Everybody Knows How to Run an NFL Team Until They Have to Run One

Football coverage is built on predictions, prescriptions and certainty. But how much can any of us really know from outside the building?

If you follow the Dallas Cowboys long enough, you eventually discover that an extraordinary number of people know exactly how to fix them.

They know who Dallas should draft.

Who Jerry Jones should pay.

Who he shouldn't pay.

Which free agent the Cowboys have to sign.

Which player they should trade.

Which coach should call the plays.

Which coach shouldn't.

And by Tuesday morning, they usually know exactly what should have happened on fourth-and-2 Sunday afternoon.

That's not uniquely a Cowboys phenomenon. Every NFL team lives inside an ecosystem of predictions, analysis and second-guessing.

But Dallas seems particularly well suited to it.

The Cowboys remain one of the NFL's biggest television attractions. Last Thanksgiving's Cowboys-Chiefs game averaged 57.23 million viewers, making it the most-watched regular-season NFL game on record. And just last Sunday, Dallas and Baltimore drew 24.9 million viewers in Rio, setting a record for an NFL international game.

Put that audience together with five Super Bowl championships, three decades spent trying to win another one, one of the most recognizable owners in sports and a fan base—and anti-fan base—willing to argue about almost anything involving the star, and you get a pretty reliable recipe for noise.

If professional football has built an industry around telling people what is going to happen and what teams should do about it, the Dallas Cowboys might be its perfect laboratory.

And it made me wonder about something.

How much do any of us actually know?

Why Dallas Cowboys Analysis Always Has an Answer

Predictions are only part of it.

Spend enough time around Cowboys analysis and you'll discover that plenty of us also know how NFL teams should be run.

Dallas should sign this player.

They shouldn't pay that one.

They have to draft an offensive lineman.

They need to trade for a cornerback.

The coach should have gone for it on fourth down.

The coordinator should have called something else.

Jerry needs to spend the money.

And sometimes those arguments are right.

Sometimes they're very good.

There are analysts who spend enormous amounts of time studying film, contracts, salary caps, personnel and statistics. There are reporters with decades of experience and relationships throughout the league. There are former players and coaches who understand parts of the game at a level most fans never will.

Expertise matters.

It just isn't the same thing as possessing the answer.

Research into NFL forecasting illustrates the problem. One study examined thousands of predictions from experts and statistical systems across two NFL seasons and found no statistically significant difference between the two groups in predicting game winners. The betting line performed better than either.

Which makes sense.

Knowing more can help us understand football.

It doesn't make football stop being uncertain.

What We Can't See

From outside an NFL building, there are things we simply don't know.

We don't sit in the meeting rooms.

We don't have every medical evaluation.

We don't hear every conversation with an agent.

We don't know everything a coach asked a player to do on a particular snap.

We don't know every assignment, every adjustment or every long-term personnel discussion happening behind closed doors.

That doesn't mean teams are automatically right because they possess more information. History provides plenty of evidence otherwise.

It means the rest of us should remember that we're usually working with an incomplete file.

And unless your last name happens to be Jones, it's particularly easy to explain how Jerry should spend Jerry's money.

The Hypothetical Play Remains Undefeated

Football gives critics another enormous advantage.

We usually get to see what happened before explaining what should have happened.

A fourth-down attempt fails.

The replay runs.

The broadcast crew analyzes it.

Social media lights up.

And within minutes, thousands of people know what the coach should have called instead.

The alternative play has one tremendous advantage.

It never had to happen.

Nobody missed its block.

Nobody slipped.

Nobody read the coverage incorrectly.

Nobody dropped its pass.

The defense never adjusted to it.

The hypothetical play remains undefeated.

That doesn't mean criticizing a play call is unfair.

Coaching decisions should be examined. So should roster construction, contracts, trades and draft picks.

But hindsight quietly gives the critic information the decision-maker didn't have when the decision was made.

That's worth remembering before declaring the answer obvious.

We Do It Too

Here's where this becomes uncomfortable.

The Doomsday Legacy is part of this ecosystem.

We analyze Cowboys games.

We question coaching decisions.

We evaluate trades.

We discuss roster construction.

We've wondered whether Brian Schottenheimer might be taking on too much responsibility as both head coach and offensive play caller.

We recently argued that Dallas's trade for Joey Porter Jr. tells us something about what the organization believes its defense needs.

We have opinions.

Strong ones sometimes.

So this isn't an argument that sportswriters should stop telling readers what they think.

That would make for a remarkably boring sports site.

It's an argument about how we present those opinions.

There is a difference between saying:

Dallas got this wrong, and here's the evidence that leads me to that conclusion.

and saying:

Anyone who couldn't see the obvious answer doesn't understand football.

The first is analysis.

The second is certainty we probably haven't earned.

Certainty Is Easier to Sell

There may be a much simpler reason football commentary sounds the way it does.

Certainty is interesting.

“Dallas Might Want to Consider Making a Change” isn't particularly exciting.

“THE COWBOYS HAVE TO MAKE THIS MOVE” is.

“This Player Could Help Dallas” doesn't travel quite as far as “THIS IS THE MISSING PIECE.”

And nobody has ever built an especially exciting television segment around five people saying, “Well, there are several reasonable possibilities and we'll need more information.”

Football media didn't invent this. Neither did social media.

We like answers.

We like predictions.

We like being told what's going to happen.

And when it doesn't happen, there's always another game coming—and another opportunity to explain what will happen next.

Being Wrong Isn't the Problem

Maybe we're too hard on predictions themselves.

Trying to figure out what happens next is part of being a sports fan.

It's fun.

Arguing about the draft before anybody has been drafted is fun.

Picking division winners is fun.

Wondering whether a rookie will become a star is fun.

And debating whether the Cowboys should make a trade is part of what keeps football alive during the six days when nobody is actually playing it.

Being wrong doesn't invalidate the exercise.

Pretending we couldn't possibly be wrong might.

The best analysis doesn't require certainty.

It requires evidence.

Tell us what you see.

Tell us what the numbers suggest.

Tell us what history says.

Tell us what information you have.

Then tell us what you think.

Those last four words matter more than they sometimes receive credit for.

What I think.

Not what everyone with a functioning brain must obviously understand.

Not what an NFL general manager would certainly do if only he were as smart as the person writing the column.

An informed conclusion.

Open to new information.

Strong Opinions, Humble Certainty

There will be times when the evidence points strongly in one direction.

Say so.

There will be decisions that look bad when they're made and worse after they're tested.

Criticize them.

There will be trades that don't make sense, contracts that age terribly and play calls that deserve scrutiny.

Football writing shouldn't become timid simply because football is complicated.

But there is a standard I think is worth remembering.

The confidence of the writing should never exceed the confidence of the evidence.

That's worth applying to the people on television.

To the writers making predictions.

To the fans yelling at those writers.

And to us.

Because understanding why a football team made a decision doesn't require agreeing with it.

And disagreeing with it doesn't require believing we could run the team better.

Sometimes the smartest thing an analyst can say isn't:

I know.

It's:

Here's what I think—and here's why.