The Dallas Cowboys front office has been in their bag. While the results hadn’t shown it true in the previous two campaigns, in 2021 the job they’ve done to assemble the 70-some-odd players who are in rotation is front and center. Dallas now sports a 7-2 record through nine game after their dominating 43-3 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. Once again, the Cowboys played without several of their star players and once again, the backups proved to be more than capable.
Depth is a key ingredient to a championship run, and it is showing itself week in, week out for Dallas. On Sunday, they played without their offseason projected starting defensive line. 3T Neville Gallimore hasn’t taken a snap all year and Pro Bowl DE DeMarcus Lawrence hasn’t played since Week 1. Brent Urban didn’t win the job as expected, but he has been out of the rotation for a couple weeks and Randy Gregory just went on the shelf for three weeks. It didn’t matter.
Just like moving along without Michael Gallup, La’el Collins and for single games Dak Prescott and Zack Martin, this team is able to play peak football almost every time out there. The one time they didn’t, in a Week 9 blowout loss, they came back the next week and had their best performance in years.
Depth is the reason.
There’s so much depth on the roster, a leading defensive player of the year candidate is barely squeezing into the top 10 this week. We haven’t done a player power ranking since Week 5, so it gives a great look into how things have changed from the quarter mark to halfway into the season.