The Dallas Cowboys have the second highest cluster of high-value players in the NFL

Pro Football Reference developed a stat called Approximate Value.

Created by PFR founder Doug Drinen, the Approximate Value (AV) method is an attempt to put a single number on the seasonal value of a player at any position from any year (since 1950).

They explain its purpose.

"AV is not meant to be a be-all end-all metric. Football stat lines just do not come close to capturing all the contributions of a player the way they do in baseball and basketball. If one player is a 16 and another is a 14, we can't be very confident that the 16AV player actually had a better season than the 14AV player. But I am pretty confident that the collection of all players with 16AV played better, as an entire group, than the collection of all players with 14AV."

What we’re going to use it for in this article is to see how many high-value players there were on each team in 2016. We don’t have data for this year yet, and we can’t guess how this year’s players will perform, so last year’s data will have to do for now.

We have chosen to arbitrarily cut off the evaluation at players who achieved a 10 AV or higher in 2016. 128 NFL players received grades that high or higher last year.

If those players were divided equally over the 32 teams, one would expect exactly four 10 AV players per team. Of course, that’s not how they were divided.

• 29 of the teams had at least one 10-AV or higher player. The three that didn’t? Chicago, San Francisco, and Cleveland.
• The top team had nine 10-AV or higher players, two teams had seven such players, and 14 teams had at least five such players.

Which teams had the highest number of players with 10 AV or higher? Which had the highest cumulative AV score for those players? Let’s look at the top 10 teams, ranked by cumulative AV.

1 - Atlanta Falcons

9 players, 124 AV

2 - Dallas Cowboys

6 players, 87 Av

3 - New England Patriots

7 players, 84 AV

4 - Kansas City Chiefs

7 players, 77 AV

5/6 - Seattle Seahawks

6 players, 73 AV

5/6 - Tennessee Titans

6 players, 73 AV

7 - Buffalo Bills

6 players, 71 AV

8 - Green Bay Packers

5 players, 69 AV

9 - New York Giants

5 players, 68 AV

10 - New Orleans Saints

6 players, 68 AV

Everyone Else

We won’t chart out all the rest of the players, but here’s how the other teams rank by total AV.

Oakland, 5 players, 61 AV
Pittsburgh, 5 players, 61 AV
Washington, 5 players, 56 AV
Arizona, 4 players, 53 AV
Miami, 5 players, 53 AV
Indianapolis, 4 players, 50 AV
Tampa, 4 players, 47 AV
Denver, 3 players, 45 AV
Minnesota, 4 players, 45 AV
Cincinnati, 4 players, 44 AV
Philadelphia, 4 players, 44 AV
Houston, 3 players, 39 AV
Baltimore, 3 players, 38 AV
Los Angeles Chargers, 3 players, 34 AV
Carolina, 3 players, 32 AV
Los Angeles Rams, 2 players, 28 AV
Detroit, 2 players, 24 AV
New York Jets, 1 player, 10 AV
Jacksonville, 1 player, 10 AV. (Puts to lie Barry Church’s claim that Jacksonville has more talent than Dallas.)

Analysis and Final Notes

The way the teams line up is fairly consistent with how they played last year. Atlanta and New England, ranked first and third, played in the Super Bowl. Dallas, ranked second, finished with the best record in the NFC and was led by its two high-value rookies and offensive line. Sure, New Orleans and Buffalo may be outliers, but perhaps they just have very poor supporting casts for their stars.

Dallas has the youngest group of high-value players, with its six players averaging just 25.1 years old. They are followed by NYG (25.6), TN (25.8), KC (26.2), NO (27.6), SEA (27.8), GB (28), ATL (28), BUF (29), NE (29.4).

Dallas also retained all six of its high-value players. Meanwhile, Chris Chester, an offensive guard who scored 10 AV for the Falcons, retired. We didn’t track who might have moved on from other teams, but the names are above for the top-10 teams.

Overall, this bodes really well for the Cowboys. In addition to the overall scores and ages of the Cowboys who made the cut, Cole Beasley just missed the cut with 9 AV, Dez Bryant scored 8 AV last year, but has had years as high as 14 AV, Maliek Collins scored 7 AV as a rookie, and has tremendous upside, and Jaylon Smith should attain those levels, if not this season, then perhaps by 2018 and beyond. La’el Collins also has the potential to add to the luster of the Dallas offensive line. Can Byron Jones make the leap from 6 AV to Landon Collins levels (13 AV)? Can DeMarcus Lawrence have a big season in his contract year?