Cowboys Mike Nolan fired defensive coordinator after one season

The Cowboys fired Mike Nolan on Friday as their defensive coordinator, a long-awaited decision after arguably the worst defensive season in the franchise’s 61-year history.

Nolan confirmed the development via text message.

Defense coach Jim Tomsula has also been sacked, and other changes to the defense coach are considered possible.

The last three defense coordinators appointed by coach Mike McCarthy – Dom Capers, Mike Pettine and Nolan – dating back to his time with the Green Bay Packers, were at one point all NFL head coaches. Former Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Quinn is a dragon-like name. He has been discussed internally as a possible replacement, sources said. Senior defense assistant George Edwards is an internal candidate.

McCarthy issued a statement thanking Nolan and Tomsula for their contributions ‘under difficult circumstances in 2020’.

“These are never easy decisions to make,” McCarthy added, “and we wish them and their families the best in the future.”

A wrong approach condemned Nolan’s one-year term.

In January, he inherited a defense that has sometimes provoked criticism over the past few years for being too schematically simple and predictable. Nolan has converted a Toyota Prius playbook into a Porsche book, which contains conceptual and technical refinement.

Perhaps the scheme transition would have gone well in other years.

Not 2020.

Amid the COVID 19 pandemic, NFL coaches and players had less off-season training time and lost their spring training sessions on the field before a cut-off training camp without a preseason. In this critical area, Nolan and McCarthy could not adapt and continued at full steam.

Only after several games in the season, when mental errors and missed orders piled up at an alarming rate, did the Cowboys begin to scale down their defense.

Results stabilized around the mid-season.

Yet Dallas allowed 218 points through its first six games, tied with the 1948 New York Giants for the third worst time in NFL history. Only the 1950 Baltimore Colts (235 points) and 1954 Washington Redskins (223) were worse. Nolan hosted the first four games from a stadium stand before moving to the sidelines.

The Cowboys finished 2020 after allowing a franchise record of 473 points. The decision makers believe that the staff shortage they had at the defense was not on a historical scale as many of these players have been a more successful defense in the past.

Nolan’s group underperformed.

McCarthy is not going anywhere, one season in a five-year contract.

So it was for weeks, short of a shocking turnaround, that it was inevitable that Nolan and a number of other defense assistants would increase the consequences. Several coaches McCarthy hired in January have been overwhelmed at The Star and are considered unlikely.

The Cowboys season ended Sunday with the defense allowing the first half of the New York Giants in a 23-19 defeat.

“I think it was clear that it was difficult to implement a new system and not be able to use it,” linebacker Leighton Vander Esch said this week. ‘I think we only got a knock at the end of the season and I think it really showed when we started to understand things much better, it appeared on film. But it was hard not to have an off-season and not be able to be on the field and go through things. ‘

Improving the defense of the runs will be a focal point during the off-season.

Dallas allowed an average of 164.8 running yards per game, the second worst in franchise history behind only the first defense in 1960 (186.8 yards).

In 2020, there were three cases against the Cleveland Browns, Arizona Cardinals and Baltimore Colts in which the Cowboys allowed at least 260 running yards and at least 7 yards per carry in the same game. By comparison, in the first 60 years of the franchise, there were only four such cases, and that was in 1960, 1961, 1963 and 2008.

The Cowboys became the first team since the New England Patriots in 1973 to allow three of those efficient, high-performing performances in the same season.

Nolan named McCarthy his attacking coordinator in 2005 as his San Francisco 49ers coach. The arrangement lasted one season before McCarthy left to lead the Packers. In 2020, McCarthy returned the gesture and made Nolan his defense coordinator.

The arrangement lasted one season.

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