One of Mike McCarthy’s most enduring projects while serving as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys was to beef up their analytics department. When McCarthy was first hired, Dallas had just two full-time employees in their football data department. By the time McCarthy started his fifth (and final, as it turned out) season, they had more than tripled their department’s size and capacity.
We profiled those changes ahead of the 2024 season, with John Park leading the way as the Cowboys’ Director of Strategic
Football Operations. Since then, Park has hired one additional full-time analytics staffer and a handful of analytics fellows, creating an early pipeline of football data aficionados for a franchise that has lagged behind the rest of the league for quite some time.
McCarthy is no longer in Dallas, but Park has remained a fixture of the organization during the transition to Brian Schottenheimer. The new head coach, by his own admission, is less analytically inclined than McCarthy, but that hasn’t stopped the Cowboys from growing into one of the best analytics departments in the league.
In fact, they were recently recognized for their efforts in this area. Neil Stratton of Inside the League has been handing out awards for scouting departments voted on by league executives, scouts, and other staffers. This year, though, he added a category to acknowledge the best analytics departments, and the Cowboys were one of three groups recognized.
The Cowboys were voted as one of the three best analytics departments in the league, alongside the Ravens and Eagles. Those other two teams have long been regarded as some of the trendsetters in the NFL with regards to embracing football analytics, and they’ve had two of the largest analytics departments for as long as anyone has been tracking it.
Of course, Dallas is now right up with them in terms of sheer staffing numbers, though that’s just happened in the past three years. It’s gone beyond just having bodies in rooms, though, as the organization is earning a reputation for excellence in this field.
That’s a long way from where the department was prior to Park’s arrival. As discussed in our in-depth profile of the overhaul, the Cowboys struggled to build out their analytics department in part because they had such a negative reputation under previous leadership.
One of the first people Park added to his department was Sarah Mallepalle, who came over from the Ravens. Her hire was praised at the time, with one person describing her as “The key that unlocks everything else. A real star.” Her experience working in Baltimore’s esteemed analytics department certainly helped prepare her.
Mallepalle isn’t the only one in Park’s department that’s turned heads, either. That’s evident by the Cowboys’ rapid ascension up these internal leaderboards, and Park himself has begun to be floated as a potential general manager candidate down the road.
As the 2026 NFL Draft approaches – this will be just the third draft since Park arrived in Dallas – it’s nice to know that the organization has taken such a huge step forward in their ability to leverage data and advanced statistics in the way they build their roster. With two first-round picks this year, Park and his team are sure to be involved in the decision making process on the best way to maximize their draft capital.
