Are The Cowboys Systematically Grading O-Line Prospects Too Low?

We can’t expect to throw some fat guy out onto the field who is a 7th round pick and expect him to be the next Willie Roaf.

The Pokes seem to want the biggest O-lineman on the planet, and it’s not working. Perhaps it’s time to start looking at lineman that actually have some athletic ability instead of just being able to have tug-of-wars with elephants. Bigg can pull a horse out of a ditch, but he can’t block a speed rusher. For that matter he’s also losing to the elephants too.

Last time I checked he wasn’t, but I don’t know how he is doing this year.

But which group do you think will come in second?

Safety

simply aren’t doing a good job? I’m even having doubts about draft picks the Cowboys have made over the last few years that, at the time, I thought were good. At the same time, they seem to be able to suss out those quality undrafted free agents. Either that, or they’ve just been lucky there.

All I know is, years of passing on O line picks has caught up with the Cowboys over the last three seasons, and, given how proactive JJ seems in other ways, his turning a blind eye to this issue is bizarre.

seem as Dallas got it right….

Teams just been beating Dallas to these guys.. & sum teams may draft these guys a lil early too..

I know there was a lot of garbage out about Davis & was glad Dallas didnt draft him,.

i know that Ducasse kid was drafted way to early!!!!!!!! He was yank and bench in preaseason.. the rest of those guys is a giv and take thing.. it differ by boards .. and team needs how early they will be taken…

Also Charles Brown was injured so he had a red flag o him.. that is y JJ may hav skip on him in the 2nd round…

I know Burnnett had a 2nd rd grade on him and was taken in the 3rd.. Cj had a 1 or 2nd rd grade on him but was taken in the 1st … so its a giv and take thing

& plz!!!!!!!!! no more we shud hav taken Loadholt !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that guy is trash!!!!!!!!!!!!

But which group do you think will come in second?

defensive line.

I don’t know exactly how to make heads or tails out of that info, except to say that the Schramn, Brandt, Landry regime were not averse at all to drafting a good lineman high: Ralph Neely, John Niland; or to taking a good football player, even a defensive end, and turning him into a good lineman: Rayfield Wright, Mark Tuinei.

Jimmy/Jerry had success finding a jewel in a little lower round: Larry Allen, Nate Newton, Erik Williams; but I believe Mark Stepnowski was a 1st or 2nd rounder.

If you don’t have good OL play, what do you have?

But which group do you think will come in second?

defensive line.

upon further consideration … I’m going to say LB … except it’s the other way.

they’re consistently over-rating them.

It appears that we also have the same issue evaluating the talent on the team……..while they seem to have hit on Doug Free, they did not see the downward spiral that the rest of the Oline have started on (seemingly all at once)……

There are 5 Olinemen (starters) and I would guess that the avg life of a starting Olineman is less than 10 years, goes to reason, that we need to be hitting on drafting a starting Olineman every other year…….and as you can see, it has not been happening

As you noted, we only have one board to go off of, so we have no idea where other teams are ranking these guys. One team biting the bullet and moving up doesn’t mean that’s where everyone else had him ranked. Darious Heyward Bey was taken by the Raiders high in the 1st, but that’s not an accurate value. It only takes one team to reach and it becomes somewhat skewed. Rather than a value ranking issue I think it’s more of a PRIORITY issue. If they placed more of a priority on fixing the OL then they would maybe take a chance on someone a little earlier than their board says they should. Of course, they’d first have to acknowledge that they have a problem and that hasn’t been one of Jerruh’s strong points.

is that this years Oline talent coming out isn’t all that great. Hopefully some good Jr’s declare and bolster it up a little. As of right now, I don’t see a top olineman in the first 15 spots of this draft. That’s not very good and doesn’t bode well for us to solidify our line depth through the draft this year. We are going to have to focus on the OLine through FA and addres other needs (secondary and Dline) in the draft.

we have good draft scouts. Tom Cizkowski is a really good scout but the problem is they need to fix their OL grading system, its awful. Also they need to fix their SS FS grading system because that is a complete joke as well. Other than that I think we have a good grading system in set. I know they will fix this because its the area’s we are really hurting in now. Again take Patrick Peterson and if Deandre McDaniel slips to us in the 2nd Im taking him too because he reminds me of Morgan Burnett, the guy we should of drafted in the 2nd rd. Its time to man up and spend money a good saftey in free agency or draft one.
all of our problems go back to this 2009 draft
if we traded 8 of those 12 picks for Patrick Chung Louis Delmas Phil Loadholt Sebastian Volmer we would be in alot better spot right now

Our grading system is set? What a joke, I do not know their grading system and I doubt anyone really knows whats going on there, if we did, we would have seen this debacle coming and not making super bowl plans. This entire franchise has a disease and its called WhereIsJimmyJohnsonITIS

the coaches go by what the scouts report especially in the later rounds so that seems to be the biggest problem.
 it really sounds like Jerry needs to revamp his scouting department with people who understand the value of certain positions. maybe he needs to inject some youth in those areas with the landscape of the draft chaging & how successful franchises are building there teams.
 this team has a lot of holes besides just on the OL/DL & its going to take a couple drafts if thats the route they go or some FA signings for a quick fix. we have holes at both safety positions (unless AoA FS & Church SS work out), ILB (Lee is the only youth we have), CB (Scandrick is either a bad fit or he’s regressed a lot/Ball just needs to be cut/maybe McCann has some potential but they need to find out asap) & TE (Witten & Phillips are solid TEs but we blew the MartyB pick).
 were going to need a solid draft this April & hopefully they can secure a few potential starters out of it. i think the Giants GM did that a few years ago & its paying off big time now so maybe we can snag a couple of scouts from them or the Ravens.

he was one of the main reasons Clemson almost knocked off Arburn & Cam Newton. that was a signature game for him & if Arburn goes on to win it all, it’ll only raise his stock bc he hasn’t been stopped since.

my larger point was that the Cowboys seemed unwilling to trade up—to spend the extra draft picks—for an offensive lineman. If we accept this, then the fact that they tend to underrate lower-round o-line prospects is particularly problematic. Apparently, the Cowboys won’t spend a premium pick (or a combo of picks—and then can’t scoop up a mid-round prospect because, according to their draft board, they don’t believe they’ll get “value” for him.

As a result, Dallas’s scouts shop at the o-line bargain bin—and we’re stuck wearing the sweater that was picked over by everybody else.

maybe it’s time, as one commenter already noted, to change the system. maybe if we were looking for a different /kind/ of OL, we could find them and coach them up. as great as houck was in the 90s, i’m just not seeing it over these last years.

Here’s the first point.

we can say that 42 percent of the variance in team scores can be accounted for by nothing more than random sample error. The 16-game season is too small of a sample to provide much confidence that team records accurately reflect their "true" level of ability. The more games in a season, the smaller the sample error, and the more certain we could be that the teams with the better records are truly the better teams.

There’s a huge amount of randomness in the NFL. Don’t forget that if you look at the metrics which are the best predictors (efficiency stats, success rate) of future success Dallas’s offense looked like it was good enough to go to the SB (this isn’t a Carolina situation) … and Dallas was subject to a lot of bad luck (and what’s really killing Dallas now is the Romo injury and the pass defense)

If one assumes 2 of the losses were due to randomness and you flip those to wins it’s a 3-5 record … which looks a lot like the SD … and frankly I think SD has a decent chance to win the SB.

So now I get to the no free lunch point. There’s no free lunch … you can’t assume you can have all the toys AND a good offensive line .. there’s a trade off. A better OL has to be paid for somehow. If you want more OL do you mean you wouldn’t have drafted Dez? What would you get rid of? (keeping in mind that you probably had a SB quality offense).

I think any analysis that says improve the OL without saying what sacrifice to do it is flawed.

My recommendation would be to trade RB for OL. But that’s just me.

How would you pay for the OL improvement?

Patriots draft primarily LEFT tackles. 3 of there 5 starters were left tackles in college, and are therefore athletic comfortable playing in space. As an example just look at what Free did at right tackle last year. An all left tackle strategy also gives you the flexibility of interchangeable parts, any guy could play any position, and allows you to get your best five on the field. I think it is an excellent methodology.

I am also, not unconvinced that Martellus Bennett’s best position might not be left tackle. He is big athletic, shows a meant streak when blocking, and most importantly 6’6" and 265.

I live in the Bay Area right now, I’ve had the unfortunate experience of watching my share of 49ers games, as one of my friends covers them, and I must say, Davis looks terrible. He’s easily been the worst offensive lineman for them this year. He does not look like a first rounder at all. JMO.

So Every Year in the Draft they say, “Don’t reach, take the best player available!” But This is what happens, we rate an offensive lineman further down and the Seahawks, the Steelers, the Patriots swoop in and now we need to replace 4 out of 5 linemen in the next 2 year!
Remember when we complained that Jerry sold the ranch to jump up and get the guy he wanted… well look at us now when we act conservatively! Some times you just have to have the _ _ _ _ s to trust your feelings and instincts and just pull the trigger….
that or go steal the guys up in New England who magically turn picks from this year into higher picks next year (Patriots have 2 picks in each of the first 4 rounds of the draft this year and odds are they will flip at least 2 of those for more next year).

Love Our Cowboys so this let down is killing me. Garrett chew their butts and make them strive for perfection. Re-awaken their desire to strike fear in opponents and make them want to hit and tackle the opponent to the ground…. “to and through the ground” we use to say (meaning pound them!). Then work some of the fat off the O-line into defined muscle in their legs so that they can at least fight well.
Oh, and Garrett when you have the beef-a-lo-s pass block have their first step be INTO the defender then back, it stops them in their tracks BEFORE they get a good head of steam going (which we don’t seem to stop very well).

However, just because another team took a player in a different round then when we graded them doesn’t mean that they were right. How have all these players done now that they are in the league. That’s really a better indicator of when they should have been picked.

 . . . is Hudson Houck! It’s a well-known fact that he prefers veterans and does not develop young linemen well — time for him to retire.

If you want to address a position, you’ve got to go after it sometimes. That is especially true about Oline for this team, since they decided to ignore it for years anyway.

Since they were willing to trade up for Dez, and trade up for Lee, it looks like they were reacting to make sure no one was going to make a last minute trade to come right in and pick the players right out from underneath them, like the Unger situation from 09.

The problem is, both Lee and Dez are not Olinemen, so once again, someone has evaluated the existing Oline as good enough, and they weren’t. They need to always be in “re-stock” mode, and they aren’t. The coaches are to blame for this, just as much as the scouts, because they have to be voicing they’re concerns. I don’t think they have. The Oline has been basically ignored for the better part of a decade. What is it going to take for them to get it right? Another year of drafting LB, WR, TE, DL?

Excellent work as usual, thanks for getting your hands dirty on all this… I looked up to the amount of work and decided to keep this as a belief or idea…

You pretty much validated my thoughts.