As everyone should know by now Mike Zimmer is the new man calling the plays for the Cowboys defense.
Earlier this week, Cowboys reporter for the Dallas Morning News, Michael Gehlken spoke with Zimmer about the defense and some of the outlook for the 2024 season.
He tweeted that Zimmer will be down on the sidelines for the games in 2024.
We saw former defensive coordinator and now Washington Commanders Head Coach Dan Quinn call plays from the booth over the last few years.
“I’ve always been on the sideline, number one. Number two, I want to catch them when they come off [the field],” Zimmer said. “So I can talk to them. If there’s adjustments that need be made, then I want to be able to sit down and do them with them.”
Love The Approach
I don’t know about you, but I love this approach by Zimmer. I think the coaches should always be down on the field so they can do exactly as he said.
Talk with them, see what is going on, etc.
Being up in the booth does no good in my opinion.
I guess maybe you see the field better from the booth, but seeing the field better doesn’t outweigh being able to do the other more important stuff during a game.
Zimmer has been around in this league for a long time, so I trust the way he wants to do things.
Zimmer’s Defense
Zimmer has run a 4-3 defense for the majority of his career but was the defense coordinator under Bill Parcells and ran a 3-4 scheme, so he has shown versatility.
Zimmer had proven over the years that his defense works and Dallas has more talent than any of his teams he had when he was the Vikings head coach.
The Vikings’ defense was top-12 in points allowed in each of Zimmer’s first six seasons with the team, including a top-five finish in 2015, ’17, and ’19.
We won’t see as many splash plays on defense as we did the last couple of years with Quinn.
The reason is that Zimmer just likes to keep you out of the end zone and make offenses work for it.
This team needs to figure out a way to be more physical at the line of scrimmage — teams hammers them running it right at them.
Mazi Smith
Something that I keep seeing all over Twitter is this stuff with Mazi Smith, the Cowboys’ first-round pick from 2023.
When Smith was drafted, he was supposed to come in and instantly upgrade the Dallas Cowboys’ run defense.
That obviously didn’t happen.
From all the talk going around, it sounds like Quinn wanted him to drop weight to fit him into his scheme.
Zimmer, however, is doing what’s best for the player, and that will ultimately be what’s best for the Cowboys’ defense.
Dallas is thin at linebacker, and as of now, it looks like Stephon Gilmore won’t be back, so they need to make sure this defensive line is ready to go.
The Cowboys need a lot of things to go right if they want to keep the 12-win-season streak alive.
They didn’t get any better this offseason, and CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons are still without deals. The longer Jerry Jones waits, the higher the price tag.
The Cowboys open the season on the road against the Cleveland Browns.
They have six primetime games this season and the schedule starts easier for them, but man… they have a gauntlet in the middle.
Things could get ugly very quickly for them. Let’s hope we can watch them compete for a playoff spot this year.