Cowboys’ Mike Nolan hopeful despite mounting evidence

When Mike McCarthy was fleshing out his coaching staff for the Dallas Cowboys, it’s clear he put a big emphasis on experience. Four of his hires had at least some experience as a head coach. One of them was Mike Nolan, a football lifer who has been employed in the NFL in some form or fashion since 1987.

Maybe experience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The hiring of retread coaches is a long standing tradition across sports. The easiest way to get hired for the job is if you held it previously, no matter the results. Sure it helps to be successful, but that doesn’t seem to be a requirement. Just look at the Cowboys defensive coordinator and his DVOA resume when he’s running the show:

DVOA, defense-adjusted value over average, is an advanced metric from Football Outsiders that puts in perspective performance based on both game situation and opponent quality. Through three weeks, the Cowboys’ defense is ranked No. 17 in 2020.

The average Nolan defense over the last 21 years has been, well average, and has ranked No. 16 in the league. All it took for him to run an elite defense was having Ray Lewis and Ed Reed on the Baltimore Ravens, which was so long ago rookie wide receiver CeeDee Lamb was just five years old.

His last stop with the Atlanta Falcons was a true horror show and might be what the Cowboys are in for going forward. Here’s Nolan on his team’s performance through three weeks:

I still think they’re good. I kind of judge it by the way they play and I thought our guys played very hard to the very end, which they’ve done for three weeks now. And I think they do believe that there’s a lot of really good football in there. But as we all well know, the ones that score points are the ones that get the most attention. And that’s what we’ve got to get better at because obviously it’s a game of points.

Thanks. It is a game of points. And so far the Dallas defense is allowing 32.3 points per game, good enough to be ranked the third-worst in the league. They’re a Julio Jones drop and a D.K. Metcalf fumble at the goal line away from 14 more points and coming in dead last. They have forced just two turnovers.

There is something to be said about the lack of an offseason hampering defenses, especially those with new systems in place. The four worst defenses in terms of points allowed all have new coordinators. It is possible for this to turn around, but if history is any indication, average is the best fans in Dallas can hope for.