Marcus Spears gives wakeup call to the Dallas Cowboys defense

The Dallas Cowboys’ offense has been pretty consistent throughout the 2021 season and currently leads the NFL with 434.3 yards per game, but the team’s defense has been a different story as it has significantly struggled. After the way the Cowboys’ unit has performed over the past couple weeks, ESPN’s Marcus Spears had quite a bit to say about what’s been going wrong.

“The biggest issue for them, and we talked about this going into the Minnesota game, I was thinking about, ‘Can they get stops?,’ Spears said Wednesday on ESPN’s NFL Live show. “It’s not about the turnovers, it’s not about the big splash plays – it’s can you consistently get stops throughout the course of a game?”

Spears said one of the primary problems with Dallas’ defense is its level of communication. He brought up a play in last week’s game against the Denver Broncos where multiple Cowboys defenders weren’t even lined up when Denver was ready to snap the ball and said they “lose the play before the ball is even snapped.”

He went on to say a couple of the Cowboys’ interior players had already gotten behind their blocks and lost their gaps and one defender even misread the whole play call by the Broncos, thinking it was a pass play instead of a run.

“This pisses me off,” Spears said. “But it also gives me pause because these are things you can easily get fixed. My concern with Dallas’ defense last year [was] physicality they couldn’t hold up. I don’t think that’s the case this year. This particular game against the Denver Broncos was a lot of technical issues, a lot of miscommunication and trying to figure out what was happening to them at the line of scrimmage.

“That’s something Dan Quinn is going to have to fix and have these guys more prepared when they face the Falcons.”

Quinn – the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator – and his unit definitely have some work to do if they want to improve heading down the stretch. After eight games this season, Dallas ranks 21st out of 32 NFL teams by allowing their opponents to put up 371.5 yards per game – 270.5 passing and 101 rushing.

Safety Jayron Kearse has been the leader of Dallas’ defense this year with 54 total tackles, while linebacker Micah Parsons is just behind him with 52 tackles. Cornerback Anthony Brown has also produced with 40 tackles and a pair of interceptions.

The Dallas Cowboys – currently 6-2 overall and in first place in the NFC East – host the Atlanta Falcons at 1 p.m. ET Sunday at AT&T Stadium.