Micah Parsons or not, Matt Eberflus’ return to Chicago showed Cowboys defensive problems run deeper than one player

As the Chicago Bears' offense retook the field with 4:21 left in the first quarter, Caleb Williams pitched a snap to running back D’Andre Swift then squared up to assess the defense.

Williams waited for a pitch back that seemed to hang, winding up and then mailing a pass 47 air yards down the left sideline.

Rookie Luther Burden III caught the heave and powered the rest of the way to a 65-yard score.

The Bears had already scored on a wide-open 35-yard Rome Odunze catch earlier in the quarter. Now, before the first quarter expired, Williams had thrown touchdowns of 30-plus yards on consecutive snaps. This was a game plan very much by design.

“We have gadgets up every week, I give the staff a lot of credit,” Bears head coach Ben Johnson said after Chicago’s 31-14 win that was more lopsided than the final box score suggested. “They’re going through, they’re watching the tape and they’re finding out things that may or may not fit.

“Whether it was Dallas this year or some of the stuff we were watching of Chicago’s defense from yesteryear … that was really a staff find and we worked it all week and felt really comfortable calling it this week.”

A film study of Dallas’ Week 2 overtime win against the New York Giants showed plainly: Big plays are the Cowboys defense’s Achilles heel.

New York Giants quarterback Russell Wilson hadn’t dinked and dunked his way to 450 yards and three touchdowns a week prior. Wilson had scorched the Cowboys for seven completions of 20-plus yards including three scores.

Fielding a more athletic quarterback still building toward his prime, the Bears realized they could exploit that and more.

So Chicago practiced the flea-flicker deep dive all week … with mixed results.

Williams underthrew Burden on some practice reps and altogether missed him on others. Even so, quarterback told receiver to keep hauling: “You won’t outrun me in the game. Just run.”

When the time came, Burden ran. And Williams hit him.

The Cowboys shouldn’t have been surprised.

“We just didn’t play well, and I told the guys that,” Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer said. “This can be a humbling business if you don’t take care of business, don’t play well.

“We’ve got to stop giving up big plays on defense and we’ve got to stop turning the ball over on offense. It’s a bad formula.”

The Cowboys’ defensive unraveling was extra notable as coordinator Matt Eberflus faced his immediate last employer and schemed against players he drafted, coached and developed as the Bears’ last head coach.

But the Cowboys’ problems stretch far beyond their coordinator’s failed revenge just as they stretch far beyond the loss of edge rusher Micah Parsons, whom Dallas traded seven days before the team’s season opener.

Communication and execution problems have plagued Dallas’ defense in all three of their games. And while kicker Brandon Aubrey’s iron leg bailed them out last week, Tom Brady painted a stark but accurate reality on Sunday’s broadcast.

The Cowboys may be 1-2 on the record books. But they’re “a 64-yard field goal that [Brandon] Aubrey made away,” Brady said, “from being 0-3.”

Chicago Tribune via Getty Images

Despite Eberflus’ experience with Williams, Cowboys allowed best game of Bears QB’s career

A Cowboys offense that lost star receiver CeeDee Lamb to a first-quarter ankle injury failed to rise to the occasion in Chicago.

Three turnovers contributed to a comeback slipping out of reach. But Dallas’ offense had stretches where it balanced the run and pass well, stretches where it was efficient if not explosive.

The Cowboys’ defense, meanwhile, seemed to find new ways to falter each drive.

“It’s a lot of misdirection, a lot of multiplicity,” Brady said during the third-quarter scoring drive that extended Chicago’s lead to 17. “If you’re Eberflus, you’re kinda standing there [wondering], ‘What do we stop?’

“Do we stop the downhill runs to Swift? Do we stop the end arounds? Do we stop DJ Moore in the backfield? Of course they’ve got [Odunze]. They’ve got a lot of guys to deal with, not to mention all the gadget plays that you know Ben Johnson has like 19 more on his call sheet than anybody in the NFL does.”

The Bears used each of their weapons and strategic mismatches to outwit and outlast the Cowboys before taking their collective foot off the gas in the fourth quarter. They scored a 65-yard touchdown in 11 seconds on a one-play drive and they scored a 5-yard touchdown on fourth-and-goal at the end of a nine-minute, 54-second drive.

Williams finished 19 of 28 for 298 yards and four touchdowns in what was, by several marks, the best performance of his 20-game career.

His 142.6 passer rating topped his previous high by 16.4 points, his four touchdowns tying a career-best.

As notably: For the first time since Chicago selected Williams first overall in the 2024 NFL Draft, he escaped an NFL game without a sack. Cowboys fans hoping that Eberflus’ front-row seat to Williams’ league-high 68 sacks last year would have guided an effective pressure plan were disappointed.

“Kudos to the big boys up front …” Williams said of his offensive line. “For me being able to get the ball out, tire the defense out, run the ball well and not be predictable in those situations — from there it’s being able to go out and execute the plays and deal.”

Eberflus and the Cowboys committed to four rushers and a zone defense that allowed Williams ample time to throw and space between targets and their nearest defenders.

On passes more than 2.5 seconds after the snap, Williams finished 14 of 21 for 254 yards and three touchdowns, per Next Gen Stats.

The arm talent that has been hailed as generational was on full display against a defense clueless how to stop it.

If Williams drew any satisfaction from beating his old coach’s defense so resoundingly, he didn’t reveal it.

“Yeah I think I don’t think it really necessarily matters who, when you’re able to have a game as effective as we were able to have on offense,” Williams said. "It feels great, to be honest, whether it was Matt or whether it was any other defensive coordinator, [Brian Flores], or anybody else we’ve played. Or anybody else that we’re going to play.

“When you’re able to go out and score a bunch of points on offense, it’s fun.”

With Micah Parsons return next, Cowboys D will be exposed

Defenders of Eberflus will take pity on a coordinator whose star edge rusher was traded away a week before the season.

That Parsons commanded two first-round draft picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark, even while costing the Green Bay Packers $47 million per year, speaks to the value the league placed on a player of his caliber at a position so premium.

The Cowboys also were without cornerback DaRon Bland against the Bears.

So sure, Eberflus did not have the full complement of players he expected when taking the Dallas coordinator job last January.

But a coach’s job is to tailor game plans in ways that accentuate personnel’s strengths and help minimize exposure to weaknesses.

The Cowboys’ inability to effectively pressure Wilson last week and Williams this week should beg serious questions about whether there’s more than just execution hampering the unit.

The bevy of big plays suggest communication and cognition lapses, too.

“Those big plays, on either side, will eventually take the heart out of you when you get a bunch of them,” Cowboys team owner and general manager Jerry Jones said after Dallas’ loss in Chicago. “I thought a lot of our team really hung in there getting hit on the end of the nose with some big haymakers there.”

What Dallas can and can’t do on defense will be ever apparent next week, when its opponent isn’t simply the coordinator’s last employer.

Rather, the Cowboys host the Packers next week on a nationally televised “Sunday Night Football” showdown.

What Parsons and his squad can do will stand in stark contrast to what the Cowboys without him can’t. Expect a Packers team that dominated its first two games to come in hungry after an upset loss to the Cleveland Browns this week.

Schottenheimer let his team know lapses like the flea flicker are unacceptable. The inability to defend explosives won’t take the Cowboys where they want to go — with or without Parsons.

And the more Dallas shows its top weakness, the more opponents will keep hammering it.

“Just can’t happen,” Schottenheimer said. “There are too many big plays and we know that.

“We certainly did not play well enough to win.”