Eagles need to take a defensive stance against Cowboys

CARY Williams looked at the Eagles' defensive glass yesterday and declared it half-full.

"I've seen drastic improvement," the 28-year-old cornerback said. "We're still a young defense. We're still dealing with a lot of different things. [Developing] communication. Getting a feel for each other. Making sure we're in the right place at the right time.

"There's a lot of different people doing different things than they did throughout most of their career. It's going to take a while. But I do see a drastic improvement in guys."

Many of you right now probably are wondering what they slipped into Williams' post-practice smoothie over at NovaCare.

Improvement? Through six games, the Eagles have given up the most yards (420.2 per game) and fourth most points (29.8) in the league. They are 32nd in first downs allowed per game (25.3), tied for 24th in sacks (13) and 26th in third-down defense (42.5).

Last week alone, a Bucs team with a rookie quarterback making only his second pro start converted a third-and-14, two third-and-9s and two third-and-7s in the Eagles' 31-20 win.

Not all of the defensive news has been grim, though. The Eagles have done a pretty good job against the run. They're 16th in rushing yards allowed per game (105.7) and 19th in yards allowed per carry (4.0). They've given up just 13 double-digit-yard runs, none longer than 24 yards.

They already have 10 takeaways, which is just three fewer than they had all last season. Their six interceptions are just two fewer than they had in 2012.

While they have given up the second most passing yards in the league, they have done a good job of taking away the deep ball. In the first six games, the Eagles have allowed just seven completions and one touchdown on 28 attempts that traveled 20 yards or more. Since Week 3, opponents are just 3-for-15 with no TDs on 20-plus-yard passes.

"One of the biggest things is we are not giving up those deep ones, and that's what one of our main goals was," defensive coordinator Bill Davis said. "The intermediate ones, we've got to tighten down on. But I do believe the guys are getting a better understanding of the deep-to-short [zones] and coming up."

The Eagles' overall pass defense numbers have been much better in the last two games than they were in the first four.

Their first four opponents had a combined 107.2 passer rating, a 70.2 completion percentage and a yards-per-attempt average of 8.1. In the last two games: 69.1, 52.6 and 6.3.

Yes, it was against struggling Eli Manning and the winless Giants and rookie Mike Glennon and the winless Bucs. But hey, as a Chinese philosopher once said, even a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

"The way I look at it, those are nameless, faceless individuals we go up against each and every week," Williams said. "Every week is a unique challenge."

Williams and the defense should get a pretty good gauge of exactly how much it has improved Sunday when it faces Tony Romo and the Cowboys' high-powered 30-point-per-game offense.

If it seemed hard to come up with a plausible way for the Eagles to slow down Peyton Manning and the Broncos 3 weeks ago, it's just as difficult to figure out a scenario in which they successfully manage to neutralize Romo and his bottomless cast of big, fast pass-catchers. But as somebody who wasn't a Chinese philosopher once said, that's why they play the game.

Romo is third in the league in passing with a 108.6 rating. He has a career-best 70.2 completion percentage and has thrown 14 touchdown passes and just three interceptions. Two weeks ago, he threw for 506 yards and five touchdowns in a three-point loss to the Broncos.

"He's a great player," admitted Williams. "He can throw the ball with the best of them. But he can also make mistakes just like the best of them do.

"At the end of the day, he's not a guy who's wearing a red cape and some tights. He's a great player, but he's still human. He still gets rattled. If we can get a great pass rush and get hands in his face, we can disrupt the timing between him and his receivers."

That's a big if. As I mentioned earlier, the Eagles have just 13 sacks in their first six games. According to the website Pro Football Focus, they've managed to get pressure on the quarterback just 30.7 percent of the time. Their blitz really has only been noticeably effective in two of the first six games (against the Giants and the Redskins).

"Right now, our pass rush . . . the sacks will come in bunches," Davis said. "I think Trent [Cole, who doesn't have a sack yet] will have a breakout game and you'll see the work that he's put in, and I think that will happen with our defensive line in general.

"I think we are getting close. We've had a couple of games in a row with intentional groundings and different interceptions."

The Eagles' linebackers and defensive backs can't survive against the Cowboys' talented receiving corps without pressure up front. Complicating matters is Romo's Houdini-like ability to escape a pass rush and extend a play with his legs. The Eagles must do a better job containing him than they did Glennon last week.

"It causes big problems when he gets out of the pocket," safety Nate Allen said. "You've got to latch on to the receiver and wait for the up-front guys to bring him to the ground. It becomes a free-for-all when a guy like that gets out of the pocket."

Said outside linebacker Connor Barwin, who leads the Eagles in sacks with three: "It's going to be a challenge on the backend, and it's going to be up to us up front to give those guys as much help as we can getting pressure on him."

Because they've put so much emphasis on taking away the deep ball, the Eagles have been very susceptible to passes underneath. They've been continually burned by slants and crosses. They made slot receivers like the Chargers' Eddie Royal and the Chiefs' Donnie Avery and Bucs tight end Tim Wright look like candidates for Canton.

Against a Cowboys receiving corps that includes three dangerous 6-2 wideouts (Dez Bryant, Miles Austin and Terrance Williams) and an eight-time Pro Bowl tight end (Jason Witten), they know they have to tighten things up.

"We've done a good job of stopping deep balls and we'll continue to do that," cornerback Brandon Boykin said. "All of the intermediate stuff can be fixed based off linebacker drops and quarterback pressure. If we get there, [Romo] won't have time for those routes to develop."

"It's just a matter of figuring out what teams are trying to shoot for," said linebacker Mychal Kendricks, who, along with the Eagles' other inside 'backer, DeMeco Ryans, has struggled in coverage this season.

"Like against KC, we really focused on taking away the deep ball. Our zones were deep-short and they hit us short. It's a cat-and-mouse game with what you want to do and when to do it."

If the Eagles hope to beat the Cowboys Sunday, the defense needs to be more cat and less mouse.