I'll be the first to tell you that I absolutely hate the pseudo explanation many fans and media members run to whenever an NFL team unexpectedly loses: They must've gotten overconfident!
Nine times out of ten, it's a lazy explanation and a shortcut to explaining a football game, which has so many moving pieces and is extremely difficult to evaluate in all of its faces.
But you know what? After thinking about it and discussing it with some smart football people, maybe the Dallas Cowboys did get overconfident against the New Orleans Saints. I'll explain.
Earlier on Tuesday, I wrote a post detailing how the team's official stance on why linebacker DeMarvion Overshown didn't see the field as much as he did in a remarkable Week 1 performance lacked logic. In it, I shared a quote from Cowboys defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer from Monday's press conference, in which he oddly claimed the team didn't expect to use many base down packages (think a 4-3 look, meaning three linebackers on the field instead of the two you get in nickel looks when you use three cornerbacks) against the Saints.
"This week (vs Saints) we didn't anticipate being in quite so many base down packages," Zimmer told reporters as part of a larger point on not using Overshown as much as we expected.
But let's push the Overshown storyline aside for another day and ask ourselves: How on Earth did they not expect to be in as much base? It was no secret the Saints hired Klint Kubiak, a former passing game coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers that graduated in the Shanahan wide zone offense, a scheme that consistently forces defenses to play base with sets featuring multiple tight ends and running backs.
We saw proof of it in in Week 1 when the Saints used 11 personnel (three wide receivers) only 32% of the snaps, which ranked 30th in the league, per Sports Info Solutions. Meanwhile, they used 12 personnel, 21 personnel, or 22 personnel 61% of the time, all of which call for base defense to be used.
And here's the thing: I don't believe for a second the Cowboys didn't know about it. They obviously studied the film. They obviously have the same data (and unbelievably much more of it, by the way), than the way I'm laying out above. This led to me coming to a conclusion in my previous post: They had to be lying to us about Overshown and used this as an excuse.
But shoutout to Tom Downey from Cowboys Report by Chat Sports, who shared the following tweet in response to my post on Zimmer: "This team fully expected to shut them down on defense, have that ball control offense and get them into a negative game script like Week 1."
I gotta tell you, Tom is probably right.
The Cowboys had to know the Saints offense would want to get them to play base defense. But maybe they expected to take care of business early on and get on the driver's seat just like they did against the Browns, when they led 20-3 at halftime. Surely, that way the Saints would be forced to drop back and pass and the Cowboys would be happy to play nickel defense.
Otherwise, why would you not expect to need to play base defense against the team that played the third-lowest rate of 11 personnel in the entire league?
Instead, the Saints punched the Cowboys in the mouth as Derek Carr had to drop back 18 times for his offense to score 44 points, 12 of which were play action attempts and four were screen passes. So yeah, if that was the plan... well. You get it.
Again, I'm no fan of explaining a football game with a simple statement like claiming they got overconfident. But Tom's theory is the only one that explains Zimmer's odd comment about not anticipating playing that much base.
