Sunday was the first time in 973 days that Mike Zimmer was back on the sidelines for a regular-season NFL game.
“It was pretty cool,” he said. “When I’m down on the field and the crowd is going and it’s a real-time game, it was pretty cool. I forgot what it was like.”
How long did it take to come back?
“Until that first call,” he said. “Once you make that first call, I’m good. Until then, it’s like that duck that’s paddling under water.”
The Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator couldn’t have asked for a better start to the season. Dallas dominated the Cleveland Browns’ offense, allowing only one first down in the first half as the Cowboys built a 20-3 lead. Things didn’t change much in the final two quarters of the 33-17 Dallas win. Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson ended up being hit 17 times and sacked six as he threw for only 169 yards and posted a 51.1 passer rating. The Browns were 2 of 15 on third down and averaged only 2.7 yards per pass play. Dallas also won the turnover battle 2-0.
“They played extremely hard, which they always have,” Zimmer said of his group. “I was very impressed.”
A significant part of Dallas’ success over the last three seasons was the defensive improvement under Dan Quinn. The Cowboys took the ball away and got after the quarterback as well as any NFL team. But they struggled to stop the run too often and turned in arguably their worst performance of the last three years in January against the Green Bay Packers.
Dallas’ offense gets a lot of attention. And it’s deserving when franchise quarterback Dak Prescott and star wide receiver CeeDee Lamb recently sign deals that make them the highest-paid player and second-highest paid non-quarterback in the league. But the possibility of the defense taking another step in Zimmer’s first season is what could potentially make the difference in January. The group that was on the field Sunday in Cleveland looked very capable of making that jump from good defense to elite.
Everything starts with Micah Parsons and he looked every bit of the NFL Defensive Player of the Year candidate he’s been the previous three seasons. DeMarcus Lawrence got after Watson like a player ready to have a double-digit sack season. Trevon Diggs picked up where he left off before last year’s season-ending knee injury. Eric Kendricks appeared to be exactly what the defense has been missing at the linebacker position. DeMarvion Overshown was flying around like a first-round pick. Jourdan Lewis was outstanding. Caelen Carson played nothing like a rookie. And Zimmer was very complimentary of the safety position.
Of course, this team will be judged by what happens in December and January. There have been plenty of strong starts that had no impact late in the year. But if there were any questions about players buying into Zimmer’s changes, they were answered with that performance Sunday afternoon. Zimmer noted Monday that everyone wasn’t immediately on board during the offseason. But a big part of his coaching is going into great detail about why he has each player doing each job on each play. Even he was a little curious to see how practice would carry over to the game.
“You go out there and stink up the joint and (players) start to question you,” he said. “I feel like they have a good grasp on things. Just trying to do the best we can to stop the other team.”
dialed up the LB blitz 💪@erickendricks6 gets to the qb!
📺: #DALvsCLE on FOX
📲: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/LvklCbYJ1e pic.twitter.com/juB8t7rgLP— Dallas Cowboys (@dallascowboys) September 8, 2024
Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy liked the idea of hiring Zimmer in February for a number of reasons. At the top of the list was their experience going against each other when McCarthy was in Green Bay and Zimmer was in Minnesota and McCarthy’s preference to have a former head coach running the defense.
“I’ve always enjoyed our competition with the scheme that he brought here,” McCarthy said. “I think with our success the three years prior, you’re always trying to adjust and evolve. Nothing stays the same and I just thought it would be a really natural shift for us schematically defensively. I think you saw some of that come to life (Sunday). Just his history here in Dallas, that was a very mutual connection for him to come back here, too.
“Personally, we both have daughters. He’s a little more grumpier than I am. No, I think there are a number of different things that I thought it was a very good choice.”
McCarthy was joking with the grumpy comment, but Zimmer has a reputation of being an old-school coach who’s not afraid to rip into a player. Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady experienced that during his 20 years being coached by Bill Belichick. He thinks that style of coaching is a good thing. He mentioned it Sunday while talking about Zimmer during his first NFL game in the broadcast booth for Fox.
“You are in the league and you are a great player, but it’s nice to have that accountability from a coach too,” Brady said. “If you want to be a great player, you want to be pushed. You want to be challenged. You want to be criticized. ‘Hey, you didn’t show up to practice today and do the job we needed you to do. And if you don’t do it on this day, it’s not going to go well on Sunday.’ I was the beneficiary of a lot of that hard coaching. Discipline and accountability are mainstays in any successful organization.”
Brady shared those thoughts after giving a lengthy explanation of why Zimmer’s defenses were so difficult for him throughout his career.
“I like everything I’ve seen from the Cowboys’ defense today,” Brady said with about 10 minutes left in the game. “So much of that is the reflection of the coaching. And they were great. Dan Quinn, there’s a reason he got hired as a head coach in Washington. Tremendous coordinator himself. But when you bring in Mike Zimmer, he’s one of the most challenging coordinators I ever went against in my career. So many mental gymnastics that you got to go through as a quarterback to understand who is coming, who is not coming.
“There is just so much scheme challenge that he does. Things kind of look the same with the blitz packages, and then he’s got guys coming from the right. And then he shows a similar look and then they come from the left. And then he shows a similar look and they all drop out and play defense. You just get guessing as a quarterback. When you can occupy the mind space of a quarterback and slow the processing down, it creates a lot of problems. You become reactionary as a quarterback. Good quarterbacks like to play with anticipation.
“He’s one of the guys that forces you to hold the ball and wait for it to get open, and that’s not where you want to be as a starting quarterback.”
Throughout training camp, Cowboys players on both sides of the ball mentioned Zimmer’s disguises being the biggest difference from their defenses in previous seasons. They’ve caused problems from legends like Brady and clearly did for Watson on Sunday. Although the team isn’t looking this far down the line, it’s easy to wonder how that could be the difference in a January game against Matthew Stafford, Jordan Love, Jared Goff, Brock Purdy or Jalen Hurts.
“It’s a defense that frustrated me all camp long,” Prescott said. “We had our days against them, but they had some days against us. Their strength is confusing the quarterback. When you can do that for a split second, and you have the pass rush that we have, it’s awesome. I just think about playing Zim for a long time and you’re never going to put up a lot of points on Zim. So now that he’s on our side, it feels good, just knowing that we go in there and we do our job, and more times than not, it’s going to be enough.”
(Photo: Nick Cammett / Getty Images)
