Check out the big brain on Cowboys’ newest front office addition, John Park

Fans of both the American film classic Pulp Fiction and America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, know only one thing tastier than a Big Kahuna burger, and that’s a 40 Burger. After only accomplishing the feat five times in the five-year stretch from 2015 through 2019 in the last half of the Jason Garrett era, Dallas has surpassed the 40-point barrier 11 times in the three seasons under Mike McCarthy, nine of them over the last two years.

Scoring 40 points may seem an offensive stat, but it rarely happens without big stops and forced turnovers by the defense or hidden-yardage dominance thanks to special teams. The group effort extends beyond on-field performance, too. It’s fueled by having great intel about opponent tendencies, how to carry one’s self in high-leverage situations and even data-driven approaches to player acquisition. On Thursday, the Cowboys made a front office acquisition geared towards making a step up in that realm, hiring John Park as Director of Strategic Football Operations.

Park's Background

Park has been in the NFL since 2016, with almost all of that time spent with the Colts. According to his LinkedIn bio, he began with Indy in Football Research/Analytics after a very short stint in the league office. After just one year he moved up to Manager of Football Research and Strategy for four years before being promoted to Director of Football Research in 2021.

Park graduated from Duke with a BA in Cultural Anthropology before earning his Masters in Actuarial Science from Columbia. Actuarial Science is the work of compiling and analyzing statistics to calculate insurance risks and premiums. After five years in the insurance industry, he made the leap to the football world going to work for Rutgers in player development.

He parlayed those two years in New Jersey into a gig with the league and has been applying his big brain to the professional ranks ever since.

A lot of praise for the move

Here’s a look at all of the quote tweets to Walder’s original announcement:

What were the Cowboys looking for?

When Mike McCarthy was hired, there was a ton of talk about his commitment to using data analytics to assist him in building a winner. The winning has been established, with back-to-back 12-victory campaigns, but now there’s a new man in charge of the data department who can hopefully keep Dallas on the leading edge.

Dallas posted the job opening in mid-May. Here’s how they described the role (h/t Daniel Houston aka @CowboysStats on Twitter):

The previous guy

The Director of Football Research position had been held by Tom Robinson until before this year’s NFL draft. Robinson had been with the club since 2010 and was in the director’s role since 2014.

Story originally appeared on Cowboys Wire