Expanding opportunities for the 1st year safety: Could it benefit the Dallas Cowboys?

While the Los Angeles Chargers vastly differ from the San Francisco 49ers, they pose offensive problems that the Dallas Cowboys should respect.

At this point, every symbolic stone in the DFW metroplex should be turned over after the beatdown at the Bay that left the Dallas Cowboys searching for answers they are still solving for.

Dallas’ window of opportunity shrinks daily, but it is undoubtedly still open.

To maximize their chances of winning, Head Coach Mike McCarthy and his coaching staff must work overtime to carefully review game footage and evaluate which players significantly impacted the team’s performance.

The team is constantly scouring the free agent market to build a successful team. They recently brought in Rashaan Evans to offset the loss of Leighton Vander Esch.

However, in many cases, NFL teams can look within to improve their roster. Dallas is no different, especially within the safety unit.

What does Juanyeh Thomas have to do to get more snaps?

This is probably one of the more puzzling pieces of the Dallas Cowboys roster for me.

Watching Juanyeh Thomas perform in camp, preseason and the snaps he has earned in the regular season, one would think he is earning favor with defensive coaches.

Pro Football Focus recorded him playing 41 defensive snaps across the backfield in the game against the New York Giants.

Granted, Donovan Wilson was still on the mend.

https://twitter.com/MarkDsCorner/status/1712240873252020403?t=V5BX78yfT5iGdH1LobyJHg&s=03

Since then, the snap distribution has been measly at best. 16 on Week 2, 0 on Week 3, 13 on Week 4 and 9 on Week 5.

He had more snaps in the first week than the four following games combined. For clarity, these do not take into consideration special team contributions.

So far, he has achieved an overall grade of 89.7, with a coverage grade of 83.7. Give me a safety who can tackle, cover and plays with a chip on his shoulder.

Most fans would agree that with the chances he has been given he has made the most of them.

Where would Juanyeh’s snaps come from?

My goodness, this is one of the easiest questions to answer, but I’ll take the high road first.

Donovan Wilson is not the same guy right now. It’s not about ability. It’s more about his health.

I’m not here to provide any prognosis or anything like that.

However, he did suffer a calf strain that held him out of most of camp as well as the first two regular season games.

Since he’s been back, it has not been good both from an analytical standpoint and just with the eye test.

His PFF grades are below average to say it nicely. He has a 37.3 overall grade with a 28.8 tackling grade. Isn’t that supposed to be his strong suit?

https://twitter.com/toddarcher/status/1711206815218729441?t=sEEGK2uUTxNhud8guQuteA&s=03

As Sunday night’s debacle was nearing its end, Wilson found himself getting rolled up on.

While his ankle MRI came back clean, it should open the door to ease him back in slowly while Juanyeh take on a more prominent role.

Jayron Kearse needs to step up or step out the way

I’m a bit disappointed in what I’ve seen from Jayron Kearse.

He set the bar high for himself but thus far failed to live up to expectations.

“We should not solely rely on the 49ers game as the reason for his demotion in favor of Thomas. It would be too simplistic to just grab onto that one game as the only factor.

There are likely other reasons that contributed to the decision.”

He hasn’t given up any m, but he does have 16 targets thrown his way and has allowed 13. That’s an 83.1% clip.

Luckily for the Dallas Cowboys, the worst may be behind them. Outside of Philadelphia and Buffalo, the opportunity to line up over a top-level tight end dwindles.

Kearse’s foolish attempt to show toughness by standing over a player and getting an unsportsmanlike penalty (albeit declined) is enough for me to give the young gun with energy more shots to play.

At some point, Dallas will have to get out of its own way and trust the eye test.

If your incumbents are not up to snuff, it is still a what have you done for me lately league.