We Like the Guys We Have: A look at Cowboys' homegrown talent recipe

Every time there’s a known-name player available in free agency, they are linked to the Dallas Cowboys. It drives clicks for websites (not this one, of course) and notoriety for agents who may otherwise be stuck in anonymity. As Will Ferrell once said, “It’s provocative. It gets the people going.”

Soon after that, the question is posed to the Jones family in an attempt to gauge their interest in the newest name on the market. And nearly without fail, the sentiment expressed is something along the lines of “We like the guys we have here.” To be fair, splashy moves in the offseason isn’t correlated to long-term success and the Cowboys have been as successful as any team in building their team through the draft. But where did the Cowboys rank in terms of homegrown talent taking snaps in 2021? The top of the heap, that’s where.

Nearly three-quarters of the snaps taken for Dallas in the 2021 campaign were by players acquired either via the draft or shortly after during the UDFA frenzy.

This is how they prefer to build their team despite failing to reach even the championship round of the playoffs for nearly 30 years.

The average percent of homegrown talent playing for teams who made the playoffs in 2021 was 61.1%. There’s some outliers on both ends, notably the Arizona Cardinals and the Tennessee Titans who fell under 50% and were near the bottom of the league. The Cincinnati Bengals revived an entire team through free agency. The Los Angeles Rams, who are often seen as a team that loves making moves ranked No. 11 in terms of homegrown snaps.

What can be gleaned from this in terms of the best paths forward is probably very little. The data from one season shows there’s no singular way to build a championship contender, but be certain that the recipe in Dallas will remain the same going forward.