Dallas has allowed 126 rushing yards to quarterbacks on 19 carries through two games, the most in the NFL. That is the number hanging over the Cowboys ahead of Sunday’s meeting with Baltimore in Rio de Janeiro, where Dallas will have to account for Lamar Jackson as well as Derrick Henry.
Quinnen Williams addressed the problem directly during Thursday’s availability in Frisco. The defensive tackle identified urgency, interior disruption, hand usage and knockback as the required response. That is useful candor. It is also still a plan, not evidence that the plan works.
Jackson is a demanding opponent for a defense already conceding substantial yardage to quarterbacks. In my view, the first priority should be avoiding a solution that creates a different problem: Dallas must account for his running threat while Henry remains available in the backfield. Concentrating on one name would be an incomplete answer to the matchup Williams described.
The Cowboys have already supplied a recent example. Against Washington last Sunday, Jayden Daniels ran for 69 yards before leaving with an injury, and Washington finished with 182 rushing yards as a team. Dallas won 37-20, but the score obscured how much work the defense had to do after allowing Washington to outgain it 389-332.
The Cowboys survived because Dak Prescott and the offense were outstanding, and because Dallas created a decisive fumble in the second half. That is a perfectly legitimate way to win a football game. It is not a comfortable blueprint against Baltimore.
Williams’s proposed fix starts in the middle, which makes sense. Interior defenders do not need to make every tackle against a quarterback such as Jackson, but they do need to prevent the line of scrimmage from becoming an invitation. Knockback can compress the pocket and force the quarterback to make his decision sooner.
Active hands can disrupt blocking lanes and keep linemen from cleanly climbing to the second level. Those details will not eliminate Jackson’s options, but they can reduce the amount of open grass available when he chooses to run.
There is a difference, though, between disrupting the interior and solving quarterback containment. The edge players must preserve their responsibilities rather than sprinting inside after Henry. The linebackers have to close downhill without overrunning the play.
The secondary may need to tackle well in space when Jackson escapes anyway. A defense can execute two-thirds of that sequence and still watch the quarterback turn a broken pocket into a first down.
