I’m going to try to keep this going for one more year at least – as always, life gets more hectic but will do my best to get these out asap after the game.

Format:

Will put together a weekly set of grades for the Cowboys for each game.

Will only include total grade for each player who plays a total of 10 snaps or more (so if a particular player isn’t there, then he didn’t reach the 10 snap threshold).

Keep a running tab throughout the year so we can compare player grades from week to week – tables will be split into two halves (weeks 1-8 and weeks 9-17) so the tables don’t get too overwhelming.

PFF grading:

The info on how PFF calculates their grades is included here - https://www.pff.com/grades#:~:text=THE%20GRADING%20SCALE,but%20those%20are%20the%20basics

Obviously, this is an attempt to make add objectivity to what is a subjective analysis. However, it is always worth remembering that despite this, it is still a human being with all his/her inherent biases making the judgement.

PFF tend to colour code their player grades and I’ve added those to the charts below. The colour coding works roughly as shown below. It is slightly confused for week by week games as PFF use shades, so I’ve add my own number for a cleaner definition (although am adding my own bias a little bit).

Will include seasonal grade (as the weeks progress) and positional rank – this only includes players with a minimum of 20% of total snaps, so not everyone included. Note – positional rank will usually exclude the final Monday night match, to ensure I get the grades out as fast as I can.

Since QB is such an important position, I’ll add one extra chart at the end which includes the QB PFF grade and the QBR. Both rate QB play on a play by play basis. PFF has some subjectivity, QBR is largely an objective analysis.

Finally, I’ll add a few thoughts at the end.

PFF grades – Week 10: Houston Texans

For ease of use, I have condensed the table so that performance in the first 8 games is now included at the end of each table. The individual game data restarts from week 10.

Offense:

Defense:

QB:

I guess this is the final read out for Dak Prescott for the 2024 season. I’ll leave it there for now.

As for Rush.

Thoughts:

Can’t pretend that I’m somewhat losing the energy for these! This is catastrophically bad football right now. No team in the history of the NFL has been this bad at home. Horrible, horrible.

The injuries continue to pile up. A weak run defense coupled with more injuries in the secondary probably should have led to a bigger blow out, so I’ll cut the defense a little slack right now. They did an OK job. In terms of grades, it was a whole bag of meh! Noone particularly looks like they are improving tremendously. It is obvious the difference Micah makes though. On his own, he disrupts the offense enough to at least give them something to think about.

As for the offense, the OL was slightly above average this week. Steele continues to be a decent run blocker – any chance we move him to Guard if Martin retires? The TEs showed up a little this week – good for them. Rush is quickly learning what we all knew – no one is ever open on this offense, unless it is for simple check downs. I thought Cee Dee probably deserved a better grade.

Overall, where is the sparkle in this team. Yes – Cee Dee and Micah have it from time to time. Probably the only other splash plays are coming from Overshown and the Kicker! I hope JJ has big ideas this year when we reach FA or we may be in big trouble.