waving monkey
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Who are the best (and worst) players on the Cowboys roster, regardless of position? After two weeks of camp and a preseason game to gather information, Rabbs and McCool rank the current roster, from one to ninety.
Last year at camp, during our "deep immersion Cowboys nerd weekend," my podcast partner, Landon McCool, and I set about to rank the 2014 Cowboys from 1-90. This was no easy task; we spent two and a half hours with index cards spread across one of our beds making agonizing decisions. As this weekend marks this year's deep immersion sojourn, we decided to revisit the exercise. Strangely, it wasn't nearly as arduous; we hit some rough patched as we ranked the second half of the roster, but most of it went surprisingly smoothly.
As many of you know, the 1-90 ranking is a favorite exercise of mine. Most standard roster assessment posts look at the top players by each position group. This is a reasonable methodology, and it's how we began the assessment process for this exercise, but there is a crucial drawback: it doesn't offer the clearest of pictures about the talent distribution across the team; as those of you who have studied the Cowboys' roster know, the sixth cornerback can be better than, say, the backup left tackle. And, while organizations
certainly look at the various position groups as they prepare for difficult roster cut decisions, they must also
rank the entire roster if they are to, as Jason Garrett says, "keep the best 53."
This is a good time to conduct this experiment. We are two weeks into camp, and have each watched the Chargers game twice, so there is considerable more clarity than there was when camp got underway on July 30. Just those few days ago, slotting the 2015 draft picks and UDFAs was a difficult endeavor, largely because we had seen little to nothing of them. Now, after twelve camp practices, a preseason game, and several tete-a-tetes with other careful observers, we have a much better handle on the roster.
Before we begin, a couple of notes: our rational was largely driven by a question and a rubric. The question: how good is this player at what his position asks him to do? The rubric: we used last year's performance as a baseline, using training camp performance to adjust the ranking. Also please note that, when applicable, I've included the player's rank at this time last year (which had no bearing on this year's rankings). Okay, here we go:
linkhttp://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2015/8/16/9161021/assessing-the-cowboys-roster-mid-camp-edition-ranking-players-1-90
Last year at camp, during our "deep immersion Cowboys nerd weekend," my podcast partner, Landon McCool, and I set about to rank the 2014 Cowboys from 1-90. This was no easy task; we spent two and a half hours with index cards spread across one of our beds making agonizing decisions. As this weekend marks this year's deep immersion sojourn, we decided to revisit the exercise. Strangely, it wasn't nearly as arduous; we hit some rough patched as we ranked the second half of the roster, but most of it went surprisingly smoothly.
As many of you know, the 1-90 ranking is a favorite exercise of mine. Most standard roster assessment posts look at the top players by each position group. This is a reasonable methodology, and it's how we began the assessment process for this exercise, but there is a crucial drawback: it doesn't offer the clearest of pictures about the talent distribution across the team; as those of you who have studied the Cowboys' roster know, the sixth cornerback can be better than, say, the backup left tackle. And, while organizations
certainly look at the various position groups as they prepare for difficult roster cut decisions, they must also
rank the entire roster if they are to, as Jason Garrett says, "keep the best 53."
This is a good time to conduct this experiment. We are two weeks into camp, and have each watched the Chargers game twice, so there is considerable more clarity than there was when camp got underway on July 30. Just those few days ago, slotting the 2015 draft picks and UDFAs was a difficult endeavor, largely because we had seen little to nothing of them. Now, after twelve camp practices, a preseason game, and several tete-a-tetes with other careful observers, we have a much better handle on the roster.
Before we begin, a couple of notes: our rational was largely driven by a question and a rubric. The question: how good is this player at what his position asks him to do? The rubric: we used last year's performance as a baseline, using training camp performance to adjust the ranking. Also please note that, when applicable, I've included the player's rank at this time last year (which had no bearing on this year's rankings). Okay, here we go:
linkhttp://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2015/8/16/9161021/assessing-the-cowboys-roster-mid-camp-edition-ranking-players-1-90
