The Athletic Football Show is previewing all 32 teams leading up to the start of the 2026 NFL season. Below are select quotes from the show’s preview of the Dallas Cowboys. The quotes are edited for clarity. You can watch the whole preview on YouTube and in the embedded video below, or listen to the full NFC East preview wherever you get your podcasts.
Derrik Klassen on what about the Cowboys most excites him: This might be the best offense in football. I just feel that they have all the right pieces. They have a quarterback who we’ve seen play at MVP heights before and put up some of the best passing numbers in the NFL. They have an offensive line that is young and really talented almost across the entire board. They have, outside of Cincinnati, the best one-two punch at wide receiver in the NFL. The offensive line was exciting last year, but they were a little bit banged up and a lot of those guys missed time. It wasn’t that many games, but when Tyler Guyton and Cooper Beebe played together, they had a 45.2 percent rushing success rate, according to TruMedia, which would have been tied for third in the league with the Chicago Bears. When they had their guys, they were mashing people. If they can get back to that in the second year in the system, this could be wheels up.
Robert Mays on what he’s watching the first month of the season: Can Christian Parker do this? People have said that I’m baking in an improvement from the Cowboys defense and how we talk about them, where I would typically be more speculative with a first-year play caller in other situations. I’m absolutely doing that. We collectively play the wait-and-see game so often on this show. And we do that because we understand the things we don’t know. But every once in a while, if you believe in something, if you have conviction about something, make a stand. I haven’t been shy about this. He’s got the goods and I think that they can do it. And yes, I’m baking that in a way that I wouldn’t with a coordinator I’ve never seen do this before.
Dave Helman on what’s keeping him up at night: We’ve been talking about it for two weeks, but at this point, across the NFL community, the defensive turnaround feels like a fait accompli. The Cowboys being a trendy Super Bowl pick because of a defensive turnaround that feels plausible but is entirely theoretical keeps me up at night.
I undermined myself a little bit when I looked at the DVOA stuff and saw that there’s plenty of precedent for units doing this. It’s not nuts. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. And for all the teams I said had these big turnarounds, there were plenty that went from 31 to 27 or 32 to 24, and 24 is not going to be good enough to get where you’re trying to go.
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