My Morning After: At Rams, Preseason Wk 1
The Cowboys lost their preseason opener, but how many key pieces won their battles?
Let’s get down to business as we analyze some preseason football.
Now, a couple thoughts before we dive too far into this.
At SturmStack, we are definitely not evaluating the game, the tactics, the coaching, and the matchup for preseason games. This will probably not change unless we see a compelling reason to do so and as long as we follow a Jerry Jones team, I don’t see that changing too much.
NFL preseason games, in general, are not to be studied from a macro view, but we have seen over the years that the Cowboys, in particular, would opt out of all of these games if they had the chance, and we don’t think that will change under current leadership. This was cemented when they lost Tony Romo for the year in the 2016 preseason, and now the front office enters each of these games with many players in bubble wrap.
Yes, they still allow their coaches to evaluate the young players, but once you have a few years under your belt, you are off the list of players that will be reviewed. Dallas isn’t the only team that does this, but they are certainly among the teams least interested in actual “dress rehearsals” or any sort of merit-based competitions among players who have even 1,000 NFL snaps under their belt.
Look at the list of scratches from last night. There are a couple of injury deals, but most of that is just “let’s get this over with.”
INACTIVES:
WR 1 J.Tolbert, CB 2 J.Lewis, WR 3 B.Cooks, QB 4 D.Prescott, S 6 Do.Wilson, CB 7 T.Diggs, WR 9 K.Turpin, LB 11 M.Parsons, RB 15 E.Elliott, DB 20 S.Redwine, S 24 I.Mukuamu, CB 26 D.Bland, RB 27 R.Freeman, S 28 M.Hooker, CB 29 C.Goodwin, RB 42 D.Vaughn, LB 50 E.Kendricks, T 62 N.Thomas, G 70 Z.Martin, OL 73 T.Smith, T 78 T.Steele, TE 87 J.Ferguson, TE 89 P.Hendershot, DE 90 D.Lawrence, DT 97 O.Odighizuwa
Is it a big deal? No, not really. The only big deal is that they continue to charge full NFL prices for fans to see these games. There is no greater show of unnecessary greed in 2024 than the fact that they don’t allow these preseason games to be seen by anyone for $5, so those who would never see an NFL game in person any other way may attend. But that sermon is for another day, I suppose.
What we will do in these preseason “Morning After” pieces is offer an evaluation of 4-5 players each week – and I am tempted to pick many of the same names each week – to really zero in on those high-leverage prospects who can play a meaningful role on the depth chart in 2024. I want to watch each snap of these players on this list with an eagle eye and tell you what I thought because if they play well, there is no reason they cannot be regulars immediately. For the betterment of the roster with salary cap crunches abounding, we should hope they pass the test.
These players are not guys we hope make the team. These are guys that they hope can be star players for them very soon. With that in mind, here are the players we picked this week and may stay on throughout the preseason games above all others:
Trey Lance, QB
Tyler Guyton, LT
DeMarvion Overshown, LB
Mazi Smith, DT
Marshawn Kneeland DE
Markquese Bell, S
Jalen Tolbert, WR
I will get to others as the week goes on, but I really locked down on Trey Lance and Tyler Guyton for this morning’s piece. Let’s begin.