Tag: snap-weighted age

Cowboys must fix this roster problem to bounce back from horrible 2024

The Cowboys are one of the worst teams in the NFL and also one of the oldest. They have work to do to correct the situation, says @ReidDHanson.

The NFL is a young man’s game. Father Time is undefeated in professional sports and that’s especially true in the NFL when peak performance levels hover around the mid-20s for most players. Oftentimes the younger the roster, the more positioned for success a team is for the future. In the midst of an extremely disappointing season, team age could be something for the Cowboys to be optimistic about.

Such was the case four years ago. Coming off the 2020 season when Dallas won just six games, they clocked in as the fifth youngest team in the league based on snap-weighted age. They turned that youthful roster into three consecutive 12-win seasons. For as disappointing as the 2020 campaign was, their team age filled them with hope for the future.

2024 doesn’t appear as hopeful.


Based on FTN Data by way of Doug Analytics, the 2024 Cowboys rank 22nd in snap-weighted team age.

Snap-weighted team age differs from usual averages because rather than averaging entire rosters, snap-weighted age looks at just the players who play and only according to the size of their role. A 35-year veteran riding the bench doesn’t hurt that average any more than a 20-year-old developmental prospect who can’t see the field would help.

Bad teams like the Giants can take solace in the fact they are the second youngest team in snap-weighted age. Just like bad teams like the Cowboys, Panthers and Jets should all take caution because they reside on the older end of the spectrum.

This should be a cause for concern in Dallas but there are things working in Dallas’ favor as well.

Key veteran players like Zack Martin (34), Ezekiel Elliott (29), Cooper Rush (31), C.J. Goodwin (34), Linval Joseph (36), DeMarcus Lawrence (32), Eric Kendricks (32) and Brandin Cooks (31) are all set to hit free agency in 2025. Most, if not all, are predicted to leave. Assuming the Cowboys don’t sign old veterans to replace them, Dallas stands to get much younger next season.

While the drop in age says very little about the quality of play replacing these aged veterans on the field, it does indicate the Cowboys are working to grow and improve rather than just trying to hang on.

Unlike 2020 the news isn’t as optimistic in regard to age this season. The Cowboys are one of the older teams in weight-adjusted age and can’t just expect to organically improve like they did four years ago. The Cowboys task over the offseason won’t only be to purge old players on the decline but to replace them with young players on the incline. They’ll need free agency and the draft to accomplish it all.

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The Jags were the youngest team in the NFL by snap count in 2020

According to Football Outsiders, the Jaguars had an average Snap-Weighted Age of 25.4 during the 2020 season.

Jacksonville’s 1-15 season in 2020 was disappointing, but it was a bit predictable. The Jaguars entered the year with the youngest roster in football at an average age of 24.9, but that number could be skewed by young players on the team that don’t see significant action.

The best way to measure is in terms of snap count, and for the Jags, those numbers tell the same story. According to a Football Outsiders analysis, Jacksonville had the youngest roster in football even when adjusted for snap count.

Using the measure of Snap-Weighted Age, the analysis showed that the Jaguars had the lowest average SWA in the NFL in 2020 at just 25.4. Offensively, they were a bit older on average, likely due to veteran offensive linemen like Andrew Norwell and Brandon Linder who saw action on most snaps. Still, with young skill position players like D.J. Chark, Gardner Minshew, James Robinson and Laviska Shenault, the Jaguars ranked 24th in the league in offensive SWA with an average of 26.1. On defense, they were dead last at 24.9, and they were 31st on special teams at 25.

Jacksonville’s youth is demonstrated by the amount of cap space it had available this offseason. It has few large veteran contracts on the books, and many of its key contributors are still on rookie deals. Obviously, this didn’t contribute to much success in 2020, but with the aforementioned young players on offense, as well as guys like Josh Allen and C.J. Henderson on defense, there seems to be nowhere to go but up.

Cowboys were among oldest teams in 2019, but with a special catch

The 2019 Cowboys finished the regular season as one of the oldest teams in the NFL, but one veteran is responsible for much of that curve.

There’s a youth movement in the NFL. But the Cowboys seem to be trying hard to buck that trend, especially in one specific unit.

Football Outsiders last week released its 2019 report digging into the age of each roster in the league. As they have with every season since 2006, they didn’t just calculate the average age of all the the guys who are technically on the team. They charted the players’ snap-weighted age; that is, they weighted the age of each player according the number of snaps he played in the regular season.

It makes sense: if the aging veterans and hotshot rookies on a squad mainly stand around on the sidelines, it doesn’t really say anything meaningful about a team’s “average age,” at least not in the way that people usually imply. That first-year quarterback who actually starts and plays the whole season? That definitely counts toward a team being considered “young.” But a long-in-the-tooth third-string emergency backup who only ever holds a clipboard shouldn’t skew the team toward being called “old.”

The Cowboys as a whole, in 2019, were the sixth-oldest team in the league, with an average snap-weighted age (SWA) of 26.7. The league average was 26.4, a number nearly all 32 teams were fairly tightly clustered around.

Where it starts to get interesting is when SWA is broken down by unit. The SWA of the Dallas offense in 2019 was 27.0, just two-tenths of a year above the league average. That ranked 13th. The defense skewed even more toward the middle of the pack compared to the rest of the NFL; the Cowboys’ SWA on the defensive side was 26.2, 18th place against the average of 26.3.

But special teams? That unit might as well qualify for early-bird specials and senior matinee discounts.

The Cowboys’ special teamers in 2019 were the third-oldest bunch in the NFL with a SWA of 26.9. That figure is a full year above the league average. Special teams play is generally thought of as a young man’s game (think gunners), but many teams do anchor that phase of the game with a greybeard kicker…

…or a 39-year-old long snapper.

L.P. Ladouceur will embark on his 16th season as a pro in 2020. His age (he celebrated his 39th birthday in March) certainly sets the curve for the rest of the special teams players in Dallas, but his is a position where longevity is a plus, not a hindrance, and extra experience is definitely a plus.

The Cowboys special teams unit got slightly (but suddenly) older late last season with the swapping of Brett Maher for Kai Forbath, as Forbath is two years older. He and new signee Greg Zuerlein are both 32, so the winner of their competition for the upcoming season’s kicking duties won’t change that number for Dallas. With punter Chris Jones turning 31 years old, there’s a good chance that the Cowboys will remain one of the oldest special teams units in the league under John Fassel’s leadership.

The defense may see their SWA rank slide toward the older end of the list moving forward. Yes, Michael Bennett turned 34 just a few weeks after joining the Cowboys last season, but in his nine games with the team, he played just 40% of the defensive snaps. Linebacker Sean Lee will turn 34 before the season begins. Gerald McCoy is 32. Dontari Poe will blow out 30 candles before Week 1; all three will likely see high snap counts and will definitely ratchet up the SWA in 2020.

Of course, any discussion of the Cowboys and their age in 2019 has to include Jason Witten. At 37 and playing the vast majority of the team’s offensive snaps last year, he made Dallas the oldest team at tight end last season. Take him out of the equation, though, and the Cowboys come in under the league’s average SWA at every single offensive position group.

Granted, youth doesn’t automatically translate to a better football team: New England was by far the oldest team in 2019- in all three phases- and they were still, by and large, the Patriots. And three of the four youngest teams- Jacksonville, Cleveland, and Miami- didn’t really scare anybody. So maybe SWA is just interesting trivia, fodder for bar bets.

Still, 2020’s Cowboys offense should feel a lot younger. Fans will no doubt be encouraged by that. The defense may feel slightly older. Maybe some additional veteran presence there is a good thing.

In any case, the special teams will still be wearing their pants too high and yelling at whippersnappers to get off their lawn.

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