Dallas Cowboys Training Camp Battle: Spears Vs Bowen Vs Hatcher

June 29, 2010   ·   Jonathan Bales   ·   Jump to comments

In the first part of my Training Camp Battles Series, I analyzed the nickel linebacker position.  Today, I will take a look at defensive end.
 
Coach Wade Phillips loves to rotate his defensive linemen.  The chart above displays the percentage of snaps each of the defensive ends played in 2009 (it adds up to 200 percent since there were always two ends on the field).
Notice that Igor Olshansky led the group at 62.8 percent of snaps, but that wasn’t even twice as much as the player with the least snaps (Jason Hatcher at 38.2 percent).  Marcus Spears, the starter opposite Olshanksy, played just slightly more (51.6 percent of all snaps) than his backup Stephen Bowen (47.4 percent).
With Spears’ and Bowen’s snaps so evenly distributed, you could effectively call them starters 1A and 1B.  Spears is the run defense guy (53.2 percent of his snaps came against the run), while Bowen is the Cowboys’ pass-rush specialist at...

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