How the 2023 Dallas Cowboys were built, The "First 53" edition

They lead the entire league in home-growns on their roster

It is all about sustainability, really.

You might have heard over the last day or so that the Cowboys lead the NFL in homegrowns on their roster.

Should you care?

Is this a big deal?

Well, sustainability and of course the added advantage of continuity. By that, we mean raising players inside your facility from the time they leave their collegiate program and training them how things are to be done. If you believe in certain protocols and procedures in the ways of preparation, training, routines, meetings, travel, and everything you want from them as long as they represent your organization. What does it mean to be a Dallas Cowboy?

That is for them to decide. But, they can only decide it if they are not a bus station of vagabonds, who have all played in many cities and many organizations, and who all have been trained by different humans on priorities and initiatives of great importance.

I am not saying that the Cowboys run this extremely tight ship in a way that will remind you of the most detail-oriented titans of this sport. There are few rumors that they assemble a group of men like Vince Lombardi or Bill Walsh, but if you want your guys dressed a certain way on road-trips, understanding expectations about off-season work, or even knowing what sort of things are ok and what sort of things are not, well, it serves you well to have guys who have only done things one way.

You start importing players who used to do things with the Raiders or the Seahawks or Jets in one fashion, and if you don’t care for that sort of thing, well, it just opens you to being undermined when the players visit with each other.

Why can’t we wear headphones in the lockerroom? Why can’t I bring my kids in here? What do you mean we have to go to California for training camp and I can’t bring my wife?

That sort of thing may not seem like a big deal, but millionaires are going to push back if you try to tell them things they are not expecting.

But, if you taught these guys since they were pups that this is what matters most around here and the other stuff doesn’t matter too much, well then there are no surprises at all and that ethos gets handed down from older players to the younger ones in the lunch lines or plane trips.

Now, back to the sustainability. I have written about the “4-year conveyor belt of talent” for years and years. Of course, it was always at the old place, so let me link to that but offer you a few handy excerpts:

The normal rookie contract in the NFL is a four-year deal. This is true for all rookie contracts that are not first-round picks. Those first-rounders have a fifth-year option that can be activated, but it is basically the NFL’s equivalent of arbitration, which means it is not really a significant discount over where elite players at his position will generally earn.

If you need 53 to 60 players under $224.8 million (the 2023 NFL salary cap), then you had better have a very high number of cheap players if you are going to try to pay your best five players over half of it on their own. It simply has to cause issues at some point and the only solution is having a roster filled with guys on their rookie deals.

It suggests you can have about eight to 10 players at 60 percent of your total money and the other 45 rostered players get the remaining 40 percent.

And that 40 percent is the four-year conveyor belt. The entirety of your roster is made up of eight guys with big money and nearly 50 guys with just good money.

This is how teams have to fill their spots for the rank-and-file soldiers they need below the top eight to 10 earners on their roster. Teams get four years of cheap labor and that is how they fill the roster because they can only give out a handful or two of big contracts and still field a team.

Even though we think a football team is a long-term venture where guys spend a decade here, the reality is that most NFL players — this is true everywhere — spend four years or less in their locale. Then their contract expires and either they are special players or they are replaced with new cheap labor who will perform on that Biadasz-level rookie deal all over again.

As the quotes indicate, sustainability is about work force. You have to build a group that are all on 4-year deals where you can lock in, train, and then put them to work at a reasonable price. Every NFL team gives most of its money to a handful of players. But, the majority of the labor is done in this league by guys on small-ish NFL contracts.

Most don’t live in mansions. And most will not retire rich before they turn 30 years old.

What sustainability means is that you do not have to replace your workforce every few seasons because. It’s impossible to train a new cast without the necessary growth time baked in. It is essential to allow a year to acclimate, learn from your predecessor, and then replace him as he runs out of contract and you move in to his place.

Let’s look at an example of how this works:

In 2021, Connor Williams played left guard. His contract expired and he went to Miami for good money, so Connor McGovern moved in on his small rookie deal for 2022. But, his contract also expired and he went to Buffalo for good money. So up steps Tyler Smith in his place. Behind him, young TJ Bass made the team to play guard and perhaps, will have a chance to succeed either Tyler Smith or Zack Martin if events necessitate.

The point is, however, that none of these players made much money. In fact, you were able to pay for 2021-2023 at left guard – 50 regular season games – for about $9 million combined. Zack Martin will make $18 million to play right guard for the Cowboys this year alone. You can only afford that if you can cost-average things down at other positions.

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Now, allow me to get to what I wanted to share with you a bit higher before I wandered down those two paths on why this all matters.

Below, please find this handy visual aid about “How the Cowboys were built” so that when you read that 83% of the Cowboys are homegrowns, you can actually check their math. I believe Jason was just counting the 53 man roster and I am using the 61 players they still have on their protected roster. As you will see, I have 48 of 61 as “homegrowns” and that is defined as players who have never been on another team’s roster.

Technically, 48/61 comes in at 79%, but either way, that still leads the league.

Of the 61 men on the 2023 roster, which includes four whom are on season-ending IR (in red), one is suspended (in yellow), three are on in-season IR, and 53 are on the roster. This does not include the practice squad because practice squad players are not protected and can be sniped by any team that wants to carry them on their active rosters.

• There are 36 Cowboys Draft Picks ranging from 2011-2023.

• Twelve players joined Dallas as undrafted college free agents, including nine from 2022-23.

• Eight are NFL free agents of which all were on minimal deals.

• Five were acquired by trade, including four since March 2023.

This is the point in the piece where I should point out that I believe that Jerry Jones is generally bad at his job as the longest tenured general manager in the league. Someday I will elaborate on the 20 most irritating things he has done to undermine his franchise and the most difficult part will be to stop at just 20.

But, doggone, if we could do the blind taste test where we simply look at those four facts above and grade accordingly without any bias, we would have to admit that the Dallas Cowboys are running a well-conceived and well-executed build of a very powerful roster.

It wasn’t always like this because if you looked at 2006-2010, you would find the Cowboys were one of the worst teams for growing their own players and were dependent on other team’s free agents and castaways. But the way Dallas has built this roster – especially now under Mike McCarthy’s tenure – would be consistent with a team that has won more regular season games in the last two seasons (24) as anyone but Kansas City in the entire sport.

This year, they have ramped up the urgency and started trading draft picks for current assets. This market inefficiency was barely present with the Cowboys for ages, but now, they have been flipping Day 3 draft picks (rounds 4 through 7) and turning them into two starters at key positions (Cooks and Gilmore) and one QB lottery ticket (Lance).

We also know that virtually no team can boast first-round draft pick success like the Cowboys who on this present roster alone can show you with Tyron Smith, Zack Martin, CeeDee Lamb, and Micah Parsons. Very few teams have hit that many All-Pro home runs. Then, they found their QB1 on Day 3.

Again, how many playoff teams can say that? And yes, they carry 48 players that they hand selected from the college ranks and literally no other organization can say that.

They are the most “homegrown” team since….many of Mike McCarthy’s Green Bay teams when he coached up north.

Fascinating, right?

In both cases, he had a front office that didn’t always follow his wishes, but that is quite a coincidence that McCarthy teams win double-digit games and do it with rosters that are almost all homegrown, right?

Talent collection and roster building is not an accepted recipe that you simply follow and prepare your trophy case for another Lombardi. In fact, you can win the whole thing and be a terrible at drafting, theoretically. There is so much more to winning than just that. You need those players to develop and to perform at their highest levels at the most important times. Regular season wins are nice, but let’s not use up all the wins before winter. At some point, to validate your strategies and priorities, you have to win things that matter.

But, the truth is that the Cowboys are now the industry leaders at drafting and developing. They decided to make it a priority about a decade ago – three straight 8-8 seasons led them to that frustrating conclusion – and now it is very much their calling card.

If they are going to pay players, they are going to pay their own guys. They are going to pick their own guys in a roster crunch. They are going to target and prioritize their kinds of guys. And it has led them to this roster that is 80% pure-bred Dallas Cowboys.

The last hurdle to validate their vision is to win big in January. And they can’t do that in August. But, August is where the team is chosen.

Now, comes the season.