IRVING, Texas –The idea of signing Brandon Carr and drafting Morris Claiborne, a lot of Cowboys observers believed, was to allow defensive coordinator Rob Ryan to be his creative self and dial up blitzes to get to the quarterback, trusting his cornerbacks to play in man coverage.
Against Seattle, though, it appeared Ryan opted to sit back and play conservatively against Russell Wilson, and the rookie quarterback proved plenty efficient, completing 15 of his 20 passes. The aggression was nowhere to be found.
But Ryan said Friday that he had plans to blitz, except the Seahawks wouldn't allow it because they utilized two tight end and two backs on so many downs, keeping in enough players to make the blitzes useless.
"We never got the game we were wanting," Ryan said. "These guys never gave us the three wide receivers sets. We'd like to play them again, and if they give us that you'll see we actually had some pretty good stuff up. But you have to be smart. If these guys are going to give us that game, the 10 snaps of three receiver sets that we got, they ran the ball on eight of them. So, I know everybody was wanting to kill their quarterback, and believe me, I was wanting to hit the kid, too. They had a plan that wouldn't allow us to do it."
As Ryan and the Cowboys try to right the ship against Tampa Bay this weekend and going forward, the coordinator isn't intending to go easy on opposing passers, but first his unit has to correct a bigger problem from Sunday's loss – the run-stopping.
Had the Cowboys managed to get a lead and make the Seahawks a little more one-dimensional, Ryan might've been able to unleash more rushers after all. "Anytime people are having success running the ball downhill on you, it's hard to do anything else until you get that run stopped, and we didn't do a good enough job," Ryan said. "We're going to get that run handled. I think we have an excellent front. I know we do. And we'll be able to attack people the way we want to attack them."
