00:00defense today is this man right here and uh cody good afternoon how the hell are you
00:04i'm doing great thanks for having me on man it's great to have you up um what's the hottest trend
00:09in defense going into 2026 well i think that more and more people are going to be trying to find
00:16that safety that can actually play nickel i think we've seen that um i think too getting into five
00:22man fronts out of a four two so basically playing playing with your leverage points on the front
00:28those are kind of the things that everybody's kind of talking about right now so a five man run at
00:33a
00:33at a four two how do you get there yeah basically you're going to have that that weak side linebacker
00:40and you're going to walk them down basically creating an edge so that's why you're seeing
00:44kind of a run on these hybrid off ball guys they you know a couple years ago you didn't know
00:49what
00:49to do with them now you're like well hey we can either blitz them we can walk them down and
00:54create
00:54an edge or we can you know use them as an off ball linebacker so is that is that five
00:59down with
01:00one line is that what people are calling penny right now i've noticed people stay in penny a lot
01:04more yes so a true penny would be a nickel so five dbs one linebacker two edges three interior but
01:13you
01:13can get to the same penny look from a four two by by just walking down that will linebacker into
01:20kind
01:21of a 50 front and of course the other thing that you mentioned in there the safety that can do
01:27the
01:27nickel stuff what do you think of caleb down stepping in here yeah i think it's a perfect fit and
01:31i think
01:32that they needed to have that you know it's really interesting you need a nickel because he touches the
01:38most players on the field in terms of who's going to relate to him and i think in the modern
01:43game
01:44the better that guy can fit the run the better that guy can pass coverage then you're going to be
01:49a
01:49better defense because you're going to be able to kind of do some other things uh and everybody
01:55kind of wants to be in 12 personnel two tight ends they want to throw the ball on first down
02:00through
02:00play action if i can live in nickel and have those five dbs i can change the math on the
02:06back end for
02:07that so cody i think one thing we've kicked around is when you think or fans might hear nickel they're
02:13thinking okay a caleb downs is going to go and cover that slot wide receiver how much of that is
02:19he
02:19really going to be asked to do in your knowledge of what christian parker might want to run where
02:23it's it's him just in man coverage isolated one-on-one with that slot receiver very rarely
02:30especially in a heavy zone system now this is one of those systems that it'll be interesting to see
02:36how much man that parker actually wants to play if you look at the eagles tape they played a lot
02:40of man
02:41which is why cooper dejean all pro makes it really easy quinnon mitchell your boundary
02:45safety makes it really easy i think what this system does when you look at other ways that
02:52people are doing this like go and look at staley with with new orleans they want to play zone so
02:57he's going to have help it's more of a it's more of a match and not necessarily heavy man i've
03:03got it
03:03kind of that old school nickel where it doesn't matter where you go i'm going to take you all over
03:08i'm going to at least going to have safety help a lot of times talking cowboys football with cody
03:14alexander of match quarters here in the gbag nation uh what what gives you the most pause
03:18about this cowboys defense right now like where do you think they still have a little bit of a weakness
03:26i've heard you guys talk about it a plenty and i think it really was something that's carried over
03:31from last year if you look at what they've brought in in the offseason the one area of concern has
03:35to
03:36be the linebackers it has to be that kind of a link point there in the middle between the front
03:40and
03:40the back end they just you know is you know overstone going to be healthy d winners does
03:47he give you that ability to do that there's not a lot of size outside of barham which is another
03:52concern so does that mean that you're going to play a lot of five-man fronts there's just a lot
03:57of questions around that linebacker core five-man fronts is that does that help you more on rundowns
04:02or passing downs it helps you more on rundowns i think on passing downs you could argue that it
04:11creates one-on-ones but you're eliminating a coverage defender and so now you're constantly
04:17playing uh with one less coverage defender which in the modern game you probably don't want to do that
04:23so it it's give and take and it really depends on and so if your back end is not as
04:28great as it needs
04:29to be you want that extra defender and so that's where kind of that that play that sliding scale
04:36of where you need to fit is going to come in cody how much do you believe in the cowboys
04:40putting
04:40piecing together a good enough pass rush to have a good defense
04:46i think that's going to be a concern as well right like we you know is the edges that are
04:52left over
04:53are they going to be able to kind of take another step you know some of them they've they've been
04:58here
04:59for a couple of years as raku you know is going on year two but no i think that that
05:04is a legitimate
05:05concern i think inside there's not i think with quinnon williams you know kenny clark you guys you
05:11kind of feel like okay we can get some interior pressure but then how is that going to translate
05:16at on the edge that's definitely a question cody alexander with us here in the gbag nation uh one
05:21thing that we've worried about from a cowboys perspective cody is going up against that you know
05:26mcveigh shanahan lafleur those type of offenses in the past when you study fangio and whatever you
05:34think christian parker might be adapting from his history how are they better suited to maybe take
05:39on those type of challenging offenses i mean they have in the dna essentially what mcveigh handpicked
05:48for his defensive coordinator when he hired staley to stop his offense and to work against it on a daily
05:54basis and really if you go and look at shula and what he's doing he's running you know fangio adjacent
06:00schemes and so i think what they what this system does is it creates backstops for a lot of these
06:08deep over routes these intermediate crossing routes a lot of that split action that you see from this
06:14from this offense especially with mcveigh this defense is layered and creates answers for that
06:22type of offense whether it's a you know they can zone over a particular receiver or they can create
06:28a backstop opposite where that receiver is if they run a ton of crossing routes so the system is built
06:34to handle pretty much what they're getting from the mcveigh system cody outside of caleb downs who do
06:41you think is the rookie that could have the biggest immediate impact this year well i look at malachi
06:48lawrence because i think that there is an opportunity for an edge rusher in this i think
06:53a lot of people probably outside of the system probably think that this is a system that wants
07:00to have these hybrid edges that they want to be able to drop into coverage and i think over time
07:04one
07:05of the things that's evolved from the system is that you kind of realize those guys aren't really
07:10helping you in coverage i really need them to either be setting the edge in the run game or i
07:14need them
07:14to actually get after the the passer i think that's what you saw with jalen phillips being picked up by
07:20the eagles last year it was like we need more juice we can manufacture some of the things on the
07:25back
07:25and we can answer problems because that's really where this system wants to place all of their
07:31capital so you need some sort of a pass rush engine and i think malachi lawrence can do that for
07:38you being that you know first round pick edge cody alexandermatchquarters.com at the coach a on
07:44twitter okay the eagles they um they they lost phillips they they lose blankenship but they brought
07:50in grenard they had a good draft but i'd love it if you if you just look at their their
07:54defense and
07:55and what what you think um you know philadelphia is going to do on on that side of the ball
08:00still the
08:00best defense in the division is this a top five defense how good how good are the eagles
08:05if they can get reek wallen to play the way that i think everybody knows he can play i still
08:12think
08:12that a lot of people probably don't realize this is that this team actually led the league in man
08:17coverage last year uh they play heavy match three system meaning that even in cover three even in
08:23zone they're going to be matching up man to man they're built to play man coverage they're built to
08:27get after the quarterback now so i would assume even though they're losing blankenship they're probably
08:33feeling a little bit better when they play man coverage and when they do some of these match
08:38concepts so i you know it's really going to come down to who's playing opposite grenard and can
08:44they manufacture a rush kind of what they had when they went to the super bowl cody quinton williams
08:50is a player that i don't know that we even really talked enough about this offseason when it comes to
08:54a player of his caliber what are things that maybe don't show up on the stat sheet that he can
08:59do
08:59and impact defensively if you go and you look at any top quarterback in any era the one thing that
09:08they will all tell you is internal pressure in their face right at the snap of the ball where they
09:14can't just set up in the pocket where they have to now move off of their point so when you
09:20get
09:20internal pressure whether it's a push or even if it is actual pressure if you can just disrupt the
09:28presence or slide the pocket over a little bit it messes with the timing on every offense in the nfl
09:35and so even though he's not getting huge sack numbers like maybe like a chris jones that is
09:43affecting the way that quarterbacks are playing and then being able to target receivers down the field
09:48so that's probably one of those things that doesn't show up on the stat sheet or you don't see all
09:51the
09:51time but those slight side steps that slight movement by the quarterback throws off timing
09:58cody last question for you new article today you published on twitter how arizona's number one
10:04ranked coverage disguise protected an outmatched front what can you tell us about this article
10:10what can you tell us about ryan smith coming over from that arizona coaching staff and if it could
10:16help the cowboys well there's definitely some aspects in it of being able to kind of simplify
10:23things throughout the throughout the scheme whether it's we're playing base or we're playing
10:27in in some of our sub packages being able to carry certain things through so like basically what
10:33arizona was doing was building a base defense out of their three high system so getting into three
10:39four looks when you have three safeties on the field and they all kind of have hybrid abilities
10:43you can do some of these things so i think there's definitely some ideas primarily from the
10:50sub packages that you can pull from that system that relate back to the cowboys because of the
10:55roster especially the safety roster that they have i just don't know what the three high structure is
11:01something that you're going to see on a base down but definitely some movement opportunities some
11:07some of the ways that they taught coverages and quarters jonathan gannon probably doesn't get enough
11:11credit for being in as innovative as he was just because they didn't win very many games in arizona
11:16but there are especially some things from that three safety structure that they can pull from
11:21maybe on third down or maybe on some of the against some of these like spread teams that you could
11:26be
11:26able to use with adding lock to downs and hooker and thompson it feels like the cowboys have a good
11:32safety room right now what do you think they have in mind with all the all those guys yeah i
11:36definitely
11:37think that there there is some hybrid ability jalen thompson gives you that kind of down safety he can
11:43play back he can play nickel if you need to um pj lock mainly played deep so you can definitely
11:49see
11:49that there's kind of a room within a room with marquise bell and jalen thompson kind of stacking
11:54together as that that down safety and then your your post safeties or your cover safeties is hooker and
12:00lock who are able to play deep so you can definitely see that and then downs obviously is kind of
12:06your
12:06wild card where if you feel like it he could probably be your starting down safety and base
12:12along with jalen thompson how does that affect malik hooker or do we just wean him in there and
12:18we just play nickel and so how much nickel is really going to be determined by how much
12:23they believe in caleb downs who can fit near the box thanks for the education once again my man
12:28cody alexander matchquarters.com have a great afternoon sir thank you guys really appreciate you
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