Dallas Cowboys: Five outsider misconceptions of the franchise

The Cowboys always choke

Admittedly, with all evidence to the contrary, the Cowboys do not choke when the stakes get high. Sure, it’s undeniable over the last 20 years the Cowboys have not found much success down the stretch (as highlighted by their pair of playoff wins over that span of time).

But to say, they, or any other team for that matter, is prone to choke, simply by using a 20-year record as proof, doesn’t understand professional sports. Or statistics. Or especially the average churn of an NFL roster.

Comparing one year’s team to the next year’s team is comparing apple to oranges.

Some players may perform well under pressure. And others…not so well. And year to year, those players change on every roster. Most teams churn roughly half of their roster every two years.

Comparing one year’s team to the next year’s team is comparing apple to oranges. You can draw some conclusions about individual players, but to think it speaks to something greater is misreading the tea leaves. With such small sample sizes at our disposal, it’s virtually impossible to draw a conclusion regarding how an entire team performs under pressure.

Additionally, in a single elimination postseason tournament, one fluke play has the ability to determine a game. That means the best team doesn’t always win (the shock! The horror!) and that means many of our conclusions regarding “clutch” play is based on opportunity and luck.

This certainly isn’t to discredit teams and players that have a great track record in clutch situations, but rather the point is to say how hard it is to accurately draw conclusions from just a couple situations that include many outside factors.

The only constant on a team like the Cowboys is the leadership and culture in the front office. It’s possible this could contribute to a losing atmosphere, sure. But Jerry Jones is a lot of things – a loser is not one of them. He’s arguably doubled the value of the entire NFL (and done even more for his own team) and he’s brokered some of the biggest deals in national sports history (he even finds ways to make tax payers cover the cost).

Calling an NBA player a clutch shooter makes sense given one player makes up 20% of the on-court roster and that player gets dozens of opportunities per season to put the “clutch” label to the test. It’s simply a bigger and more relevant sample.

The NFL is not so easy. You can say specific Cowboys teams choked. You can say none have stepped up as clutch. But you can’t definitively say the Cowboys franchise are chokers given the churn and limited sample size.