ESPN’s FPI model suggests Dallas Cowboys will be below average team in 2025

One model believes the Dallas Cowboys will be a below average team in 2025.

There are a lot of different ways to predict or project the NFL season. Gut feelings are one avenue of pursuit. Projected wins are another. Using the infamous eye test, basically an advanced gut feeling, is another way to go. You get the picture.

One method to this madness that ESPN uses is their FPI (Football Power Index) model. This is something that exists as a power ranking of sort as a season moves along and they obviously put together rankings/ratings/projections before it all starts as well.

The projections are out for 2025 and they are not fond of the Dallas Cowboys.

ESPN’s FPI Index believes Dallas is a bottom half team

For starters we need to understand what is going into the FPI model so that we can determine whether it is sound or ridiculous. Here is how the worldwide leader is defining FPI relative to the preseason (in terms of before the season, not the literal time with the exhibition games) is concerned.

In the preseason, FPI’s overall predictive ratings are primarily based on win totals from the betting market in conjunction with each team’s schedule — along with factors such as the difference between a team’s starting and backup quarterback and a special teams rating that incorporates specific kickers. We use these ratings to simulate the season thousands of times, with the results forming our projections.

This is not meant to sound like picking on the system or its methodology, but if you are building it off of projected win totals from betting markets then you are effectively just listing out betting market win totals with a little bit of a twist. It is fair to use the projected win totals as some form of evaluation, the buildings in Las Vegas are tall and shiny for a reason.

We have noted several times here at BTB that projected win totals for the Cowboys are rather low. Oddsmakers tend to have Dallas around 7.5 projected wins and it is important to note that this feels unlikely given the team’s history. We can acknowledge simultaneously that the Cowboys have failed to win a Super Bowl while noting that they generally tend to win somewhere around 9-10 games barring some sort of injury or catastrophe.

All of that being said, here is how the FPI model shakes things out at this point in the calendar.

The numbers you are seeing are each team’s FPI rating. It is intended to assess the strength of each team. If it isn’t obvious, you do not want to be in the negatives like Dallas is. To be clear, the Cowboys are the first team in the negative and are hanging around average at the 18th spot overall.

If we look at the FPI assessment a little bit more in depth we can see that the model is predicting somewhere between 7.9-9.0 wins for the Cowboys this season, north of the 7.5 number we just mentioned by the way, and gives them over a 30% chance to reach the playoffs.

ESPN

Push is going to come to shove at some point in 2025 with the Cowboys, and they are going to prove that they are either the core of a team that went to the playoffs three times in a row with an outlier of a season that followed, or a team that began to fall off of a cliff of sorts. These are the only real practical outcomes for who they are going to be next season.

It makes sense in this vein to approach the team with some anticipation in 2025, but this does still seem a bit harsh. Time will tell if the Cowboys are in fact a team who will return to playoff form and prove things like this to be too critical of who they ultimately are.