defense in 2023 to fifth from last in 2024.
This column raised concerns last summer. The hiring of Matt Eberflus could have Jerry Jones lamenting, “Oops, I did it again.”
Matt Eberflus's defense, contrasted with Dennis Allen's more aggressive approach in last week's edition of Reading the New Defense, focuses on assignment-sound football. Eberflus's Bears were the league's least penalized defense in 2024. Much of the secondary, which created havoc for Dan Quinn, is known for big plays and big errors.
Scheme Differences That Matter
Almost all NFL defenses utilize a 4-2-5 nickel subpackage for the majority of their defensive reps. Unlike Tom Landry's 4-3 Flex defense, the defensive ends of the current-day 4-2-5 line up wide of the offensive tackles. Twenty-first-century NFL defenses differ from one another in three primary ways that impact IDP statistical output.
Zone Vs. Man Coverage
Zone coverage by a defense significantly improves the inside linebackers' rate of tackling per snap. A coach's historical tendencies and the personnel available to him for the upcoming season empower us to make educated guesses as to how often a defense will use zone coverage and to an extent, how efficiently the inside linebackers will make tackles. Matt Eberflus uses zone coverages at a much higher rate than Dan Quinn.
#FFIDP - Most efficient coverage schemes for LB tackling in 2024:
— Jon Macri (@PFF_Macri) June 9, 2025
Cover-2: 15.8%
Cover-6: 15.7%
Cover-4: 14.9%
Cover-3: 14.5%
AVERAGE LB TKL EFFICIENCY: 13.1%
Cover-1: 10.4%
Cover-0: 7.9%
2-MAN: 7.5%
Reminder: Zone-heavy defenses are a cheat code for IDP while man-heavy ones… https://t.co/FXZdUm3Jdd
One High Vs. Two High Safeties
Two-high coverages have received disproportionate attention from mainstream media in this decade. Only the Vikings showed them more than half the time in 2024. Two-high coverages have, however, grown in use over the past ten years and made volume tacklers at the safety position harder to spot. Reduced competition from safeties in the middle of the field marginally improves inside linebackers' tackling prospects.
Meanwhile, a team that plays predominantly one-high coverages can infuse one of its two safeties with a statistical uptick if it deploys one, typically the strong safety, close to the line of scrimmage frequently relative to the other. For example, Pro Football Focus collects tackle efficiencies for safeties by alignment in the defense. PFF's Jon Macri reports the data as follows.
#FFIDP - For safety rankings/projections, knowing how unstable that fantasy production can be, rankings start with playing time and potential deployment because...
— Jon Macri (@PFF_Macri) June 16, 2025
Safety tackle efficiency by defensive alignment in 2024:
BOX: 11.3% ?
SLOT: 10.4% ?
-- Average: 9.6% --
DEEP:…
2024 proved lucrative for fantasy gamers chasing strong safeties in one-high defenses. The in-season version of this column closed by debriefing this phenomenon.
Rush Strategy
Some teams ask their pass rushers to mush rush or use heavy technique, while select linemen on other teams have the green light to get upfield with reckless abandon. The former set is integral to run defense. Green-lit defensive tackles typically have higher sack upside.
Gervon Dexter Sr was typically penetrating in Matt Eberflus's defense. Osa Odighizuwa will relish getting back to the undertackle role in which he thrived under Dan Quinn.
Osa Odighizuwa is another fast boi. Smaller DT who plays over Guards. Good handfighting and can outrun punches/contact from Guards. Run defense is fine, much better in attack/react mode, and good slanter/penetrator. Legit contain player (great in NFC East ?) (97) pic.twitter.com/qmBByIeZnw
— JJ Pegues Cross Chop?????? (@TheCasualNFLFan) June 28, 2025
Cowboys Defensive Tackles
Osa Odighizuwa ranked fourth among NFL defensive tackles in pass-rush win rate in 2023, ahead of real-life and fantasy star DeForest Buckner and the more heralded prospect Jalen Carter. Mike Zimmer's over fronts did not suit his strength, and he did not take the step forward this writer envisioned in 2024.
The franchise knows what it has. Odighizuwa agreed to a 4-year $80 million contract, the most lucrative deal for a defensive tackle signed in 2025, to stay in Dallas. He returns to act as “the engine of (Matt Eberflus's) defense.”
2023 first-round pick Mazi Smith will start alongside Odighizuwa. Smith was a premium athlete but a part-time player for the Michigan Wolverines. Dan Quinn asked Smith to improve his conditioning and lose weight. The results were disastrous. Smith added to his frame for 2024 to fit Mike Zimmer's scheme and assume space-filling duties. Matt Eberflus will ask him to fulfill a 0- and 1-technique nose tackle role in a make-or-break Year 3.
Cowboys Edge Defenders
Provided the team works out a contract with one of the league's premier pass rushers, Matt Eberflus will have Micah Parsons at his disposal in 2025. Eberflus has never coached a player like Parsons and has no clearly defined role in his defense that Parsons fits.
Eberflus will likely draw on his predecessors' experience in deploying Parsons. To balance Eberflus's fronts, Parsons's bookend will see significant time as an edge-setting strong-side end. Youngsters Sam Williams, Marshawn Kneeland, and Devon Ezeiruaku will compete for reps there, while Dante Fowler Jr plays the role of designated pass rusher off the bench in his return to Dallas.
Micah Parsons interior rush = terrifying
— Ted Nguyen (@FB_FilmAnalysis) June 27, 2025
Smooth and explosive shoulder fake and swim inside pic.twitter.com/VOre1xZrPX
Cowboys Linebackers
Dallas brought in veteran linebacker Eric Kendricks to run Mike Zimmer's defense last year. Similarly, Eberflus recruited former Bear Jack Sanborn to relay signals in the middle of the 2025 Cowboys defense.
Dallas acquired Kenneth Murray Jr. in a late-round pick-swap to start alongside Sanborn. Murray might be a placeholder for Demarvion Overshown, who was severely injured during the latter end of a breakout season. 2024 second-rounder Marist Liufau offers more upside than Sanborn but must shore up his tackling and demonstrate command of Eberflus's scheme to earn a larger role.
Cowboys Coverages
Matt Eberflus's defense borrows heavily from the defensive scheme that dominated the previous decade: even fronts with a featured interior disruptor and frequent Cover-3 zones. A healthy dose of Cover-2 keeps his defenses from being as predictable and exploitable as those of his contemporaries in recent years.
Trevon Diggs and DaRon Bland took turns leading the league in interceptions under Dan Quinn. They were invited to gamble on passes they thought they could take away. Diggs also led the league in yards allowed (907) to accompany his 11 interceptions in 2021. Eberflus simply won't accept this tradeoff.
Safety Donovan Wilson allowed an opponent passer rating of 130.0 in 2024. He's an exciting player who plays larger than his measurements close to the line of scrimmage. He's also a liability in coverage. His upside in Eberflus's defense is more limited than it was in Quinn's.
Wilson will start next to Malik Hooker in the back end. Hooker will be the primary deep safety. He played more than 80 percent of his snaps deep in 2022 and 2023. That ratio declined to 65 percent under Mike Zimmer but is unlikely to drop further under Eberflus.
The franchise allowed its nickel cornerback, Jourdan Lewis, to leave on free agency and seemingly has no plan for the slot in 2025. DaRon Bland practiced there in OTAs despite his hesitancy to move inside.
The outdated value of the Nickel Corner & what that means for Daron Bland pic.twitter.com/67om8JZWxI
— Landon Holifield ? (@TheLandoShow) June 18, 2025
2025 Cowboys Defense Outlook
The Cowboys traded for a pair of busts to compete with rookie Shavon Revel Jr. to join Diggs and Bland in Eberflus's frequent 4-2-5 subpackage. That's assuming Diggs and Revel are healthy enough to play in September – two open questions three weeks before training camp.
Donovan Wilson, Kenneth Murray Jr., and Jack Sanborn are all question marks at best in coverage. If Andrew Booth Jr and Kaiir Elam or cornerbacks from the back end of the roster are pressed into service for extended periods, Eberflus and the Cowboys defense will have a long season.
Like the image in the 1981 trading card, it's difficult to see how the Cowboys are moving forward.
The Cowboys defense is infuriating. They refuse to learn from their freaking mistakes! This exact play beat them 2 weeks in a row, watch!
— Emmanuel Acho (@EmmanuelAcho) September 23, 2024
Cowboys fans, I hope y'all are sitting down for this one: #AchoAnalysis @BloggingTheBoys pic.twitter.com/uGDLl0LA2Y
2025 Cowboys IDP Outlook
Donovan Wilson finished among the top 30 fantasy safeties in each of the past three seasons by Footballguys scoring. He could finish as a low-end DB2 again in 2025, but might be equally likely to lose his job.
DaRon Bland is an appealing fantasy cornerback as a defender who plays on the boundary in base defense and in the slot in subpackages. Kyler Gordon ranked 26th among fantasy cornerbacks under Eberflus in 2024 despite coming off the field in base defense. Those with August drafts should monitor preseason news regarding Bland's deployment.
The linebackers are each compelling fantasy assets at low cost. As long as Sanborn and Murray hold onto their jobs, they should be useful as a fantasy LB2 and an LB4, respectively, with upside.
Fantasy gamers need not overthink Parsons. He's a DE1; however, he lacks league-leading upside in a defense that could struggle. Likewise, Osa Odighizuwa fits fantasy rosters as a low-end, boom-bust DT2 in front of soft coverage.
Summer Plans
Reading the New Defense will drop each week throughout the summer with a fresh look at expectations for defenses under the tutelage of a new defensive coordinator. Analysis at Footballguys aims to equip fantasy gamers with the knowledge and confidence to draft players for their rosters for deployment on Sundays this coming fall. Readers are welcome to contact and follow this writer @DynastyTripp on the app formerly known as Twitter.
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