There are a lot of reasons why the Dallas Cowboys are struggling so much on defense right now. The most obvious answer to their problems will play against them in Week 4 with Micah Parsons and the Green Bay Packers coming to town. Parsons is a generational player who covered up a lot of flaws on the roster over the last four years.
But outside of just Parsons, there is another reason why this defense is among the worst in the league. And that’s been the Cowboys' overconfidence in their ability to draft and replace starters in the previous few years. Missing on several picks, especially in the front seven, has caused the roster to rot, and you are now seeing the effects of poor drafting.
Cowboys let too many good players out of the building
It’s true that you can’t pay everyone. And, as Jerry Jones and Stephen Jones love to remind fans, there is only so much “pie” to go around. Having said that, the Cowboys haven’t done a great job of deciding who gets the pie and who doesn’t (IE, Micah Parsons).
A great example of this is Dorance Armstrong, who was a very productive player in Dallas. He spent the first six years of his career with the Cowboys, and by the end of the 2023 season, Armstrong had become a legit asset to the defense. He tallied 16 sacks between the 2022 and 2023 seasons and was a key member of the special teams units.
Armstrong signed a three-year deal with the Commanders worth $33 million with $22 million in guaranteed money. While that seems like a lot of money on the surface, he’s only the 32nd highest-paid defensive end in the league, according to OverTheCap.com. Armstrong has already recorded three sacks this season, which is one fewer than the Cowboys have as a team through three games.
While sack totals don’t tell the whole story, it’s worth noting that Armstrong is currently the No. 14 graded EDGE rusher in the league among players with at least 120 snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. He’s way out-performing his contract, and he’s one of the NFL’s highest-graded run defenders (74.9). Just to put that in perspective, the highest-graded run defender for the Cowboys this season is Dante Fowler at 58.6, which ranks 72nd out of 109 qualifying edge rushers.
Dallas let Armstrong walk because they believed that Sam Williams could replace him in the starting lineup. In fairness, Williams tore his ACL before the 2024 season, which has had a significant impact on his development. But the Cowboys also used a second-round pick in the 2024 draft on Marshawn Kneeland, a big-bodied run defender. Neither player has had a strong start to the season, and they have combined for two quarterback hits on 194 snaps.
That is just one example of how slim the margin of error is in the NFL. Armstrong isn’t a Pro Bowl player or anything like that. But he would easily be the best pass rusher in Dallas right now, and the fact that Dallas has had to use several resources to replace him is what is sinking this team. Because Kneeland and Williams have struggled out of the gate, now they are paying Jadeveon Clowney to fill the role that Armstrong left behind.
Whether it be Jourdan Lewis, DeMarcus Lawrence, or any number of players, the inability of the Cowboys' front office to draft and replace players on defense is what is crushing this unit. Keeping players like Lewis and Armstrong wasn’t suddenly going to turn this unit into a world-beater, but it would have been a much more respectable unit. And given what we’ve seen over the last three weeks, that would have been an enormous improvement.
The Cowboys are hopeful that with two extra first-round picks over the next two years, they can add an influx of talent to their defense. And they certainly need it after letting so much talent walk out the door over the last three or four years.