Cowboys hire John Park from the Colts for prominent analytics role

The Cowboys on Wednesday hired John Park as their new Director of Strategic Football Operations, according to ESPN’s Seth Walder.

Park comes from the Colts, where he had been their Director of Football Research for the past two seasons. He originally started in Indianapolis as a football research/analytics staffer before being promoted to Manager of Football Research & Strategy, and later to the position he just left.

Park joined the Colts shortly after Chris Ballard was first hired as the team’s new general manager, along with George Li, as part of Ballard’s attempt to beef up the Colts’ analytics department. Park and Li became the chief analytics officers for the team, and eventually became an integral part of game management decision making processes for head coach Frank Reich.

Park’s hiring in Dallas comes less than a month after it was announced that the Cowboys had parted ways with Tom Robinson, who had been the Director of Football Research for the team since 2014 and with the franchise in total since 2010. Robinson left the team prior to the 2023 NFL Draft, though it did not become publicized until afterwards.

Park likely now becomes the highest ranking analytics officer in the Cowboys organization, one that has made a more public commitment to football analytics since the hiring of Mike McCarthy as the head coach. The Cowboys have added several analytics-focused personnel to the coaching staff since then, but Park appears to be the first prominent addition on the front office side of things.

Park is considered to be a rising star in the NFL analytics community, and his new position with the Cowboys is the culmination of the impressive work he achieved with the Colts. Some of the reactions from others in the analytics community have been glowing: