Dallas scouting report: Dissecting the Dolphins’ defensive approach

Vic Fangio presents a difficult task for the Dallas Cowboys.

In many ways, Mike McCarthy’s second season in Dallas was his first real season, since the 2020 season featured a limited offseason due to the pandemic, losing Dak Prescott for the year, and a whole host of other injuries throughout the season. But in 2021, McCarthy’s Cowboys were looking exactly like what some had hoped when he was hired.

After narrowly losing to the reigning Super Bowl champion Buccaneers, the Cowboys won six in a row, including a win on the road over the Vikings with Cooper Rush making his first career start. The offense, in particular, was red-hot and looking unstoppable. Then came a home appointment with the 4-4 Broncos, a team that had just traded away superstar Von Miller and looked to be ready to move on from third-year head coach Vic Fangio.

The game turned into a blowout loss for the Cowboys. They were shut out in the first three quarters, eventually scoring in the fourth quarter when the Broncos defense was clearly not playing aggressive anymore, to dress up the final score a bit at 30-16. Still, it was an embarrassing loss for Dallas, who came into the game as 10-point favorites and lost by two touchdowns.

Fangio, often a very quiet personality and unremarkable quote, suddenly had a lot to say:

“How about them Broncos as Jimmy Johnson used to say,” Fangio said with a smile as he began his media session.

“I just felt we had the right stuff to give ourselves a chance,” Fangio explained. “We just had to do it the right way, call it the right way, which I’m in charge of, so you know that’s going to be taken care of, and I just felt okay about. I don’t say, oh good about it, teams just haven’t played them the right way.”

As the talking point quickly became whether or not Fangio had just created a blueprint for beating the Cowboys’ high-powered offense, McCarthy more or less laughed the suggestion off:

“This is a copycat league, and I just told [that] the team, so get ready, I hope they do, too,” McCarthy responded during his November 8 press conference. “Vic played us very aggressive. That’s good to hear him beating his own drum.”

A copycat league it certainly is, because Fangio’s style of defense has taken the league by storm. There are 14 teams in the league that currently operate some iteration of the two-deep safety scheme that Fangio has had decades of success with, while even more teams have incorporated elements of the scheme into their own defense in one form or another.

In fact, the Cowboys have faced 10 such teams this year alone, including six games (Cardinals, Chargers, Rams, Eagles x2, Panthers) against defenses coordinated by coaches that have direct links to Fangio in their coaching tree. To say that the Cowboys have seen this defense more often than not would be an understatement. If Fangio caught the Cowboys by surprise in 2021, that won’t be the case this week as he tries to defend an offense now run by McCarthy himself.