ESPN Power Rankings: Cowboys fall out of top 10, ‘most improved’ unit gives hope
Cowboys veterans and rookies are preparing to take the practice field together for the first time this offseason, and they’ve already got some ground to make up over where the team ended up in January.
ESPN’s post-free agency power rankings say Dallas has taken two steps back from even their humbling home loss to the Packers in the postseason. They were previously in the No. 9 spot; now they sit just outside the top 10 at No. 11.
The ranking pegs the Cowboys as the NFC’s fifth-best team, behind San Francisco (2), Detroit (4), Philadelphia (5), and Green Bay (10).
And while Cowboys coaches are said to be impressed with their rookie draft haul and undrafted free agents, there’s one positional unit that has improved more than the others this offseason, according to the network’s designated Cowboys/NFL Nation reporter.
“Linebacker is really the only answer,” Todd Archer writes, even while acknowledging major questions at running back, offensive line, defensive line, wide receiver, and in the secondary.
Archer singles out the signing of Eric Kendricks as a main contributing factor to the optimism. The 32-year-old veteran was a second-round pick of Mike Zimmer in Minnesota and was his defensive field general there for seven seasons.
Now Kendricks will play a key role in getting his new Cowboys teammates on the same page as Zimmer in his first year back in Dallas as coordinator.
“He always used to say, ‘You take care of me, I’ll take care of you,’ and things like that,” Kendricks said of Zimmer recently. “I have talked to the guys about Zim. It is a big difference, but at the same time, ball is ball and we’ve got to be disciplined on our cues.”
Kendricks remembers playing against Dallas last season (while with the Chargers) and recalled “a lot of explosiveness.” He believes the unit has “talent at all levels,” but there promises to be even more at LB than what Kendricks saw last year in L.A.
Archer points out that DeMarvion Overshown will be back from a preseason knee injury to make his true Cowboys debut. That could be a huge development if the Texas product lives up to what he showed last summer.
Additionally, the team spent a third-round pick this year on Notre Dame’s Marist Liufau, who says he’s looking forward to learning from Kendricks.
“He’s been in the game so long and played at such a high level that, as a young guy, you want to get as much knowledge from him as you can,” Liufau explained as rookie minicamp got underway, “learn from him and kind of be under his wing.”
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There will be watchful eyes on Liufau, as many draft experts thought the Cowboys reached to select him 87th overall. But the Hawaiian-born linebacker has already shown tendencies to potentially be a leader in the Kendricks mold, having blown Zimmer away during a pre-draft visit by rattling off the specific job of every single defender on the field during a play breakdown.
“There’s a standard at Notre Dame,” he told reporters, “end especially for linebackers that we have to lead the defense and know what the guys around us are doing so that we can always, obviously, just do our job at the best ability but also to be there for our teammates.”
Even with the new names at linebacker in 2024, Archer stresses that the real improvement for the Cowboys should come from one simple thing: “they will have linebackers playing linebacker” again, after a trend (and often a last-resort emergency plan) under Dan Quinn to bring safeties up to moonlight at the middle level.
Now with a revamped linebacker crew, the Cowboys hope to not only march back into the league’s top 10, but see just how much higher they can climb.
