One day after the Dallas Cowboys’ defense took the defending Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams to the woodshed last Sunday in a 22-10 beatdown, defensive coordinator Dan Quinn spoke about one thing edge-rusher Demarcus Lawrence said postgame, and what that meant regarding the defense as a whole.

“I did see one quote that was very interesting,” Quinn said. “About, ‘Who’s the next him?’ Meaning all of the players. That speaks to the unselfish nature of the group, and it speaks to the entire crew — just how deep and how hard we roll. Knowing that it may be somebody different next week to be counted upon in a different role next week. I thought that was a pretty accurate description about the ‘him’ — they could all be the ‘him.’ We play guys in different roles and in different ways. If you key too much on one person, the next one is ready to attack.”

That has been exactly the case for a defense that no opponent has been able to figure out this season. Whoever the next ‘him’ is from week to week, it’s working historically well. The Cowboys have allowed just five touchdowns this season — that’s an average of one touchdown per game.

Dallas has only given up five touchdowns in its first five games of 2022, joining the 1972 Cowboys team as the only teams in franchise history to give up five touchdowns-or-less in the first five games of the season.

— Dallas Cowboys Public Relations (@DallasCowboysPR) October 10, 2022

Dallas stands at 4-1 on the season despite an offense that has been limited, to say the least, with Cooper Rush replacing Dak Prescott at quarterback for most of the season, and that’s all about the defense. The things that used to define the Cowboys in recent years — Prescott’s excellence, a dominant offensive line, and a highly effective run game — have been anywhere from inconsistent to nonexistent in 2022.

What has arisen is Quinn’s defense, and the next ‘him’ could indeed come from just about anywhere. Dallas has perhaps the NFL’s best edge-rusher in Micah Parsons, and cornerback Trevon Diggs has been an interception machine (if somewhat spotty in coverage), but the real sub-story of this defense is how many other players are ascending in their roles.

After the Rams game, head coach Mike McCarthy proved that he knew what was up.

“Defensively, I thought we were outstanding, consistent, and all fought [in the] game. They are definitely the straw that’s stirring this drink. We felt strongly coming out [of] last year about our group and [we] had a great offseason and everything leading up to this. But, boy, they’re just playing lights out. We expected a heavy run game coming from the Rams. But when we had the opportunity to pressure, I thought our guys were outstanding.”

If the defense overall is the sub-story, what’s above the fold? It’s not that the Cowboys’ defense is great — that defense was great last season, ranking second in DVOA in Quinn’s first season of 2021 after ranking 23rd under Mike Nolan in 2020. The really interesting thing is to what degree Quinn and his staff have erased their previous schematic tendencies, playing against type over and over, and with remarkable success.

Let’s get into how Dan Quinn remade himself when he didn’t even need to.

Though five games, Quinn’s 2022 defense is tied with the 49ers for the most solo sacks with 20. The Cowboys have the NFL’s most quarterback hits with 61, and they also have the NFL’s most quarterback hurries with 61. No defense has more total pressures than Dallas’ 142, and when opposing quarterbacks are pressured by this defense, they’re completing just 22 of 60 passes for 211 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 33.4 — third-best in the league, behind only the Eagles and Falcons.

In Dallas’ case, there are multiple reasons for this. The primary reason is that Quinn has eschewed blitzes for stunts.

This season, the Cowboys have run a total of 124 stunts. 90 of those stunts have come on passing plays. They have blitzed without stunting on just 25 passing plays, and blitzed with stunts on 22 passing attempts. They have blitzed with stunts on 33 total plays, and blitzed without stunts on 54 total plays.

If you suspect that the Cowboys have run the most stunts in the NFL this season, you’re on the right track — they’re doing so by a crushing margin. Per Pro Football Focus (via Fran Duffy’s Eagle Eye in the Sky podcast), the 49ers rank second with 82 stunts, then the Texans with 81, the Bears with 78, and the Steelers with 77.

Quinn is leaving his four and five down linemen to eat with all kinds of line games, allowing him to call coverage and run fits for six or seven defenders. Dallas has blitzed on just 19% of their defensive snaps, which ranks 23rd in the league. In 2021, they blitzed on 27% of their snaps, which ranked 11th.

What does this mean? The Cowboys have solved one of the most important defensive issues of any era — how to get pressure with only your pressure defenders, leaving your coverage defenders to cover.

Eight of the Cowboys’ 20 sacks this season have come without a blitz, but with stunts. This started in Week 1 against Tom Brady and the Buccaneers. Micah Parsons got the sack because he’s an alien, and he beat left tackle Josh Wells one-on-one, but the way defensive tackles Osa Odighizuwa and Quinton Bohanna free Odighizuwa to penetrate up the middle had Odighizuwa half a step behind Dallas’ most fearsome pass-rusher.

In Week 3, Dallas was expert in messing up the Giants’ interior protections with stunts, once again presenting favorable one-on-one looks for edge defenders. Odighizuwa and Bohanna are once again the force multipliers, and this time, it’s Demarcus Lawrence who gets the best path to the quarterback, beating rookie first-round right tackle Evan Neal around the arc to get to Daniel Jones.

There’s one more quarterback who fell victim to Quinn’s stunts more than any other this season, but we’re holding that for the time being to make an additional point down the road.

Most defensive coaches and coordinators have defined coverage types from season to season and throughout their careers. Bill Belichick may run more iterations of zone or match in a period of time because of his personnel or league trends, but you know that deep down, he wants to play aggressive man coverage. Wherever Gus Bradley goes (he’s currently the Colts’ defensive coordinator), you’re going to see a ton of Cover-3, whether it makes sense or not. This year it doesn’t; the Colts have run the second-most Cover-3 snaps in the NFL behind the Falcons, and they’ve allowed three touchdowns to no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 118.7 in Cover-3.

If Lovie Smith is in charge of your team, your defenders are going to play a lot of Cover-2, and even more Tampa-2 (Cover-2 with a linebacker dropping deep up the middle). The Texans did this even before Smith joined the team in 2021, whether it made sense or not. This year, it does — the Texans have allowed no touchdowns with three interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 45.4 in Cover-2.

Over the past two seasons, Quinn has proven to be far more malleable. In 2021, the Cowboys played a higher rate of Cover-1 (man with a single-high safety) than any other team in the league — 201 opponent passing attempts, and 37.29% of their total. This season, only the Texans (Lovie Smith’s team) have played more Cover-2 than the Cowboys — Dallas has done so on 45 opponent passing attempts, and 30% of the time. As you can see from the metrics below, most of the Cowboys’ other coverage rates are in the ballpark from season to season, but the switch from single-high man to two-high zone is drastic.

While this does align to a degree with the NFL moving to more two-high coverage in recent years, the extent to which Quinn has shifted his primary paradigm is, once again, way off the map. Per Sports Info Solutions, NFL defenses ran some kind of two-deep coverage last season on 33.8% of all opponent passing attempts. This season, that rate has raised to 36.2%. Notable, but hardly radical.

The nightmare scenario for Cowboys opponents, therefore, is that not only has Quinn completely changed so many aspects of his defense, but also that he and his staff have coached it all up so well.

What has Quinn and his players done with all this Cover-2? Tied pressure and coverage together, as all great defenses must.

If you want to know what fresh hell the Cowboys are giving opposing quarterbacks out of Cover-2, you can go ask Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.

In Week 2’s 20-17 Dallas win over Cincinnati, Burrow took six sacks, and every single one of those sacks were against some Cover-2 variant. Burrow didn’t throw a single interception against the Cowboys in 36 passing attempts, but the negative effect was the same in the end — when you throw any kind of two-high at the Bengals’ offense, the Bengals’ offense doesn’t work.

As you would expect, Burrow was trying to time things out against base rush numbers (four on the floor), and drop-seven coverage looks that gave him very little oxygen downfield. This was the root cause of Dorance Armstrong’s 11-yard sack of Burrow with 1:13 left in the first half.

This was a six-man pressure look pre-snap, and then, linebacker Leighton Vander Esch and safety Israel Mukuamu dropped into hook coverage. Parsons and fellow edge-rusher Dante Fowler Jr. each ran inside stunts on this play (more stunts!), but the Bengals’ offensive line picked them both up. Burrow bailed out of the pocket because he didn’t see what he wanted to see, and Armstrong got the sack because he chased Burrow most successfully after the play broke down.

One of Parsons’ two sacks in this game was predicated on Burrow once again getting a two-deep look he did not like. On first-and-15 with 13:21 left in the third quarter, the Cowboys actually ran Tampa-2 with Vander Esch dropping up the chute, the cornerbacks matching across. and the safeties rolling deep. This time, it was Armstrong and Neville Gallimore with the end-tackle stunt to the other side, and he who hesitates against Micah Parsons is lost.

“That feels just as good,” Parsons said after the Bengals game, when asked about creating opportunities for others. “It’s all a team in here. One lion can’t do it by himself. You need a pride. It’s just like when 10 hyenas go after one lion, the lion is liable to lose. The fact that I’ve got 10 other guys other that I feel that I can rely on, that’s what makes this boat go round. That was cool for Leighton because I knew exactly we were going to set it up. We drew it up knowing they were going to crash in on me. That’s just mastering the game plan. That’s just how to feed off each other. That’s what teamwork is.”

So… if you’re keeping track, this defense has demolished the two teams who appeared in last season’s Super Bowl over a month-long stretch. Not bad work if you can pull it off. Another way in which the Cowboys are vexing even the game’s best quarterbacks is with the use of disguised coverages. This affected both Burrow and Stafford, and every quarterback dealing with this defense from now on should expect to see a ton of it.

Quinn has become a mad scientist in the ways he’ll change the picture for quarterbacks pre- and post-snap. Not just with the aforementioned stunts affecting protection rules over and over, but also with disguised coverage looks in which safeties flip to other looks after the snap. When both of these things happen in concert, a quarterback has to deal with the downfall of his protection and the fact that what he saw pre-snap downfield is not at all what is the case post-snap downfield.

More often than not, that leads to quarterback disaster, because this defense is so well-coached in its disguises.

Opposing quarterbacks against the Cowboys when Dallas flips its safeties post-snap this season: 26 of 38 for 217 yards, no TD, 2INT, no explosive plays, and a passer rating of 60.9. pic.twitter.com/04sFusdCie

— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) October 12, 2022

Spinning coverage against Carson Wentz seems almost unfair, and both of Wentz’s interceptions against the Cowboys in Week 4 came on looks he did not expect. Here, with 5:36 left in the game, Wentz was presented with a Cover-3 look pre-snap, only to find that safeties Malik Hooker and Donovan Wilson were each dropping into deep coverage, with safety Israel Mukuamu, linebacker Anthony Barr, and slot defender Daron Bland all dropping into intermediate coverage.

Yet more stunts and exchanges up front (check out how Barr and Sam Williams flipped their line/box responsibilities), and Wentz just wanted to get the ball out to Curtin Samuel over the middle. Bland turned that into a mistake on Wentz’s part. but it seemed that wherever Wentz threw the ball, it was going to be a Bad Idea.

Tom Brady had some reasonably big plays against Dallas’ flipped coverages in Week 1, because he’s Tom Brady and he’s seen everything and can still beat it all, but even the GOAT was flustered by this stuff at times. Brady would see something he didn’t like deep (a 2-Man to Cover-1 flip here), and then hope for the best on the underneath stuff.

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” — Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee would probably appreciate the Cowboys’ defense. Lee was an evangelist for the idea that one should not be beholden to one’s familiar systems or previous thought processes, and I don’t know if anybody in the NFL has done those kinds of switches with more success in the young season than Quinn has. The Cowboys can attack you with all kinds of personnel packages. They can throw man or zone at you, depending on the situation. More often than not, what you see pre-snap is not what you will see post-snap. Middle of the field open or closed? Sure, and you never know which is coming under which circumstance.

Demarcus Lawrence talked about the “next him” him every week in this defense, but that wouldn’t be possible without the “him” who has been completely on point every week.

Dan Quinn is leading the way because he recognized the need for change, even when most in his position would have stayed with the status quo.

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