Most dominant elements of the 2022/23 NFL playoffs: What to look out for in the postseason

#6. Cowboys’ crushing pass-rush

NFL Regular Season - Dallas Cowboys v Minnesota Vikings

Finding reasons for regression concerning the Dallas Cowboys coming into 2022 was fairly easy for me personally. I had legit concerns about the reformed offensive line and lack of proven perimeter weapons offensively. More importantly, the variance we see on the defensive side of the ball, above all turnover “luck” and largely also pressure rates.

Dallas finished last season number one in takeaways with 34 and fourth in percentage of pressures per dropback at 27.6%. Well, guess what – they once again are at the top of the NFL in takeaways (32, which is five more than the next-closest team) and have also risen to first in pressure rate (25.6%), along with being third in sacks (51).

While he has cooled off to some degree, Micah Parsons has been even more dominant in his second season as a chess piece. This has been huge, as a lot of the guys around him have taken advantage of their one-on-one matchups.

NFL Regular Season - Dallas Cowboys v Philadelphia Eagles

Something that has hurt Dallas at times (in terms of creating opportunities to just tee off in the pass-rush department) is the fact they’ve had issues against teams who have stuck with the run game in neutral game-script situations.

They’re tied for 19th in the NFL in yards per rush (4.5) surrendered and have allowed 136+ yards on the ground in seven games this season. However, only one of those has happened across the past seven weeks and they’re now actually up to third in rushing success rate (37.6%).

Thanks to that, defensive coordinator Dan Quinn has been able to be versatile with the looks they throw out there on the back-end. This in return gives those guys up front time to get home, as quarterbacks have to re-evaluate post-snap. You see quite a few twists and overloading of sides, but the Cowboys rank just outside the top-ten in blitz rate (26.4%).

Altogether, they now have the third-best EPA per dropback (-0.060) and overall EPA per play defensively (-0.083). As well as being tied for first in the NFL in defensive DVOA (-14.0%) with the 49ers.

Against the Tennessee Titans this past Thursday night (a decimated, one-dimensional offensive team), they pressured Joshua Dobbs on a season-high 42.9 percent of dropbacks. What really stands out once they take control in games is how the dam can break and this unit piles on big plays.

In their dominant showing against the Minnesota Vikings mid-way through the year, they sacked Kirk Cousins seven times and held those guys to three points. While they shouldn’t have allowed the Colts to hang around against them about a month ago, what they did in the fourth quarter was almost unheard of. They created turnovers on four consecutive possessions, once taking the ball back to the house themselves and setting up three more short fields leading to touchdowns.

The key to everything they do is the way they can make quarterbacks uncomfortable and create opportunities for game-changing plays. Dallas right now has four of the NFL's top-58 players in sacks and top-62 in total pressures (Micah Parsons, Dante Fowler, DeMarcus Lawrence and Dorance Armstrong Jr.). Only two other teams have three such names (New England Patriots and Eagles).

It’s fair to question if we’ll see one of these dominant showings of the Cowboys defense overall against the well-balanced teams at the top of the NFC. But if they can play with the lead or get into situations where the opposing team is in heavy dropback settings, they can unleash that pass-rush.