Cowboys’ Matt Eberflus Gives Plan to Fix Defense Amid Early Struggles
To start the season, the Dallas Cowboys‘ defense has been one of the worst in the NFL. They allowed 30 points to the Carolina Panthers last Sunday, perhaps the worst showing they had on that side of the football this season.
The Panthers are a decent team, but giving up 183 rushing yards to former Cowboys running back Rico Dowdle is inexcusable, despite him having an excellent two weeks.
As the Cowboys continue to find ways to improve defensively, defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus is the man in charge of trying to fix things. According to Eberflus, he’s not happy with how the defense has looked, and it’s not up to the standards of what the Cowboys have set in the past.
“Thought a couple weeks ago we took a step forward versus the Jets,” Eberflus said, per Dallas News. “Last week, obviously, disappointed in that performance.
“It’s not to our standard how we played last week.”
Cowboys Are In a Tough Spot Defensively
Eberflus has a tough job, as the Dallas Cowboys don’t exactly have a ton of talent on the defensive side of the football.
In his defense, the unit was expected to be below average entering the season. Still, after his failed stint as head coach of the Chicago Bears, he continues to face criticism, suggesting he might not be a great coach.
Brian Schottenheimer wanted to quiet those takes, saying that he’s a great coach,
“I’ve been Matt,” coach Schottenheimer said, per the team. “I’ve been a coordinator. And I’ve been where people are calling you out and saying you don’t know how to coach and, ‘Man, this guy is the worst coach in history.’
“Matt Eberflus is a damn good football coach. We have to perform better. But I’ve been him, so part of me being in (the defensive meeting room) is to help as an asset, to tell him, ‘I believe in him. I understand what he’s going through.’ It sucks. It’s no fun. We’re gonna ride this thing out. And we’ll play better. We really will.”
Should the Cowboys Make Changes?
Regarding what potential changes the Dallas Cowboys can make, nothing is off the table, according to Eberflus.
“When your performance has been inconsistent or not to the standard, you certainly look at everything,” Eberflus said about the defense. “You try to find solutions. That’s the coach’s job to get that done. Nothing is off the table.”
Some have wondered if the Cowboys will go out and make a move for a defensive player over the next few weeks before the Nov. 4 trade deadline, but Eberflus stayed consistent in his words, stating that there are changes in the building to make.
The next three weeks will show if that happens, but the Cowboys can’t afford to let this defense continue performing this poorly.
“We know the solutions are in the room,” Eberflus said. “There’s not a magic pill there. We just have to make sure we do a great job of working together and being together and making sure the plan is tight and effective. That’s all of us working together.”
Colts' move fans slammed is quickly turning into a masterstroke
Indianapolis Colts’ fans haven’t had all that much to cheer about since Andrew Luck’s surprise retirement after the 2018 season. One of the more pleasant stories in those drab days concerned Will Fries.
Fries was selected in the seventh round of the 2021 draft. The end of the seventh round, just ten spots away from being Mr. Irrelevant. The last of 13 guards taken that year. Nonetheless, Fries was starting at right guard by his second season and was firmly entrenched by his third. He did it with hard work, toughness, and smarts. It was the kind of make-good story everyone loves.
When he got hurt in 2024, it put both the player and the team in a bit of a bind. Fries’s rookie contract was up. He was scheduled to be a free agent. What would the market be? A steady young guard on the rise. An injury. Could Chris Ballard afford to re-sign him? That’s the standard blueprint, isn’t it? Identify a quality player in the draft, develop him, and lock him up long term. Then repeat the process at another position.
Matt Goncalves is making Indianapolis Colts’ fans forget all about Will Fries
In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 season, many publications urged Ballard to make retaining Fries a priority. Many fans agreed. Sign him, and the team is set at guard for the foreseeable future. But it soon became clear that despite his injury, the price tag for Fries was going to be high. Ballard had a tough decision.
In hindsight, two things probably impacted what the GM chose to do. The first was the reality of roster construction in the salary cap era. The second was the presence of Matt Goncalves.
The Colts were already paying left guard Quenton Nelson commensurate with what a future Hall of Famer still in his prime deserves. Shelling out major dollars to the right guard would throw the roster balance out of whack. Few teams can afford to have so much of their cap space devoted to two interior linemen.
Ballard needed to extend left tackle Bernhard Raimann, and that was going to be very difficult if he was to equal the market price for Fries. Minnesota ended up signing Fries to a five-year, $87 million deal, roughly half of which was guaranteed. Though bonuses reduce his cap hit this season to a little under six million, it will balloon in subsequent years into the $20 million range.
Meanwhile, Matt Goncalves was about to enter his second year. The 2024 third-round pick out of Pittsburgh still had three years left on a rookie contract that owed him a little over a million dollars per season. Clearly, he was a better bargain. The question was, could he play?
Goncalves entered the league as a tackle. In his rookie year, that’s where he took his snaps. When Fries went down last year, another rookie – UDFA Dalton Tucker – picked up some of the slack. Late in the season, the team brought Mark Glowinski back to town to provide some veteran play. But neither Glowinski nor Tucker looked like a viable option to start in 2025.
A plan emerged to shift Goncalves inside to right guard. Shifting a college tackle to guard is fairly common in today’s NFL. The Cowboys' Tyler Smith made the transition and then made the Pro Bowl. One of the veterans Ballard was urged to sign this offseason – the since-retired Brandon Scherff – was a college tackle who became an All-Pro guard in the NFL.
So far, the move has worked even better than most fans could have hoped. Despite a relatively poor game against Arizona in Week 6, Goncalves currently grades out as the 24th-best guard in the league, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required). That has him ranked ahead of the aforementioned Tyler Smith as well as Carolina’s Robert Hunt – both Pro Bowlers in 2024.
Even more significantly, he is ranked twelve spots ahead of Will Fries.
PFF rankings are not perfect. Matt Goncalves, rankings aside, may not be better than Will Fries. But that ranking, combined with the eye test, is a pretty good indicator of the fact that Ballard made the right decision. Goncalves is pairing with Nelson (second in the PFF rankings) to give Indianapolis one of the best guard tandems in the league.
And at just 24 years old, he has nowhere to go but up.
