FRISCO — The need to play more man-to-man defense was answered by Cowboys defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus.
The Cowboys played man-to-man defense a season-high 49.2% in their victory over Washington, according to Tru Media.
Does it mean the Cowboys will play more man-to-man going forward?
“It’s always about matchups,” Eberflus said Thursday. “It’s always about matchups. It’s about going to be about that. It’s a matchup league and we got to make sure we understand that and make sure we ask our guys to do what they can do and do that and make it a strength.”
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The corners, mainly Trevon Diggs and DaRon Bland, asked for more man coverage over the heavy zone scheme Eberflus used in the first six weeks of the season.
With Diggs missing the Washington game with a concussion, Bland and Kaiir Elam got the start against the Commanders, who were missing Deebo Samuel and Terry McLaurin with injuries.
Coach Brian Schottenheimer said the Cowboys played more man-to-man against Washington because of data gathered by analytics.
“You know every week is different, last week we played more man-to-man because it was the right thing to do,” Eberflus said. “Obviously when you can do that, you’re tighter in windows and stuff like that, we’ve done some more on third down as of late. But the guys did a nice job of executing and it was important to go forward that have multiple things in our package. We can do man pressures, zone pressures and the guys did a good job of executing.”
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