Dallas Cowboys Slot Receiver
The Dallas Cowboys have been lucky in the sense that they have had success with slot receivers in recent years. Unfortunately, wide receiver Randall Cobb was too expensive to remain a Cowboy. But then we asked a source inside The Star about Dallas' willingness to solve its slot-receiver vacancy by making a trade for 'a player like Kirk.' ' And the answer is a general 'yes.' Cowboys draft falling star receiver CeeDee Lamb, set up offense for lethality in 2020 An already dangerous Dallas offense just hit a new level of terror.
As long as the season doesn’t get grounded, the airshow in Dallas should be a blast to watch. Quarterback Dak Prescott is coming off his best statistical campaign and will be playing on what amounts to a one-year “prove-it” deal that should directly forecast his post-2020 payday, whether that ultimately comes with the Cowboys or someone else.
But oh, those wide receivers. Amari Cooper reignited his career after being traded out of Oakland, blossomed in his first full season as a Cowboy, and earned himself an elite five-year deal from the team. Michael Gallup’s star continues to climb; in his second pro season, he doubled his rookie receptions, more than doubled his yardage, and tripled his touchdowns. And then Dallas inexplicably had CeeDee Lamb fall into their laps in the first round of April’s draft.
The Cowboys’ passing game could provide legitimate fireworks in 2020. But even looking back at the 2019 numbers is good for a few oohs and aahs.
Bryan Knowles and the crew at Football Outsiders took a deep-dive look at wide receiver play, specifically the difference in production when players line up wide versus in the slot. Overall, their data shows that throwing to the slot is “notably more effective” than throwing out wide. Leaguewide, 56.9% of targets went to slot receivers in 2019; that’s up from 51.8% just three years prior.
Interestingly, though, Dallas was just one of three teams (along with Tampa Bay and Carolina) who bucked that trend and threw more passes to their wideouts than slot guys last season.
For the 2019 Cowboys, that slot role was filled by Randall Cobb. Cobb saw 98.8% of his targets in the slot, being thrown to just once all season when lined up wide. His 81 slot targets put him in 13th place among all receivers.
How did Cobb do with those targets? Football Outsiders uses a metric called Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), which “measures a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent.”
Cobb’s slot DVOA in 2019 was 6.0%. He bettered the league average on those 81 balls by just six percent, which may help explain why Dallas chose not to bring him back for the 2020 season.
So where does the slot action go now? For one, the rookie from Oklahoma is expected to wreak havoc from the interior as a Cowboy. One doesn’t have to watch much of his college tape to suspect that the 6-foot-2-inch Lamb could prove to be a significant upgrade at that position over Cobb and even Cole Beasley before him. (Read more on what Cowboys Wire had to say about Lamb here.)
But the stats show that Gallup is also more of a force to be reckoned with than one might first think, even lined up inside. Known for his acrobatic sideline grabs and as a deep threat, Gallup put up a 27.3% slot DVOA, meaning he performed 27.3 percent better on his slot targets than the expected average. That’s 14th place. His 22 slot targets- where he lined up 19.1% of the time- may represent a smallish sample size, but Gallup made the most of those balls; his DVOA is better than a lot of recognized slot terrors, including Julian Edelman, Adam Thielen, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Cooper Kupp.
Hard to believe an 1,100-yard guy could be flying under the radar. But if the Cowboys choose to utilize Gallup more often as a slot secret weapon, he may be soaring into the end zone even more often.
It’s one thing for a receiver to excel either in the slot or lined up wide, but it’s also worth looking at who does particularly well at both. The tell here is a positive DVOA score at both positions. Compile a list of the players with double-digit DVOA marks in both categories, and one finds guys like Mike Evans, Michael Thomas, Chris Godwin, Tyrell Williams, Calvin Ridley, Mike Williams, Stefon Diggs, Tyreek Hill, DeVante Parker, and Kenny Stills. Michael Gallup is on that list, too.
Not bad company for a youngster who isn’t even WR1 on his own team.
Now then, about Amari Cooper.
The FO piece also tracks a stat called Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement, or DYAR. This metric takes into account how well a player performs compared to the player(s) who would theoretically take his place in the lineup.
Using a hypothetical running back who logs 300 carries a season, the site explains DYAR thusly:
“When a player is removed from an offense, he is usually not replaced by a player of similar ability. Nearly every starting player in the NFL is a starter because he is better than the alternative. Those 300 plays will typically be given to a significantly worse player, someone who is the backup because he doesn’t have as much experience and/or talent. A player’s true value can then be measured by the level of performance he provides above that replacement level baseline, totaled over all of his run or pass attempts.”
From the slot position, Tyler Lockett, Chris Godwin, and Michael Thomas lead the way. Each racked up over 300 yards more than their replacements likely would have in the same situations.
For true wideouts, nobody did it better than the Cowboys’ Cooper. The four-time Pro Bowler had 290 DYAR, a full 65 yards more than the Falcons’ Ridley in second place and 74 more than the Saints’ Thomas in third.
In terms of DVOA, Cooper bested the average by 32.0%. That’s eighth overall. (By way of comparison, Ridley scored 34.3% on 20 fewer catches, and Thomas notched just 16.3% but had ten more receptions than Cooper.)
Bottom line, Cooper is a stud. Says Football Outsiders:
“The Cowboys were one of the three teams who threw wide more than to the slot, and one of the major reasons was Amari Cooper, who has been a more natural fit for Dallas than he was in Oakland. Remember, too, that Cooper was hampered by knee and ankle injuries over the last seven weeks of the season; Cooper had 215 DYAR and a 41.1% DVOA out wide over the first ten weeks. You can understand why the Cowboys would be eager to lock Cooper up to a long-term extension, if not so much why they weren’t excited to lock the other half of that passing combo up to a similar deal. With the franchise tag already used on Dak Prescott and more than 70% of Dallas’ wide passing DYAR at any position going through Cooper, Jerry Jones almost had to write Cooper a blank check, which is why he is now the second-highest-paid receiver in football.”
Three wide receivers who can torch secondaries on the outside, and all three can slide in to work the slot. The writing is on the wall, and it’s forecasting big things for the Cowboys’ air attack in 2020.
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© Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty ImagesDallas Cowboys Slot Receiver
Wednesday marks the third day of free agency activity for the NFL and the Dallas Cowboys have mostly been busy retaining their own.
Dallas has placed the franchise tag on Dak Prescott, extended Blake Jarwin, re-signed the likes of Amari Cooper, Darian Thompson, and Sean Lee, and as of late Tuesday night landed defensive tackle Gerald McCoy. Things are starting to heat up.
One thing that happened to the Cowboys is that they lost Randall Cobb to the Houston Texans (who felt trading DeAndre Hopkins was a good idea). This puts the Cowboys in need of a receiver, specifically a slot receiver, and there is thought that they could address that in the draft.
What if the Cowboys managed to sign a receiver, though? And what if they even went with someone who has ties to the Dallas area and is coming off of a pretty great season?
The Dallas Cowboys are interested in Emmanuel Sanders
Emmanuel Sanders notably played 17 games in 2019 due to playing for both the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers thanks to being traded midseason.
Sanders is coming off of a Super Bowl loss with San Fran, but he’s won a ring of his own five years ago with Denver. Like a former Cowboys slot receiver in Cole Beasley, Sanders is an SMU product, and he has some interest in the Cowboys as well.
The #Cowboys have expressed an interest in 2x Pro Bowler and former SMU wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders per a source informed. Sanders, last with the 49ers, trains in Dallas in the offseason and is equally interested in the #Cowboys I’m told.
— Jane Slater (@SlaterNFL) March 18, 2020Sanders has been targeted almost 100 times in each of his last two seasons, eclipsing 800 yards and catching at least four touchdowns in both of them. He is 33 years old, but he can still play at a high level.
Dallas Cowboys Defense Vs Slot Receiver
There has been connection between Emmanuel Sanders and the Cowboys before to be fair. Two years ago rumors started to swirl that he would be interested in Dallas if he was released by the Broncos, and he even liked a tweet suggesting that he would fit in well in Big D. Things are serious when liked tweets are involved.
Dallas Cowboys Slot Receiver
Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, and Emmanuel Sanders. Do you like the sound of that trio?