Sleepers, Busts and Bets: The 2022 Dallas Cowboys

Jeremy Popielarz and Daniel Kelley with the 2022 Sleepers, Busts and Bets series to preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming year. Next up: The Dallas Cowboys.

Jeremy and Daniel will list their picks with confidence in “The Answers,” Then expand upon their picks with more details reason in “The Explanation.”

The Answers

Favorite Sleeper

Popielarz: Jalen Tolbert
Kelley: Ezekiel Elliott

Biggest Bust

Popielarz: Dalton Schultz
Kelley: Dalton Schultz

Boldest Bet

Popielarz: Ezekiel Elliott Finishes as a Top-10 RB
Kelley: The Cowboys Have 2 Top-20 RBs

The Explanation

Sleeper

Popielarz: Jalen Tolbert

Jalen Tolbert was one of the best wide receivers in the nation last season at South Alabama, while leading the Sun Belt Conference with 1,474 yards on 129 targets and 82 receptions. Within this, he produced 581 yards after the catch and forced 13 missed tackles, displaying an ability to create after the catch. All of this helped him get drafted 88th overall by the Cowboys this spring. Currently, he is set to have a huge opportunity to start the season as the second passing option in the offense, especially with Michael Gallup likely to miss the start of the season due to injury. If he can carve out this role over players like James Washington, Simi Fehoko and Noah Brown, he will be in line for a huge target share. The Cowboys had three players with over 100 targets (CeeDee Lamb, Amari Cooper and Dalton Schultz) last season, which is no surprise, as they averaged 38.05 passing attempts per game. With this, it’s easy to see a path to 5-8 targets a game for Tolbert, which can be enough to produce viable fantasy points – especially if he can average anything near the 18 yards per reception he averaged last season. Although it is unlikely he fends off Gallup when he returns, he can still find a role as the third wide receiver in the Cowboys’ pass-heavy offense. Ultimately, this may not create a path to a top-24 finish, but there is a path to some weekly flex value throughout the season.

Kelley: Ezekiel Elliott

It’s easy to overlook Ezekiel Elliott at this point in his career. After all, his rushing yards per game have dropped literally every year of his career (from 108.7 to 98.3 to 95.6 to 84.8 to 65.3 to last year’s 58.9), and he’s not the contributor as a receiver at this point that he was at his peak. He turns 27 later this month, always a scary age for a running back. And Tony Pollard has seen more work, from 106 opportunities as a rookie in 2019 to 141 in 2020 to 176 last year. 

But those are the warning signs. Now for the positive. Elliott has literally never finished outside the RB1 ranks (he’s been top-nine every year but the 2017 season he lost six games to suspension, and even then he was RB12). He’s as much an iron man as any running back — other than those six games suspended, he’s missed exactly three games in his career, and two were meaningless Week 17 outings in 2016 and 2018). And while Elliott played largely uninspired football in 2021, it is easy to chalk much of those struggles up to injuries, in particular playing most of the year with a torn PCL that he suffered in Week 4. Elliott probably no longer has top-five RB upside in fantasy, but his current draft cost is only RB18, and he seems like an easy candidate to beat that by a fair amount.

Bust

Popielarz: Dalton Schultz

In 2021 we saw Schultz emerge as a top-tier tight end for fantasy, finishing as the TE3 in PPR scoring with 208.8 points. He posted a career year, setting highs in targets (104), receptions (78), yards (808), yards per catch (10.4) and touchdowns (8). A significant amount of these points came in three 20-plus fantasy point weeks, where he scored 68.2 points – 32.6% of his total points. Although he did have a few blow-up games, he also was one of the more consistent tight ends in the league with 11 double-digit point weeks in PPR scoring. Thanks to all of this, his ADP has skyrocketed to TE7, which seems perfect when looking strictly at tight ends. However, he is going as the 68th player off the board. At this point in the draft, players like Amon-Ra St. Brown, Gabriel Davis and Jalen Hurts (1QB ADP) are still available, three players who I would much rather draft this season. Schultz is in line to see 80-plus targets again this season if he plays (he is currently in a contract dispute). Even with this volume, the key to tight end scoring is touchdowns, and last season he scored more touchdowns per game (.60) when Lamb, Cooper, or Gallup were out, as compared to when all three were healthy (.29) – via FTNs Split Tool. With the aforementioned Tolbert playing alongside Lamb and Gallup, they will make up the new big three in Dallas, resulting in some production and touchdown regression from Schultz this season. This will make it more likely that he finishes as TE12 rather than TE3 as he did last season.  

Kelley: Dalton Schultz

“Bust” can be such a harsh term. Dalton Schultz went from essentially a no-name his first two seasons to surprise TE11 in 2020 to star TE3 in 2021. Calling him a “bust” if he goes from that high to, say, TE9 or TE10 in 2022 feels like an insult, even when it’s not meant to be that, and especially since I doubt he even falls as far as TE9 or TE10. But right now, Schultz is going off the board sixth at the position, behind the obvious names (Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews, Kyle Pitts, George Kittle, Darren Waller). He’s drafted at virtually the same spot as T.J. Hockenson and a little ahead of Dallas Goedert, Zach Ertz and Dawson Knox.

Schultz has a floor similar to all those tight ends (arguably higher than at least Ertz or Knox). The problem is his ceiling. Schultz had what most anyone would agree is his career year in 2021. A TE3 finish. Of course, that was on the back of playing all 17 games and many other tight ends struggling to put up massive numbers. He was the TE3 with only 12.3 points per game. That PPG average would have been enough for a TE3 finish in 2021 or 2020, but before these two fallow years, it would traditionally have been hard-pressed to crack the top-five. What’s more likely — that Schultz improves on what was already better than most anyone projected from him, or that he falls off even a little, while higher-ceiling names like Pitts, Goedert, Hockenson and more rise above him and push him to the back end of the TE1 ranks? 

Bet

Popielarz: Ezekiel Elliott Finishes as a Top-10 RB

Since entering the NFL in 2016, Zeke has yet to finish with less than 979 rushing yards or 1,252 scrimmage yards, all while only missing nine games his entire career (six in 2017 due to suspension). This has helped him finish as a top-12 running back every year in PPR scoring – finishing as high as RB2 in 2016, and as low as RB12 in 2017. He has averaged 274.21 PPR points per season and 18.6 PPR points per game over his career, helping him become a staple of many fantasy rosters. Last season, he finished as RB7 in PPR scoring, while averaging 14.8 points per week. That was down significantly from his career average, in large part due to a PCL injury that he played through. With this dip in production and the emergence of Tony Pollard, we have seen Zeke’s ADP plummet to RB18. This is a crazy value for a player who has the track record he has and is paired with an offense that led the NFL in points per game (31.2). As a team that enjoys airing the ball out, the Cowboys still did run the ball 41% of the time while in the red zone in 2022. Although this was one of the lower percentages in the league, Zeke continues to command the touches here, as he saw 38 carries last season, which was 50% of the Cowboys’ carries in the red zone, and this will continue in 2022. With this usage, it’s easy to see how Zeke can produce yet another top-10 finish in 2022. 

Kelley: The Cowboys Have 2 Top-20 RBs 

You can read my belief in Ezekiel Elliott’s 2022 above, but that won’t necessarily come at the expense of Tony Pollard. Pollard has more than earned a healthy workload in 2022 after finishing as the RB28 in 2021 despite never topping 14 carries in a game in his three-year career. Pollard had 17 carries of 10-plus yard on 130 carries (13.1%) last year, compared to 24 on 237 (10.1%) for Elliott. As a receiver, Pollard was more efficient than Elliott as well, averaging 7.3 yards per target to Elliott’s 4.2. I’m comfortable saying some of Elliott’s struggles were due to injury, but it’s still true that Pollard was more than competent.

Now, 2022. Even if we stipulate, as above, that Elliott is healthy and will get plenty of work, Pollard shouldn’t struggle to get work in his own right. He averaged 11.7 opportunities a game in 2021. Now, Amari Cooper’s 104 targets and Cedrick Wilson’s 61 are gone. Michael Gallup’s 62 targets are still on the roster, but we’ll see when he’s available after a Week 18 torn ACL. 2022 third-rounder Jalen Tolbert will soak up plenty, as will No. 1 receiver CeeDee Lamb, but there are already murmurs about Pollard lining up in the slot more often in 2022. Let Elliott produce on the ground, give Pollard plenty of PPR value as a receiver, and that’s a recipe for two running backs finishing in the top 20 in 2022.