Free agency and the NFL Draft have come and gone. It’s time to fully embrace the 2023 offseason by breaking down the fantasy football aspirations of each and every team before fantasy draft season truly gets underway.
You can find our team previews for all 32 NFL teams here.
What follows is a fantasy-focused breakdown of the Dallas Cowboys, focusing on key questions like:
- Is Dak Prescott arguably fantasy football’s most-consistent QB?
- Does Tony Pollard deserve to be a top-five fantasy RB?
- Will CeeDee Lamb maintain top-10 fantasy goodness despite the offense adding Brandin Cooks to the WR room?
Every fantasy-relevant player from the Cowboys will be covered. Make sure to check out the Fantasy Life Team Preview Landing Page through the end of June for more all-encompassing fantasy football coverage.
Notable offseason moves
From the front office, to the coaching staff, to the roster: Every 2023 NFL team will be different than its 2022 version.
Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy enters his fourth year in Dallas – but this time he’ll be calling plays. Don’t expect the absence of offensive coordinator Kellen Moore to result in wholesale changes; McCarthy himself said it’ll be around a 30-35% difference.
Blame Moore all you want for the Cowboys’ back-to-back season-ending losses to the 49ers, but it’s tough to be overly critical about the man partially responsible for leading this offense to so much regular season success in recent years.
- 2020 points per game pre-Dak injury: 32.6 (No. 2)
- 2021: 31.2 (No. 1)
- 2022 post-Dak injury: 32.5 (No. 1)
Slant-flat jokes aside: McCarthy deserves credit for calling plays well enough to help lead Aaron Rodgers and company to a Super Bowl once upon a time. The question is just how serious he is about wanting to further run the damn ball:
You see, McCarthy’s desire to establish the run is concerning because the Cowboys already run the ball at a high rate. Overall, Prescott and company ranked 20th (-1.6%), 9th (+1.2%), and most recently 25th (-6%) in pass rate over expected.
Failure to maintain their status as a top-two offense in the fastest situation neutral pace could make it awfully difficult for this passing game to enable more than one high-end option due to the lack of available volume.