Blogging The Boys
The 2024 Cowboys rookies got more playing time than you might have expected.
In early May last year, about two weeks after the draft, we published an article titled “Why the Cowboys’ 2024 rookie class could see more playing time than most recent rookie classes.” At the time, as the author, I wondered if the 2024 draft class could “yield four eventual starters,” even if the 2024 class might not have the star power of some successful previous draft classes.
The projection at the time was for the 2024 rookie class to account for 13.6% of total snaps. In reality, the draft class came in with 12.9% of all snaps, which isn’t very far off the initial projection.
Unfortunately, this was not from being blessed with the gift of prophecy or having access to some nifty algorithm. Instead, a promising draft class got extended playing time when the Cowboys decided not to acquire or retain free agents to fill key roster holes, and subsequent injuries to veteran players forced the team to play the rookies more than they might have in a normal season.
There are many different ways of evaluating the impact, success, and quality of a rookie class, though most of them in some form or another revolve around early impact and the number of starters drafted.
In any rookie class, you’re looking for immediate contribution from your early picks, and perhaps hoping for some additional contribution from your late-round picks. In the medium term, it’s widely held that a good draft class yields two solid starters, even if they are not necessarily expected to be starters in their first season.
For our purposes today, we’ll use the 2024 rookie class snap count to evaluate their first-year contribution and to compare this class to previous rookie classes.
The Cowboys got at least two (Tyler Guyton, Cooper Beebe), maybe three (Marshawn Kneeland), and possibly four (Marist Liufau) starters out of this draft class. That’s a success any way you look at it, no matter the injury situation.
So how do the snap counts above compare to those of previous rookie classes? The title of this post already gave it away, the snap counts for the 2024 rookie are the second most since 2017. Here are the Cowboys rookie class snap percentages since 2007:
For this analysis, let’s assume that adding the equivalent of two starters (or 9.0% of all snaps) to the roster is a good target for a rookie class. By that measure the data here suggests the Cowboys had some really bad draft classes between 2007-2012, but things started looking up in 2013, and have been mostly green since Will McClay took over the Cowboys drafts in 2014, the occasional glitch (2019 & 2023) notwithstanding.
The 2024 draft class is the third best in McClay’s 11-year tenure (as measured by snap count contribution), but it takes more than a strong rookie season to determine the value of a draft class. Three years (and sometimes even more) is...
