About ten years ago, Jerry Jones explained that roster turnover every year is about 30%.
”We have about a 30 percent turnover every year. What is the core? Who is the core? That’s a part of what we’ll be doing.“
As the NFL slows down to a crawl between final OTAs and the start of camp, there’s not going to be much roster activity over the next few weeks. Which makes this a good time to look at how much raw playing time from last season each NFC East team will have to replace in 2026, and how close
Jerry came to predicting that number.
And the way we’ll do that is to look at the total snaps played by each player on offense, defense, and special teams for each NFC East team, and then look at the percentage of snaps from 2025 remaining on the 2026 roster. Here are two examples to illustrate the approach:
- In 2025, the Cowboys offensive line played 5,938 combined snaps on offense. Brock Hoffman (474 snaps) and Hakeem Adenji (76) are the only players not returning in 2026. The returning linemen combined for combined for 5,388 snaps in 2025, so the Cowboys are returning 91% of their offensive line snaps in 2026.
- Very different story at linebacker, where the Cowboys are only returning 967 of 2,373 snaps (41%).
- The Eagles had six defensive tackles combine for 2,520 snaps last year. Pending whatever happens with Jalen Carter, all six players are still with the team, so the Eagles are returning 100% of their DL snaps.
Here’s the percentage of returning snaps for each team, broken down by unit:
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; } body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th { padding: 2px 6px !important; }| Percentage of 2025 Snaps Remaining on Roster | |||||||||
| Team | Offense | Defense | Special Teams | Total | |||||
| Dallas | 92% | 54% | 75% | 74% | |||||
| New York | 71% | 58% | 58% | 64% | |||||
| Philadelphia | 74% | 73% | 71% | 73% | |||||
| Washington | 71% | 61% | 77% | 68% | |||||
| TOTAL | 75% | 61% | 70% | 69% | |||||
| Source: ProFootballReference.com, Team Websites per July 1st, 2026 | |||||||||
Most turnover
The Cowboys moved on from almost half of all their defensive snaps, but because of the continuity on offense, the total number across all three units of 74% doesn’t look overly dramatic.
On defense, the 2026 Cowboys will look quite a bit different from last year’s iteration of the team, shedding 90 of 187 starts or 46% of all snaps. But replacing so many players in one offseason is not an easy thing to do.
Which is why the mass hiring of new assistant coaches is a much bigger deal than many think: their success will be measured by their ability to get all the new players up to speed and playing productively, and that was something the Cowboys felt the old staff was most definitely not up to.
The Giants lost the most snaps overall, which is probably par for the course for a 4-10 team. Roster change can be good for teams looking to dramatically upgrade, but there’s also something to be said for continuity.
Most continuity
Somewhat surprisingly, the Cowboys return the most snaps in the East with 74%, even it’s by the slimmest of margins versus the Eagles at 73%.
And that’s because of the continuity on offense, where the Cowboys are returning 92% of their snaps, by far the highest value of any unit across the NFC East. And the Cowboys have more continuity than just with their roster. The entire offensive coaching staff remains in place for at least their second season in Dallas.
Meanwhile, the Eagles revamped their entire offensive coaching staff, the Giants brought in a new head coach, a new offensive coordinator, and a slew of new offensive assistant coaches, and the Commanders also have a new OC, though he was promoted internally, and while he brought in new QB and TE coaches, most of the offensive staff remains unchanged.
Will the Cowboys’ offensive continuity guarantee an even better offense in 2026? Maybe, maybe not.
Nothing is guaranteed in the NFL. But with nearly the entire roster and coaching staff returning, the Cowboys should easily be able to pick up where they left off last year and leverage their experience to their advantage. And in a division where every team looking for an edge from new players and new coaches, perhaps the biggest edge is simply running it back.
Unfortunately, what the numbers don’t tell us is when when too much continuity becomes stifling and too much turnover becomes disruptive.
Turnover vs Continuity
NFL teams that retain the majority of their roster are typically doing so for a reason: they are good. Fewer new faces means less of a transition, which often translates to success on the field.
While many teams claim improvement by adding talent through the draft or via free agency, the reality is that a team that maintains its core players year-in, year-out will improve simply by a longer tenure of playing together. In football, the more that players play together, the better they become not only as individuals but as a team.
But when you think it through, isn’t continuity ultimately a progress stopper?
There seems to be a fairly broad consensus in the NFL that continuity is a strength of, and key driver for, most winning teams. The flipside of the coin is that continuity on losing teams is almost always seen as stagnation. In fact, there is a school of thought that argues that success requires constant change, that the absence of change is stagnation and inevitably leads to failure.
Turnover versus continuity. Which strategy is better?
We may have to wait until January to find out.
