Are the Cowboys the most overrated team ahead of 2024? Bettors seem to think so. But they’ve taken their Dallas skepticism too far. We explain and give our Cowboys predictions.
The only thing more American than America’s Team is the rest of America getting tired of it.
The Dallas Cowboys are force-fed to a national TV audience week after week, and they are indeed coming up on a third full decade of not winning the Super Bowl. Long range, it’d be hard to argue there’s a more stylish, less substantive NFL franchise.
But are they the most overrated team ahead of 2024? Bettors seem to think so.
The Cowboys’ preseason win total at most sportsbooks is 9.5, and they’re reportedly the team with the heaviest betting percentage on the “under” side of that wager. So perhaps people are sick of the Cowboys and see an opportunity to capitalize on an overripe market that takes Mike McCarthy’s team as a coin flip to go 10-7 or better.
However, the bettors, as a collective, have taken their Dallas skepticism too far. The Cowboys may well fall short of their 9.5-win total, just as any team could fail to hit its number. But 9.5 is an eminently reasonable figure for the 2024 Cowboys.
There are just as many reasons to think it’s low as to think it’s high.
Our projection model confirms 9.5 as a perfect Cowboys total.
Our model analyzes every matchup of the regular season and gives each team a predicted win percentage across its games.
After 1,000 simulations of the 2024 season, the Cowboys averaged 9.6 wins. They finished first in the NFC East more often than anyone else. They made the playoffs in two-thirds of our simulations, the NFC championship game in 20.6%, and the Super Bowl in 9.0%. The Cowboys won the whole thing in 3.8% of our simulations.
It’s not likely, but a Dallas championship is squarely in the “so you’re telling me there’s a chance?” range. (Seven teams have better title odds.)
According to our model, the Cowboys look like a winning team. (Our model does not watch First Take or consume any other media that focuses especially closely on Dallas’ chances.)
What’s the case, then, that the Cowboys’ total is unusually high? To the extent that it’s not just about public bettors being fatigued with (and skeptical of) an underachieving organization, it’s probably about the Cowboys’ offseason losses.
The team has gone 12-5 for three straight seasons, but it lost a boatload of big contributors. Two offensive linemen – future Hall of Fame tackle Tyron Smith and center Tyler Biadasz – are gone. So are running back Tony Pollard and wideout Michael Gallup, who averaged 429 yards and three touchdowns the past three years mainly as a depth target. The defense also lost a pair of front players, end Dorance Armstrong and tackle Jonathan Hankins.
The Cowboys didn’t sign any big-ticket free agents. Their splashiest addition in that realm was to bring back running back Ezekiel Elliott for a second tour of duty, and Elliott’s best days are long gone. The team didn’t make a draft pick higher than 29th, where it landed offensive tackle Tyler Guyton.
The Cowboys should decline, but they’re starting from a high baseline.
Not so much has to go wrong for a 12-win team to become a nine-win team and allow “under 9.5 wins” to cash. The Cowboys were 3-2 last year in one-score games, which could have easily flipped to 2-3 and not all that unusually to 1-4.
The roster is worse, at least in the short term. The last anyone saw of this team was its self-destruction in a home playoff game against the Jordan Love-led Packers.
But the Cowboys’ returning players are quite good.
QB Dak Prescott’s playoff problems are well-documented (and very real). Still, he was one of the best players in the league last regular season, ranking near the top of the NFL in most conventional passing stats as well as our game-tracking metrics like pickable pass percentage (2.81%) and well-thrown percentage (82.5%). Prescott and CeeDee Lamb were the most prolific passer-receiver duo anywhere last season.
The offensive line returns one of the best guard tandems in football. Both Tyler Smith and Zack Martin rated near the top of the league in run disruptions and pressures allowed. Center Brock Hoffman, who was a backup to Biadasz, actually had better pressure and run disruption data than the man who had been ahead of him on the depth chart. (Hoffman is now the starter.)
The defense retains all of its best players. Armstrong and Hankins each played important roles, but neither is irreplaceable. Armstrong was a non-factor against the run, and Hankins posted a slightly below-average hurry rate (8.9%) from his tackle spot. They’re the kind of good players whose production can be filled in by committee, and the Cowboys spent both a pair of early draft picks and their biggest free-agent contract on the defensive front seven.
Does that all add up to a worse team than before? Sure. Does it add up to a team for which the best guess wouldn’t be nine or 10 wins? It’s easy to see why the computers think not.
CeeDee Lamb’s contract status is a wild card, though.
The Cowboys are locked in a fierce negotiation with Lamb, their 2020 second-round pick who’s evolved into one of the best wideouts in the NFL by any measure.
In classic Jerry Jones style, Dallas has held the line against giving the star skill-position player what he wants. He takes a page from the same playbook he’s run over the years against Emmitt Smith, Elliott, Prescott, and more.
Lamb is a year away from becoming one of the sport’s best-compensated receivers, whether that’s via the franchise tag, a deal with the Cowboys, or a deal with someone else. In the meantime, Lamb is predictably not happy, and he did not report on time to training camp ahead of a season in which he’ll make $18 million.
Will Lamb eventually suit up for the Cowboys even without a contractual resolution? Probably. But it’s not a certainty, and Lamb knows how essential he is to the Cowboys.
A look at EVE, our efficiency versus expected model, emphasizes this point below. The dots are sized by number of times a player has been targeted and shows how far Lamb (large dot, far right) is ahead in EVE percentile from the rest of the unit.
EVE Percentile: 2023 WRs
He nearly tripled the yardage total of the team’s second-most productive wideout last year (Brandin Cooks) and could easily do that again
The Cowboys could be fading from competitiveness, but Lamb not playing would speed that process up.
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