This is fantastic to see.
The past two offseasons have seen the Cowboys undergo a complete and total reorganization of their analytics department, starting with the hiring of John Park to run the department following the 2023 NFL Draft. It seems that this effort has not gone unnoticed, as the Cowboys received plenty of praise from the latest NFL analytics survey conducted by ESPN.
This is a survey that ESPN has been conducting for several years now, and the list of questions are sent out to each NFL organization. While multiple analytics staffers can answer the question from each team, only one submission per team is permitted. So, for example, Park could answer one question on the survey and then have the rest of his team answer the remaining questions.
This year’s survey received responses from 22 teams, with some leaving additional comments and follow-up conversations. As has been the case since this survey began, the Cleveland Browns take the top spot when asked about which team is the most analytically advanced, produces the most analytics work, and incorporates analytics the most into their decision-making. That’s no surprise, as the Browns have the largest analytics department in the NFL, and have for some time.
However, the Cowboys have received the most votes in a question for the first time in this survey’s history. The question posed was centered around which team has improved the most in terms of analytics capability and implementation in the last two years. Out of 20 responses to this question, the Cowboys received 13 votes; only one other team received multiple votes. The following was said about the organization:
Dallas was chosen as the clear runaway most-improved franchise here over the past two years. The Cowboys have made substantial staffing changes since last summer, when they hired John Park as their director of strategic football operations from the Colts. They’ve since added four more full-time employees to their analytics group in addition to Kathy Evans — a former VP at Monumental Sports (Washington Wizards and Mystics) and a big name in sports analytics — and a pair of strategic football fellows.
“The growth of their team,” an AFC staffer said on why they picked the Cowboys as the most improved. “It’s Dallas, they have more resources than anybody. It’s been cool to see that department grow.”
The Cowboys also received the fourth-most votes when asked about the top five most analytically advanced teams. Their nine votes placed them behind analytical heavyweights like the Browns, Ravens, and Eagles but ahead of teams like the 49ers and Vikings, the latter of which is run by general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, previously the top analytics staffer in Cleveland who also helped orchestrate the current analytics infrastructure in San Francisco.
When talking about football analytics, this is very good company to be in, and it signals the seismic shift in the Cowboys’ attitude as an organization to the integration of analytics into their decision making. We previously detailed the nature of that shift and the growing trust in the new-look analytics department, but these survey results indicate that the rest of the league is also taking note of the Cowboys’ data science efforts.
