The 2025 Cowboys were a fantasy football force. Dak Prescott finished as QB6 in a bounceback season, George Pickens was the PPR WR5 in his first year with the team. CeeDee Lamb was PPR WR22 despite missing much of the season. Scrap heap pickup Javonte Williams was RB12. Jake Ferguson was PPR TE5 despite not doing much of anything over the last few months of the season. What has changed this year? Not much. What is coming for them as a main enemy? Regression. <\/p>\n
\u25b6 2025 Dallas Cowboys Stats (Rank)Points per game: 27.7 (7th) Total yards per game: 391.9 (2nd) Plays per game: 65.9 (4th) Dropbacks per game: 43.6 (2nd) Dropback EPA per play: 0.18 (5th) Designed rush attempts per game: 26.3 (14th) Rush EPA per play: -0.01 (8th)
\u25b6 The more things stay the same, the more things change<\/p>\n
The Cowboys in 2025 rolled out this in their first game of the season: head coach Brian Schottenheimer, offensive coordinator Klayton Adams, Prescott, Williams, Lamb, Pickens, Ferguson, and an offensive line of Tyler Guyton, Tyler Smith, Cooper Beebe, Tyler Booker, and Terence Steele. <\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t a single projected change in the starting lineup from last year \u2014 though Nate Thomas may push Guyton for a starting role at left tackle as Guyton appears to have earned some skepticism from the coaching staff after two injury-plagued opening years in the NFL. The Cowboys spent zero draft picks on the offense in the first two days and other than Marquez Valdes-Scantling haven\u2019t added anyone in free agency who seems like a real lock to fight for a roster spot.<\/p>\n
We do have a recent comparison here, but it\u2019s not a pretty one: The Atlanta Falcons did this from 2024 to 2025. They fell from 13th in points scored (22.9 per game) in 2024 to 24th (20.8) in 2025. Granted, they did lose offensive linemen Kaleb McGary to injury and Drew Dalman in free agency \u2014 the Cowboys suffered no such real losses. <\/p>\n
The Cowboys should do a better job at handling regression as a fantasy offense than the Falcons did last year, but that doesn\u2019t mean it will be a pure runback.<\/p>\n
\u25b6 Passing Game<\/p>\n
QB: Dak Prescott, Joe Milton\/Sam Howell
WR: CeeDee Lamb, Jonathan Mingo
WR: George Pickens, Marquez Valdes-Scantling
WR: Ryan Flournoy, KaVontae Turpin
TE: Jake Ferguson, Luke Schoonmaker<\/p>\n
So, here\u2019s the thing: The Cowboys probably won\u2019t drop back to throw 43.6 times this year. That was a function of having one of the worst defenses in modern NFL history in 2025. The Cowboys threw on 52.2 percent of neutral situation (20-80 percent win expectancy) downs last year, a number that puts them smack dab in the middle of the NFL at 16th place.<\/p>\n
I do think there\u2019s a chance that number is overemphasized, as the Cowboys simply knew they wouldn\u2019t have many of those downs to begin with given how their defense lives. But I\u2019d be lying to you if I said I thought Prescott was dropping back 600 times again in 2026. The defense may not be good in 2026, but they will be hard pressed to replicate last year\u2019s terrible showing.<\/p>\n
The thing is, that\u2019s already priced in on him. Prescott is now part of the boring quarterback tier \u2014 he doesn\u2019t run and he\u2019s old \u2014 and so he\u2019s QB8 and coming off the board well after the top six in most cases with an ADP of around 80-90. I happen to think some of the quarterbacks in that range have more upside than Prescott if everything goes right for them, and so I don\u2019t find myself clicking on him often, but I definitely think he\u2019s got the elements for a top-10 finish at the position again in 2026. <\/p>\n
The other easy thing to peg this year is Ferguson \u2014 he\u2019s a lower-end TE1 by ADP and also someone who produced almost nothing when Lamb was on the field and healthy. From Weeks 3-7, Ferguson scored six touchdowns and received 40 of his 102 targets. In the last 10 games of the season he averaged 4.4 targets per game. He\u2019s a worthwhile TE1 play in a good matchup but I\u2019m not rushing out to invest in Ferguson stocks without injuries ahead of him in the passing game pecking order.<\/p>\n
How the Lamb\/Pickens question will unfold is one of the key questions of the fantasy football season. Pickens paradoxically feels like both the safer player and the riskier pick. Pickens received 21 red zone targets \u2014 most of any wideout besides Amon-Ra St. Brown and Davante Adams. Even if his role is reined in a bit this year by Lamb being healthier, his red zone role gives him a more trust-worthy blueprint. And yet, for me personally? I always feel a little bit queasy spending a pick in the top two rounds on Pickens. I sometimes wind up doing it because I think his upside cases are better than some of the other second-round wideouts (like Nico Collins) but even if Pickens has sworn to put football first after getting franchise-tagged the elements of a contentious situation are still here and Pickens has spent some time in the malcontent mines over the past few years. I side with traditional fantasy wisdom in thinking that Lamb is the better pick (his ADP is higher everywhere, a fringe first-round pick in most cases), but he dropped plenty of chances last year and has only played 28 of a possible 34 games over the past two seasons. His YAC was also sharply down in 2025 \u2014 the optimistic side of that is believing it was driven by injury, and the pessimistic side of that points to him slowing down a bit. <\/p>\n
Ryan Flournoy enters the year as a an interesting WR5 hedge in case something happens to the players ahead of him, but I\u2019d be stunned if he turned in anything beyond annoying touchdown-heavy games that crimp Lamb and Pickens\u2019 value when both are healthy and out there. There\u2019s just too many mouths to feed on this offense already.<\/p>\n
\u25b6 Running Game<\/p>\n
RB: Javonte Williams, Malik Davis, Jaydon Blue\/Phil Mafah
OL (L-R): Tyler Guyton, Tyler Smith, Cooper Beebe, Tyler Booker, Terence Steele<\/p>\n
As good as Williams\u2019 season was, it also was a tale of two seasons. From Weeks 1-8, he was at 124\/633\/8, averaging 5.1 yards per attempt. From Weeks 9-17, he started slowing down, producing 128\/568\/3 while averaging 4.4 yards per attempt. If you read between the lines of the Cowboys letting their other backs take on big roles in the early activities, it seems like they believe they wore down Williams last year. <\/p>\n
The good news for the rest of the contenders for a roster spot is that Williams wearing down opens up the door that they could get a bigger role this year. The bad news for the rest of the contenders is that none of them seemed up to it last year. Jaydon Blue started the meaningless Week 18 game but spent a lot of last year in the doghouse. I guess if we had to rank his backups I\u2019d start with Blue but I don\u2019t consider him fantasy gold at this point and if Williams went down I\u2019d imagine this would be a committee situation unless someone really shined through. <\/p>\n
Williams feels like a decent candidate to finish about where he did last year given some extra emphasis on the run game, but I\u2019m not excited about spending a top-40 pick on him given his injury history and the wear they put on him. Then again, that RB15 and down range is largely about volume desperation and Williams figures to have plenty of volume. <\/p>\n
\u25b6 2026 Dallas Cowboys Win Total<\/p>\n
DraftKings Over\/Under: 9.5
Pick: Over (+115)<\/p>\n
I like new DC Christian Parker and think he\u2019ll help turn the Cowboys defense into a reasonable-if-not-exciting unit. I don\u2019t think the Giants and Commanders have become real threats over the offseason. And when you start with those inclinations \u2014 before we even get into what the Eagles offense is \u2014 10 wins becomes a pretty reasonable bar. I\u2019m not excited to bet this knowing that any sharp odds on a highly public team like the Cowboys doing well are likely inflated, but I see the case for the Cowboys being worse as heavily reliant on a Prescott injury given the division around them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 Cowboys were a fantasy football force. Dak Prescott finished as QB6 in a bounceback season, George…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-759899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}