Jerry Jones made a big deal about the importance of run defense during the offseason amid his trade of elite pass rusher Micah Parsons. And say what you will about the guy, but at least the 83-year-old owner has stuck to his guns on that one.
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To that end, Jones acquired three-time Pro Bowl DT Kenny Clark in that Parsons deal. But that didn’t lead to any meaningful improvement for a run defense that allowed the fourth-most yards on the ground in 2024 and ranked 27th in total rush yards allowed after nine games.
However, a blockbuster deal to acquire young All-Pro DT Quinnen Williams from the New York Jets at the deadline is already paying dividends for the Cowboys. They held the Raiders to just 27 total rushing yards on Monday Night Football, the third-best mark by any defense so far this season. After that display, Emmanuel Acho believes the Cowboys now have the “best DT tandem” in football.
“This man Quinnen Williams has saved the Cowboys defense. The Cowboys have the best defensive tackle tandem now in the NFL. Watch Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark on this play. They dominated the entire football game… You’ve got offensive linemen falling to the ground, and now we get a sack between these two new additions for the Dallas Cowboys,” Acho said on his podcast, Speakeasy.
Acho went on to show a very impressive three-play snippet where Quinnen Williams essentially makes the play on every down to force the Raiders to punt on fourth and long. And it’s not because he always got the sack or TFL, but often because his force is leading to a big play for a teammate. He’s a “force multiplier,” in Acho parlance.
“Quinnen Williams is not a force, he’s a force multiplier. He himself is a force, but he multiplies the force of every other Cowboys player… Quinnen Williams has absolutely changed the entirety of the Cowboys defense… There are forces in the game of football … and then every now and then there are force multipliers,” said the analyst.
For the MNF game, the Cowboys gave up just 27 yards rushing (season low by a mile) and 209 pass yards (third-lowest) for a grand total of just 236 yards, which is also a season low and the first time they’ve held a team below 300 yards all year.
There’s no way such a dominant performance in Williams’ Dallas debut was a coincidence. The Cowboys have played bad teams like the Raiders before, and they’ve allowed them to go for 300+ yards. But not this time.
With Williams and Clark controlling the middle on every play, Williams finished with 1.5 sacks and five QB hits, while Clark added 0.5 sacks, a tackle for loss, and a QB hit. And the Raiders got nothing.
This performance won’t change the unit overnight. But it’s clear Williams has changed this Dallas defense from hopeless to half-decent, at the very least.
