ESPN Gives Dallas Cowboys Nonsensical Grade for Offseason Moves

The vast majority of NFL analysts will tell you the Dallas Cowboys had a good offseason and it's not hard to see why that's the case.

The Cowboys had a clear mandate entering the offseason, and that was to improve a league-worst defense that no doubt held Dallas back.

While it remains to be seen if the Cowboys were successful, they did make plenty of moves to address that side of the ball, so it's fair to grade them positively until we see the results on the field.

ESPN's Seth Walder is an outlier, though. He wasn't very high on the Cowboys' offseason and gave it a "C+" grade.

Walder was a fan of the decision to keep Pickens on the franchise tag, but he did not like Dallas trading Osa Odighizuwa.

"The Cowboys chose the wrong D-tackle to deal, as Odighizuwa is younger and makes less than Clark, plus is arguably better than the veteran at this stage of their respective careers," Walder explained.

Walder wasn't a fan of the Rashan Gary trade as well and called the deal an "overpay" because Gary is "vastly diminished" following his past torn ACL.

Walder then goes on to say that if the moves the Cowboys made "can make Dallas' defense roughly average," Dallas can "quickly become a contender" if the offense continues to play at a high level, something we've been saying all offseason long.

Walder noted the firing of Matt Eberflus and the hiring of Christian Parker, and the additions of Caleb Downs — which was one of the best moves of the entire offseason — Malachi Lawrence, Jalen Thompson and Dee Winters but did not provide his opinion of those moves.

Why Walder's grade is nonsensical

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones before a game against the Minnesota Vikings. — Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. | Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

While a "C+" is a passing grade, it's a bad one when it comes to marks given to NFL teams.

Even Walder admits the Cowboys just need to be average on defense in order to be a contender, and all of the moves they made puts them in position to be at least that.

Again, we can't know for sure just how good or bad the Cowboys will be on defense this coming season because all we can do is look at the Cowboys on paper.

But what we see on paper is a team that has pulled off a much-needed overhaul of its defense, and that overhaul has Dallas in much better standing than it was going into last season.

Did the Cowboys make the earth-shattering move (like acquiring Maxx Crosby, for example) like we all wanted them to? No, but Dallas did try.

And even though the blockbuster trade for Crosby didn't happen, that doesn't erase everything else the Cowboys did, and that everything else deserves better than a "C+" grade.

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