Dallas Cowboys: Projected starting lineup leaves no excuses in 2019
By Chris Hill
The Cowboys surprised the league last year by turning in a top ten performance with a lot of young talent. That talent is a year more mature and the sky is the limit.
Dealing with all three levels, let’s look at the defensive line first. We have to start with All-Pro defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence, one of the best in the league against both the pass and the run.
Lawrence was dominant last year and was listed as a top ten candidate in the NFL.com rankings for NFL Defensive Player of the Year. This year he will be joined by former All-Pro defensive end Robert Quinn who has a 19 sack season on his résumé. You can read about him impact in my earlier article: 3 reasons to be excited about Dallas Cowboys training camp.
The Cowboys invested a second round draft pick on University of Central Florida defensive tackle Trysten Hill. He struggled to make any splash plays in his first preseason game, but combined with defensive tackles Tyrone Crawford, Maliek Collins, and Antwan Woods, defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli will have a stable to work with. Defensive line – better in 2019.
The linebacker corps is simply one of the best in the NFL with Leighton Vander Esch, Jaylon Smith, and Sean Lee. Times have changed as Lee, a former All-Pro, is clearly the third best linebacker in this group. Paired together, Vander Esch and Smith have a legitimate argument for the best linebacker duo in the entire league. Lee will slide over the strong side and with fewer snaps could be fresher and hopefully play at an elite level for 16 games. Linebackers – better in 2019.
The Dallas Cowboys secondary is the one area that most will point to having a weakness on defense. Let’s just address it up front. It is a fact that Jeff Heath is statistically one of the worst safeties in the game as he was rated 80th in the league by pff.com mainly due to 19 missed tackles.
Prior to the Prescott and Elliott contract negotiations, Heath was the talk of the offseason based on the experts view that replacing him with then free agent safety Earl Thomas would make the Cowboys an instant Super Bowl contender. Thomas has since signed with the Baltimore Ravens and every sign points to Heath being the starter.
However, the rest of the secondary is very strong as Daniel Rymer points out on pff.com with cornerback Byron Jones ranking 7th out of 131 cornerbacks in the NFL. With so many pass happy offenses, Dallas is well positioned with a bevy of above average young corners like Chidobe Awuzie, Anthony Brown, and Jourdan Lewis. Passing game coordinator Kris Richard has made this group an aggressive strength of the team.
The last member of this group is free safety Xavier Woods. While most saw Earl Thomas as a replacement for Heath, actually Woods plays the natural position for Thomas and he spoke about it with Lindsay Draper as quoted by Burke Downer in cowboyswire.usatoday.com:
"“[What fans say] doesn’t really affect me It’s just more of what comes from inside this building. I was told some things, and then seen other things. So I mean I just felt like that was disrespectful to me, but all in all, I just use it as motivation. I feel like this year is gonna be a big year for me."
All the chatter coming out of camp and the few plays we saw in the first preseason game against the San Francisco 49ers confirm Woods is playing on another level. So far in training camp, the extra motivation and hard has resulted in sideline to sideline coverage resulting in takeaways as reported by Rob Phillips on dallascowboys.com. Defensive backs – better in 2019.