BobbyBelt Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 Good evening fellas. Wanted to share a little bit of research I've been doing ahead of the draft. I'm actually doing this research for all teams, but I obviously have a particular interest in what this means for the Cowboys. Last year when the Cowboys drafted Taco Charlton, it triggered a debate among fans and media about what the Cowboys were actually looking for when Jerry proclaimed they needed a "war daddy." Charlton looked physically looked the part of a dominant pass-rusher, but the words many people used to describe Dallas' pass-rusher preference (bend, twitch, get-off, etc.) didn't seem to fit Charlton. Did the Cowboys diverge from their prototype, or did the fans and media never quite understand what their prototype was? In order to get a handle on what type of athletes Dallas wants at each position, you have to find a starting point where most of a team's decision-makers were in place, or at least had other jobs of importance within the draft process. 2008 appears to be a pretty good year to start pinpointing trends within the front office. Stephen Jones, Will McClay, Tom Ciskowski, Drew Fabianich, and Jason Garrett all had large voices in the process, just as they do now. I've compiled all of the relevant athletic testing of players Dallas has drafted since 2008 HERE. If you follow THIS link, I've broken down the same data by position group, and compiled the average numbers of each position group. A few notes on the data... Observant readers will notice that five players - Byron Jones, Akwasi Owusu-Ansah, Ben Gardner, Tyrone Crawford, and Bill Nagy - show up in two different groups of positional data. Because these five players were asked to play two different positions during their time in Dallas, it's probably safe to assume that those players meet Dallas' athletic satisfaction at both spots. I've decided NOT to include Chaz Green in the guard data, because that shift was largely made out of an attempt to find anyone who could hold down the left guard position. Also, there are some positions where the data is simply too thin to glean much from it. Dallas has drafted two quarterbacks in the last decade. If you count Nagy, they've drafted two centers. What I'm working on now, at positions where we don't have much draft data, is to compile free agent data for those positions. The composite should give us a good idea of what the Cowboys like at those positions. For those that aren't used to seeing the four-digit height listing, it works like this: the first number is feet, the next two numbers are inches, and the fourth number is eighths of an inch. So a player who is 5'11¼ would be listed as 5112. The results... There are some interesting bullet points that are embedded in this data: - The Cowboys don't mind short corners. Despite the consistent claim that Dallas likes taller corners, they've actually never drafted a pure corner (Jones and Owusu-Ansah excluded here) who was 6000 tall. The tallest corner they've drafted is Chidobe Awuzie (5116) and there are still some in the organization who think he should be a safety. 6 of the 12 corners the Cowboys have drafted in the last decade are actually 5102 or shorter. The Cowboys, believe it or not, actually trend towards smaller corners. - Taco Charlton is roughly in the area of where the Cowboys' defensive ends threshold. He's a tad above their marks for things like 3-cone, but it's not egregious. I'm not a Charlton fan, but it's actually not much of a split from other edge rushers they've selected. - The Cowboys are not big fans of speedy receivers. Dallas has drafted 8 receivers over the last decade, and none of them ran a faster than 4.5 speed in the 40-yard dash. - Dallas' linebackers and edge rushers are the same athletes. Outside of height and weight, the linebackers and edge rushers the Cowboys have drafted are remarkably similar in terms of their athleticism. The edge rushers average a 4.83 in the 40, while the linebackers average 4.72. The linebackers have averaged 23 reps of 225 lbs on the bench, while edge rushers have averaged 24. The linebackers get about an inch more on their vertical, and complete the short shuttle in .04 seconds faster time, but their broad jumps (117') and 3-cone times (7.15) are identical. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's all relatively simple data, but I know there aren't many places to find it organized in this manner, so thought I'd share it here and let you guys draw your own conclusions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D82 Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 Yet another great read, Bobby. I'm looking forward to seeing your notes on the other 31 teams. So, if they stick with the trend, it's unlikely that guys like Christian Kirk, Anthony Miller, etc. will be selected should they elect to go with a wide out. Kind of a bummer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plan9misfit Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 It is pretty simple data, but useful nonetheless. If nothing else, one can use that to perform a simple trend analysis to generally determine which players at various positions we would favor ahead of others. Very fun read. Nice work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
textaz03 Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 Looking at the chart, damn we suck at drafting late round edge rushers, Olineman (lot of draft capital wasted) outside of the big 3 and TE’s lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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