A deep dive into the defensive schemes that Christian Parker brings to the Cowboys

New Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker is generating a lot of excitement already, even though the 34-year old has never called a play in his coaching career. Despite that, it’s not hard to figure out what kind of system Parker will bring to the Cowboys.

A staunch disciple of Vic Fangio, Parker is expected to run the same scheme. He first worked under Fangio when the current Eagles defensive coordinator was the head coach in Denver. When Fangio was fired, one of his other disciples – current Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero – was put in charge of the defense. Even after Evero left for Carolina and Vance Joseph was brought in, head coach Sean Payton asked Joseph to lean on retained assistants like Parker to run the same Fangio principles.

In short, Parker has been coaching this scheme in some capacity for the past five years of his 13 year coaching career. Not every coach runs the exact same scheme as their mentor, and Parker will undoubtedly tweak some things in Dallas, but it’s safe to say the bones of this defense will be what Fangio has dominated with for multiple decades. So let’s take a deep dive into the core tenets of this defense.

Deception is everything

The way Brian Schottenheimer conducted this search was fascinating. Of the four reported finalists, two of them (Jim Leonhard and Daronte Jones) had direct ties to Vance Joseph and Baylor head coach Dave Aranda, while the other two (Jonathan Gannon and Parker) had strong ties to Fangio. Joseph and Aranda have built their defensive careers on loaded boxes with exotic simulated pressures in front of middle-of-field-closed coverage shells. Fangio is known for very light boxes and middle-of-field-open coverage shells.

Yet both approaches put a premium on deception. Leonhard and Jones have predicated their defenses on crowding the line of scrimmage pre-snap and tricking the quarterback about who’s rushing him. Fangio takes a different approach, showing pretty much the same look every play but running very different concepts each time.

At the end of the day, though, Parker comes from a lineage where deception is everything. His goal is to show the offense one thing and do something completely different. This entire scheme is built on changing the picture after the ball is snapped, very similar philosophically to what both Dan Quinn and Mike Zimmer did in Dallas not too long ago. Everything that Parker will do as coordinator will start the question of how to best deceive the quarterback.

Heavy line, light box

One of the ways Fangio deceives offenses is in the way he aligns the front. His philosophy is built on showing a light box – meaning one or two linebackers on the field – and daring teams to run the ball or throw into the middle of the field. They do that because they know they’ll occupy that area anyway, and Fangio is goading the offense into going exactly where they’ll have bodies.

In order to succeed with this approach, though, the scheme requires stout defensive line play. Linemen who play in this system have to be able to hold up against the run. The scheme employs what’s called gap-and-a-half technique, a half measure between one-gap and two-gap, which effectively asks defensive linemen to hold at the point of attack until they know whether it’s a run or pass. Once the play is committed, linemen have to shed and attack according to their responsibilities on that play call.

That’s a departure from what the Cowboys have been doing lately. Both Zimmer and Matt Eberflus utilized heavy one-gap attacking techniques, and even Quinn used a great deal of it despite having used gap-and-a-half principles more frequently when he was the Seahawks defensive coordinator.

Typically, Fangio defenses require bigger bodies along the defensive line to best execute these schemes. He also makes extensive use of what’s called the penny front, which has five men on the line of scrimmage with just one linebacker. Typically this manifests with three interior defensive linemen – in Dallas, that would be Quinnen Williams, Osa Odighizuwa, and Kenny Clark – and two EDGE players, either standing up or putting a hand in the dirt.

Fangio, who rarely blitzes, usually drops one of his EDGE players out of this look rather than send all five after the quarterback. That said, two of his disciples – the aforementioned Evero, as well as current Saints defensive coordinator Brandon Staley – have routinely blitzed at or just above the league average. Either way, the five-man fronts innate to this scheme present problems to the way offenses approach their blocking schemes.

Another key part of the light boxes not becoming a liability is the way Fangio tree coaches use their nickel position. Effective nickels in this scheme have to have the ability to fill the run and cover the middle of the field well. In some ways, they’re almost an extra linebacker, akin to some of the “star” positions that are common in the college level with 4-2-5 and 3-3-5 hybrid defenses.

The specific utility of the nickel can be dictated by several factors, specifically the strength of the secondary overall. In Philadelphia, Fangio and Parker used Cooper DeJean in that role and employed a healthy amount of zone coverage as a result; Staley, with the Rams, put Jalen Ramsey in the role and used man coverage at a high rate.

Whoever ultimately fills this crucial role (we have one suggestion) in Dallas for Parker, they will be a key cog in the scheme and its ability to work as intended. In the same way that this scheme needs the defensive linemen to hold their own against the run, the nickel has to be able to handle the multiple different responsibilities without being overwhelmed.

Numbers game in the secondary

Talk of the nickel position brings us to the secondary as a whole, which is where this defensive approach shines the most. Deception is once again key, with coverage disguises being so routine that it’s almost a surprise when the pre-snap two-high shell ends up being just a two-high coverage structure.

The Fangio scheme is predicated on its use of split field coverages, which basically employs two different kind of coverages on either side of the field. Cover 6 and Cover 9 are the de facto base coverages for Fangio, and they’re the same type of coverage but just flipped. Both employ quarters (two deep defenders) to one side and halves (one deep defender) to the other side, they just change up which side of the play is quarters.

The reason these coverage types are so common in this defense is because the entire coverage philosophy is built on gaining a numbers advantage in the passing game. Staley once described this while with the Rams as striving to create a two-on-one matchup against any receiver. The split field coverages help achieve that.

In today’s NFL, offenses are running more 3×1 sets (three pass catchers to one side of the ball) than ever before. Often, the three are lining up in condensed splits too, a method for deterring jam techniques.

With Cover 6, the defense plays quarters to the side with three pass catchers, which provides two deep defenders and at least two other defenders to that side, creating a 4v3 advantage. On the other side, where the one receiver is isolated, the defense plays halves, meaning just the one deep defender and the cornerback who’s lined up on that side, creating a 2v1 advantage.

There are, as you can see in the attached play sheets, a litany of variations off of this base coverage look. The strength of the Fangio system is the way they bake their match techniques into these coverage schemes, empowering the defense to adapt on the fly to the different routes being run.

Installing a pattern match technique is difficult, as it requires high IQ players in the secondary and clear communication, both from the coaches teaching it and from the players to each other. That’s one major way in which Parker’s background as a teacher and communicator will come in handy, and it already has in his career up to this point.

One big issue the Cowboys had this past season was a lack of numbers advantages in the secondary. Too often, Eberflus’ predictable coverages got exploited and created a one-on-one matchup between receiver and defender, at which point it was just a matter of who had the better positioning or speed.

That won’t be a problem under Parker, at least as long he’s able to implement this scheme successfully. Everything is built on deception, both upfront and in the secondary, and it’s a big reason why Fangio has had so much success throughout his lengthy career. Now, Parker hopes to launch his own career as a coordinator, and the Cowboys can benefit greatly from it.