49ers' Purdy Builds MVP Case While Cowboys' Defense Holds Its Own Meeting
Two clubs got the league's attention today for opposite reasons. San Francisco is 5-0 and the argument is whether Brock Purdy is the MVP. Dallas lost to Tampa Bay and the argument is whether the Cowboys' defensive players holding a meeting is a healthy thing. Only one of those arguments is worth having.
Start with the 49ers, because the Purdy discourse has gone soft. Purdy has emerged as an early MVP candidate, and Asante Samuel's contribution was to say Purdy was never a system quarterback. Read that again. Samuel is defending Purdy against a charge that stopped being credible a while ago, which tells you how much of this debate is muscle memory from Purdy's first season. My read: he's a real candidate and the system label is dead. But the candidacy right now is being carried by the 5-0 record, not by a case the tape has already closed. Early MVP races are team-record races with a quarterback's name attached. Undefeated teams get their quarterback nominated by default. What would change my mind is Purdy playing the same way in the games where the 49ers are not the better roster on paper. That's the test. Samuel's soundbite does more for Purdy's reputation than for anyone's understanding.
Dallas is the other kind of story, and Mike Tomlin is closer to right than the Cowboys' head coach is willing to say out loud. The Dallas Cowboys' defense held a players-only meeting after the loss to the Buccaneers. Tomlin panned it. Brian Schottenheimer said he has no issue with it and called it a good sign for the Cowboys.
Of course he did. That's the only answer a head coach can give in public, and Schottenheimer gave it cleanly. But a players-only meeting called by the defense after a loss is not a sign of unity. It's a sign the defense decided something needed saying that wasn't being said in the meeting rooms. Players don't gather themselves when things are working. Tomlin's criticism is the useful one because it names what the meeting actually is: a response to outside criticism, not a solution to an internal problem. Meetings don't tackle. They do send a message upward, though, and a message from a defensive meeting goes straight to the defensive coordinator.
Which is why the Christian Parker item is not the procedural footnote it looks like. Parker is "most likely" coaching from the sideline this week, per the report, and Jerry Jones apparently spoke too soon about where the Cowboys' defensive coordinator would be situated for Sunday night against the Packers. Where a coordinator stands is worth roughly nothing on its own. The owner narrating it, then getting walked back, is worth something. Coordinators whose location becomes a talking point are coordinators whose seat is being discussed above the coaching level.
Stack the two Dallas items and the picture isn't complicated. The defense held a meeting nobody in the building asked for, and the owner is freelancing about the man who runs it. Schottenheimer's job in that spot is to absorb pressure, and he did. Parker's job is harder: coach a defense that just publicly decided it needed a private conversation.
My verdict, on the record. Purdy's MVP case is real but currently rented from the 5-0 record, and it survives a loss. The Cowboys' meeting is a symptom dressed up as a remedy, and it stops being a "good sign" the moment the defense looks the same against Green Bay as it did against Tampa Bay. Watch where Parker is standing Sunday night. If the camera keeps finding him, that's not a broadcast choice. That's the story.
