NFL coaches and front office folks live in a vacuum, it seems. They tend to keep their focus solely on the guys they have in the building, especially this time of year. “We don’t worry about what anybody else is doing,” and, “Control what we can control,” and all that. Sometimes, to a fault.
Because at some point, it does turns into a competition, and then it becomes readily apparent which clubs made real progress since last year. The offseason moves, the trades they made or didn’t make, the draft picks, the free agent signings… it all starts to shake out and offer a clear picture of who is truly better than whom.
Within the bubble of fandom, most of the Cowboys faithful probably feel pretty good about the team’s chances in 2022. Yes, they lost a couple of big names. Most would have preferred the Jones boys to be a lot more aggressive in free agency, but by and large, the feeling is that the defending NFC East champs are still an upper-tier squad, with just a few thin spots here and there to cause only minor concern heading into the new campaign.
ESPN respectfully disagrees.
Using the Pro Football Focus database and projecting who the starters will be, the network has ranked the rosters of all 32 NFL teams heading into the season.
The Cowboys are quite literally stuck in the middle of the road.
Their overall rank of 16th place would suggest that they’re not even playoff-caliber, especially with the Eagles landing at No. 7 overall. That’s enough for many die-hards to discount the entire exercise and shove their heads back in the sand, content to let summertime optimism carry the day.
But when the numbers are objectively laid out in black and white, 16th place out of 32 sounds, sadly, awfully accurate.
The network examines each team’s biggest strength, weakness, and X factor. And for the ’22 Cowboys, every one of those things are on the defensive side of the ball.
