Cowboys fans rejoiced on Thursday at the news that defensive coordinator Dan Quinn would be returning to the team in 2022.
Quinn had been wooed by several teams that were looking for head coaches, but ultimately decided to lead the Dallas defense once again next season.
Quinn had become such a hot commodity because of the radical overnight
improvements Dallas’ defense saw last season.
It went from a historically bad defense in 2020 to one of the league’s best scoring defenses in 2021, and became unit that could be counted on to make big plays that changed the game.
Dallas was one of 13 teams that changed its defensive coordinator from 2020 to 2021. Of those teams, Dallas saw the most dramatic improvement in several key categories.
Points Allowed Per Game
The Dallas defense allowed almost 30 points per game during its miserable 2020 showing. Dallas saw that number drop by more than a touchdown in 2021 under Dan Quinn, which was tops among the 13 teams that changed their coordinator:
Bobby Belt
Dallas allowed at least 30 points in half their games in 2020, but allowed 30 on just three occasions this past season, and only twice after the season opener.
Points Allowed Per Drive
There is a line of thinking that believes points allowed per drive is a better indicator of a defense’s performance than points allowed per game. If you play a game with few possessions, but the opponent scores almost every time, you may have made a positive impact on your points allowed per game, but you weren’t very efficient.
Dallas was 25th in the NFL in points allowed per drive in 2020, but finished 4th in the NFL in 2021.
Bobby Belt
Allowing .79 fewer points per drive may sound insignificant on the surface, but when you consider teams were averaging about 12 possessions per game against the Cowboys, that adds up to 9.5 fewer points per game than the 2020 squad would have allowed with the same number of possessions.
Score Percentage
The typical “bend, but don’t break” defense tends to give up its fair share of field goals. The points per drive and points per game aren’t the worst, but the percentage of drives ending in a score of any type might be a little problematic.
The talk heading into 2021 was that Dan Quinn would be a success if he could just turn them into that “bend, but don’t break” type of defense. The change in the defense’s scoring percentage shows they were much more than that.
Bobby Belt
Under Dan Quinn’s guidance, the Cowboys dropped their defensive drive scoring percentage by almost 11 percentage points. Compare that to the Rams on the other end of the spectrum who saw their numbers increase by eight percentage points.
The Rams were 15.2 percentage points better than Dallas in 2020. Even with all the changes in the NFL from year-to-year, that would typically be an insurmountable gap from one season to the next. Dallas finished the season 3.4 percentage points better than the Rams.
Interceptions Per Game
The most noticeable change in the 2021 Cowboys defense compared to years past were the turnovers, particularly the interceptions.
The Cowboys entered the year on a six-year streak of 10 interceptions or fewer, the longest streak in the NFL over the last 88 years. Dallas snapped the streak in week six. Trevon Diggs broke the streak on his own with 11 interceptions.
Bobby Belt
Dallas intercepted almost one extra pass every game from its 2020 showing. It was the best improvement in the entire NFL, not just the group of teams that changed their coordinators.
Jerry Jones celebrated the return of Dan Quinn when he spoke with 105.3 The Fan on Friday morning. When you take a deeper look at the impact Quinn had on the team, it’s easy to see why.
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