00:00Make us feel good about one of these Cowboy additions.
00:02Let's do it.
00:03Rashawn Gary, who a lot of people just, I think, have decided that they want to
00:10just make up their minds already because they saw, like, what his SAG numbers have been
00:13and they listened to some Green Bay fans that were just kind of tired.
00:16See, the opposite was when the Cowboys traded Oso Digizua yesterday,
00:20everybody who had been complaining about him all of a sudden acted like they've loved him
00:23the whole time and wanted to keep him.
00:26Packers fans were like the opposite.
00:27They have just now acted like Rashawn Gary was never good and they never loved him.
00:32But one guy, Cody Alexander, over at Match Quarters, who is one of the more prominent,
00:38like, emerging new media analysts and has been, like, if you look on Brian Schottenheimer's
00:45social media, for instance, it is one of the handful of accounts that Brian Schottenheimer
00:48like follows as Match Quarters, which just dives into a lot of different defensive philosophy,
00:55X's and O's, how players fit in the scheme.
00:57Cody's really, really smart.
00:59He's been on G-Bag a lot lately.
01:00But Cody Alexander was on his podcast, Let's Talk Ball.
01:05Love the name.
01:06Love the name, Cody.
01:07It's good stuff.
01:07No wonder Schottenheimer follows him.
01:09Cody Alexander was on his podcast yesterday and they were doing an overview of NFL free
01:16agency and where things stood.
01:17And he is a big fan so far of what the Cowboys have done, particularly with Sean Gary.
01:21This is the first cut here where Cody Alexander says this is about raising the floor for the
01:26Dallas Cowboys defense.
01:28This is 100% about raising the floor.
01:32So here's another thing, too, when you're looking at these moves is everybody wants to
01:38focus on the ceiling.
01:39They want to focus on the high guys.
01:41But you have to understand, like, where are we setting our floor?
01:45If I go out and buy a high-priced free agent and I put him on a pedestal, well, who
01:51the
01:52hell else is playing around him?
01:53We've seen this too often where a team is just like, we're going to throw a bag at a guy.
01:58And then we don't give him any complimentary players.
02:01And then we look back after a couple of years and we're like, man, that was a terrible, that
02:04was a terrible signing.
02:06That kid, that guy's washed.
02:07And then he goes somewhere else and he, you know, automatically becomes a good player.
02:11And it was like, well, maybe it was the people that were around him, the scheme that he's
02:14playing.
02:14And I think, again, look, this is, this is Kenny Clark and Rashawn Gary.
02:20Do not forget Christian Parker was with the Packers when both of these guys were, were pretty
02:25much in their prime.
02:26I think he understands how to use them.
02:28And he had talked about that.
02:30He was one of the ones yesterday who he's in, he's analytics.
02:33He's X's and O's.
02:34Cody has a lot of varied things.
02:36Cody was saying that, yeah, the reality is that maybe Osa wasn't totally a fit.
02:40Solomon Thomas probably wasn't a fit.
02:42Like this is a remaking of, of what you want to look like as the true fit.
02:45And Rashawn Gary is that.
02:46And he had talked about, you know, we, we, we remember Nico saying, I think fans are starting
02:51to see the vision.
02:52Cody Alexander is seeing the Cowboys defensive vision.
02:56Again, this is about, we've been the worst run defense, arguably like really over the
03:03past five years, which is by design.
03:05I mean, it's by design.
03:06Dan Quinn had designed that defense for that.
03:09Yeah.
03:09But this is, this is Christian Parker in not a blitz heavy system in more of a coverage
03:15system that he knows he's going to have to rebuild the secondary.
03:17What you can't have is as we're rebuilding the secondary that we owe, by the way, we cannot
03:22stop the run again for another year.
03:25So now you've got Rashawn Gary, who is a heavy, heavy edge.
03:30Okay.
03:30He's not going to drop a lot.
03:32That's perfect.
03:33Now you have all of these kinds of rotational light edges that you can now move around.
03:38It's going to look, I think a lot like what Seattle looked like last year.
03:41They still need to figure out the nickel position.
03:43I think they're going to figure that out through the draft.
03:46But I think that, like you said, they're not going to get enough credit and they're going
03:50to still, everything again, will be projected back to, oh, you had Michael Parsons.
03:55Yeah, that's great.
03:55But you got Quinn Williams.
03:56Now you got Kenny Clark, who is a solid nose.
03:59And then now you've got Rashawn Gary, who is good, not great, but that's exactly what
04:03you want.
04:04It's positive.
04:05It's a positive review for Rashawn Gary and where he fits in.
04:08And we've got an analytics review now that is very, very positive.
04:13So Kevin Cole, who previously had been a data scientist at PFF, he broke off, branched
04:19away, probably realized that the grades that they have over there at PFF are stupid.
04:23And he wanted to get into doing the real work.
04:27But he was previously a data scientist.
04:28So he's gone off now and created a really successful newsletter and podcast called
04:33Unexpected Points, which tries to look at.
04:35Imagine when you're like growing up and you're like, mom and dad, I'm going to be a
04:38data scientist.
04:39And they're like, yes.
04:41And they're like, what field?
04:42What are you studying?
04:43They go, football.
04:44Yeah.
04:45And they're like, what?
04:46A data scientist for football.
04:49So you remember in Moneyball, we've all watched Moneyball.
04:52In Moneyball, Jonah Hill says, you want to buy, what's he say?
04:56You want to buy runs or you want to buy wins?
04:58You're looking to buy, yeah, you're looking to buy runs to buy wins.
05:02And so he's like, people just view things incorrectly.
05:05Similarly, they look at it as in the evolution of EPA, expected points added, and then how
05:11efficient you're playing.
05:12When you're acquiring players, it's a lot similar to you're looking to buy points.
05:17You're trying to buy points to create margins and then get to victories.
05:22In fact, he's had this breakdown that he's done the last couple of years trying to look
05:26at the improvement index and how it impacts teams, how teams who spend and improve their
05:33rosters, whether it be by subtractions, like for instance, a Kenneth Murray subtraction on
05:37its own would probably improve it because you compare it to a league average player the
05:42way that War or one of those other ones would.
05:44And he had said yesterday when he released the index, the first version of it yesterday,
05:48he said it doesn't always project perfectly, he said, but in 2025, the top three winners
05:54were the Patriots, the Bears, and the Panthers.
05:59So Patriots, Bears, and Panthers had all improved at the highest level last offseason.
06:03Those were three playoff teams.
06:04The three that were at the bottom in this index last year were the Chiefs, the Jets, and the
06:10Eagles.
06:11And the Chiefs, Jets, and Eagles all regressed tremendously.
06:14So he had done his index yesterday, and it's a breakdown that tries to look at how much
06:20an individual player contributes to expected point differential added or lost over a league
06:26average player.
06:27So similar to War, if War is zero and you're above it or below it, that means you're above
06:31or below an average replacement level player.
06:33So he took a look specifically at the edge rushers that have been acquired that he's gone
06:36through projections for already.
06:38This is who he's had on there.
06:38Rashawn Gary, Jalen Phillips, Adafi Owe, Draymond Jones, Boye Mafe, Quidi Pei, Arden
06:46Key, and Jermaine Johnson.
06:48Those were all the edge rushers that he had processed as of yesterday.
06:51Out of all those acquisitions, Rashawn Gary is projected by that model to be the best player
06:56in 2026 out of that whole group.
06:58In fact, if you look at how much each team paid, if you say, all right, how many expected
07:03points added you've added here as an acquisition, Rashawn Gary leads in this entire group, he's
07:09at 10.6.
07:10The next closest would be 9.8 is the next closest, but he's at 10.6.
07:18And when you look at what everybody's supposed to add there and how many millions you paid
07:24for each point that they're expected to add.
07:27So how much did you spend on every point that they're giving you?
07:31The Cowboys paid $1.88 million per point with Rashawn Gary.
07:35The Panthers paid $3.4 million for Jalen Phillips.
07:39The Commanders paid $5.1 million for Odafe Owe, and the Bengals paid a stunning and the
07:45largest margin of the entire edge group.
07:47They paid $5.7 million per point with Boye Mafe.
07:50Wow.
07:51So these are like the projections that when you look at how they've broken out and how
07:56this, and again, this is a projection, but this whole thing is done with a lot of deep
08:01study and research into scheme fit, how guys are projected to work under new coaching staffs,
08:06projections out over a hundred simulations and putting them into circles.
08:10But he was by far out of all the edge groups by a full point over anybody else was the
08:14most
08:15like, like the largest gap presented of points added.
08:19So Barnwell weighed in on it.
08:21Gary looked to be on track to stardom in 2021 and 2022 before tearing an ACL.
08:27And while he has not been quite as productive since, I wonder if setting expectations might
08:32reveal a player who can be useful on the right contract.
08:35He's produced seven and a half sacks in each of the past two years, 15 knockdowns in 2024
08:41and 20 and 2025, benefited from playing across from Micah.
08:45Uh, Gary was still chipped at a slightly above average rate.
08:49His pressure rates were a little below average league average on the edge, but there's still
08:53a solid edge rusher there.
08:55I would have liked to see the Cowboys do this for a six or seventh as it stands.
09:00They probably paid a little too much in terms of capital and they will shell out a little
09:05too much to Gary who makes 18 and 20, 26 and 21 next year.
09:09I suspect he would have been looking at an annual salary of something closer to 12 to
09:1415 and free agency.
09:15And we were kind of speculating.
09:17Or net.
09:18Yeah, no, Barnwell's wrong.
09:19At least what he was making or more.
09:21Yeah, he's wrong.
09:22I love the first clip he had where he said, you know, look at, look at raising the floor
09:28as opposed to buying high.
09:30It's the old phrase.
09:31And I don't know if it's an old phrase.
09:32Maybe I just came up with it.
09:33I'm gonna take credit for it right now.
09:34Mine the gold, buy the silver.
09:37I've never heard it.
09:38Okay.
09:38You want to mine for gold and you want to buy your silver.
09:41So you want to draft your superstars and then you want to buy the small pieces to put around
09:47the perfect world out of course.
09:49You can't always do that because the moment you miss on a draft pick, you got to go buy
09:52them somewhere else on the expected points, added scale in these projections out of all
09:57the addressers.
09:58Gary is slightly behind first in terms of expected pass rush production.
10:02He's at a 6.7 and then you've got 6.8 on Arden key, but he is by far the
10:07highest graded
10:08run defender expected out of the entire edge group.
10:10So the nerds signing off on Rashawn Gary.
10:13So far, nerds respectfully.
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