The Dallas Cowboys made it quite obvious. They normally don’t spend big in free agency, but this offseason they barely spent anything at all. It wasn’t because they couldn’t afford to; Stephen Jones was looking to curb spending. The win-at-any-cost belief many fans wish their front offices subscribed to is not present in this year’s iteration. The Cowboys are presenting a roster they are asking to perform with an addition-by-subtraction mantra.
What the losses of Amari Cooper, Randy Gregory, La’El Collins and others means is that the Cowboys lost a lot of former top-of-the-roster talent.
As training camp approaches, our first 2022-season look at the player power rankings shows that Dallas lost six players who were inside their top 30 at season’s end; a frustrating wild-card debacle. The new rankings, though, also boast seven players in its top 30 who weren’t on that end-of-the-year list.
Here’s a look at the key changes to the inaugural 2022 Player Power Rankings, and the top 40 to start things off.
There will likely be quite a big of movement once things kick off in Oxnard, but for now this is projection of sorts. Not where things will sit at the end of the season; the rankings always look woefully different from start to finish. Although there wasn’t a 2021 training camp edition, Everson Griffen and Jaylon Smith were members of the 2020 camp top 10.
How will rookies phase in initially? What are realistic expectations for how injured players recover?