Troy Aikman says Cowboys made a ‘good hire’ at defensive coordinator with Dan Quinn

Former Cowboys quarterback and current Fox broadcaster Troy Aikman appeared on The Musers on 96.7 FM/1310 AM The Ticket [KTCK-AM] recently. Here are some of the highlights:

What do you think of the Cowboys’ hire of new defensive coordinator Dan Quinn?

Aikman: “I think it’s a good hire. I’ve always liked Dan, I think he’s a good coach... I thought that Dan would be a good hire for them... Dan took over for a couple years as defensive coordinator and they were number one for both years he was there in Seattle. They never were quite as good on defense [in Atlanta] as what I think a lot of people thought they would be considering Dan’s background as a defensive coach, but yeah, I think he’s a really good football coach.”

Do you think the Cowboys have the personnel in place for Quinn to be successful?

Aikman: “It’s the system that they were running with Kris Richard. That’s that Seattle background. It has evolved over the years, it even has in Seattle with some of the things that they’re doing...

“There are holes in the defense personnel-wise. Those things have to be addressed. I’ve always believed that on the defensive side of the ball it’s more of a mindset. If you can get guys rallying to the football and playing at a certain level that you can do a lot of good things on the defensive side of the ball and you don’t necessarily have to have the best players. But you can have really good players that don’t buy in, don’t execute, don’t run to the football, don’t tackle well — shoot, hardly anybody tackles well anymore. It’s kind of maddening to me, some of the fundamentals of our game.

“In the league today, not entirely unlike how it’s always been, you’ve got to have people who can get after the quarterback, you’ve got to have people who can cover. I think the Cowboys with DeMarcus Lawrence, they can do that. There’s some other pieces to that I think are pretty good. And then, of course, Trevon Diggs, he’s shown a lot of promise in his first season. And the other areas of the secondary will continue to be addressed as we continue through the offseason with free agency and then of course in the draft.”

Is the 4-3 guy starting to become outdated?

Aikman: “I don’t know about that... The base defense really anymore is the five defensive backs. They’re on the field a lot more than what your base defense is. Three linebackers generally are not on the field a lot. So the 3-4, I think that — there was a time when the 3-4 was an anomaly, there wasn’t a lot of teams doing it. I know that when I was playing and we played Pittsburgh, the Giants ran the 3-4 scheme with [Bill] Parcells and [Bill] Belichick as their defensive coordinator, but there weren’t a lot. There’s rules with that within the protection. It would takes us a little bit in the week leading up to it as far as how we were going to handle things... Then you saw more and more of it. Since I retired, it probably then went to where it was more 3-4 and I think that the big reason for that was it was hard to find these big defensive ends... They ended up taking a lot of these defensive tackles, defensive ends and making them stand-up linebackers. That’s what they did with DeMarcus Ware and a lot of guys really took to that. The athletic guys were able to.

“So in our game today, being able to play in space is more of a priority than these big pass rushers that aren’t able to do as multiple things as the smaller guys. So that’s kind of where it went, but I do think even within the 3-4 schemes, there’s a lot of 4-3 principles, if that makes sense. And I think that what Mike Nolan was doing was a lot of multiple types of things and looks and I know that’s what [Mike] McCarthy wanted. And I don’t disagree with that. I’ve said it before, I think that ultimately you get judged on whether your defense does the job or not. I just know that the games that we had, and I didn’t see every game so I can only comment on what I saw, there were a number of times where the defensive call was fine, it just wasn’t executed particularly well. And yet the coordinator’s the one who gets criticized for that when those things happen. And ultimately, that’s where the buck stops. I still think Mike Nolan’s a good football coach. I think it became apparent that it was going to be his head on the chopping block over everyone else and I think that’s the hard thing in this business. And I think Mike McCarthy would probably agree with that.”

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