# Dallas Cowboys 2026: The Coverage Report — Ten Graded Calls Said Micah Parsons Would Be a Cowboy, All Ten Scored Zero

*Published 2026-09-06 — MissedTakes*

One post per club, built from what our tracked outlets actually said and what actually happened. This is Dallas.

A note on scope, said once: this measures the outlets and pundits **MissedTakes tracks**, not all football media. Nobody is claiming to have counted every Cowboys segment ever aired.

## The coverage baseline: heavy, and near the top of the league

Across all 32 clubs, the [Dallas Cowboys](/nfl/teams/cowboys) sit high in raw volume — 715 logged takes, 8th-most in the league, behind the Bills (999), Rams (866), Eagles (861), Chiefs (795), Saints (792), Commanders (746) and 49ers (718). Of those, 232 have been graded, 10th-most. The league mean is 212 graded takes per club and the median 207, so Dallas runs about 12 percent above the middle of the pack.

Volume is not the problem here. Quality is. The Cowboys' graded takes average **47.1 percent accuracy** and a skill delta of just **+4.19** over the naive baseline — that accuracy figure sits in the bottom third of the league, well under Seattle (75.0), Cleveland (67.6) and Denver (67.5).

![Cowboys coverage, in numbers](/posts/visuals/05fe782d-5454-4920-a2ec-769846ab9bda.png)

What the club actually produced: 7-9-1 in 2025 and 7-10 in 2024, no playoff berth either year, after three straight 12-5 seasons from 2021 through 2023. Head coach Brian Schottenheimer, general manager Jerry Jones.

That two-year slide is where a chunk of the misses come from. The [field's 2025 win-total calls](/nfl) on Dallas — eight of them — averaged 8.96 wins against an actual seven, with [Chris Brockman](/pundits/chris-brockman) and TJ Jefferson both at 12. Playoff picks fared worse: 14 graded, **14.3 percent accuracy**. Division-winner calls: five graded, 20 percent.

## The cutdown: 83 roster-spot calls, five of them graded

The news hook for this series is the 53-man cutdown, and here the honest answer is that the ledger is mostly empty. Dallas has 83 roster-spot calls on file. **Five are graded.** The other 78 — including essentially everything published in the last week of August 2026 — are pending, so there are no graded 2026 cutdown surprises to report yet, in either direction.

What is on file and unresolved, for the record: Randy Gurzi's 17-man practice-squad projection from August 31, which includes released Giants tackle [Evan Neal](/nfl/players/evan-neal) as a "surprise addition"; [Nathan Jahnke](/pundits/nathan-jahnke)'s [PFF preseason read](/opinions/47566b48-8024-4960-b25c-11c03fe43543) that [Malik Davis](/nfl/players/malik-davis) and [Jonathan Mingo](/nfl/players/jonathan-mingo) "weren't roster locks entering training camp, so the fact that both sat out this week strongly suggests they have secured spots on the 53-man roster," with [Phil Mafah](/nfl/players/phil-mafah) "in danger of missing the roster"; Carter Bahns of CBS listing [Marquez Valdes-Scantling](/nfl/players/marquez-valdes-scantling) among veterans at risk; and [Clarence Hill](/pundits/clarence-hill) [saying](/opinions/f40b2b02-b704-404d-a557-adbf55d541aa) [Camden Brown](/nfl/players/camden-brown) clears waivers to the practice squad. Check back when those grade.

The five that did grade tell a sharper story, because three of them are the same call.

## The Parsons cluster

Across all claim types, [Micah Parsons](/nfl/players/micah-parsons) is the most-graded Cowboys subject on the site: 23 takes, 22 graded, **17.4 percent average accuracy, −28.03 skill**. That is the worst mark of any frequently-covered player on this roster by a distance.

Ten of those graded calls, made between June and August 2025, said in one form or another that Parsons would be a Dallas Cowboy in 2025. All ten scored zero. He ended up with Green Bay.

Three came through roster-spot calls, and each drew the maximum penalty — the naive baseline was "he was on somebody's 53 last season," so betting with the obvious and losing costs a full −200 skill:

- [Rich Eisen](/pundits/rich-eisen), August 1: ["Micah's gonna be in Philadelphia chasing Jalen Hertz"](/opinions/ff3be4ec-72bb-4c69-9a9c-cbfc5d910afa) in Week 1. Weeks on the Dallas 53: zero.
- [Tom Pelissero](/pundits/tom-pelissero), August 21: [the "most logical outcome"](/opinions/a7185069-741c-4dc1-b7c3-09775ddb0c32) was Parsons showing up and playing out his contract.
- [Gregg Rosenthal](/pundits/gregg-rosenthal), August 28: ["Assuming Michaeh Parsons is going to be on the team. And I am assuming that... history tells us he will be on that team."](/opinions/7fd60c68-daca-4b01-92cb-4ec7f89c6722)

Seven more landed as trade-and-signing calls, all graded zero against a "he stays where he is" baseline: [Jason McIntyre](/pundits/jason-mcintyre) ("Jerry's gonna sign him, but he's gonna wait and wait"), [Sara Walsh](/pundits/sara-walsh) ("this is imminent, this is happening"), [Jahleel Addae](/pundits/jahleel-addae) ("I have no doubt in my mind that the deal will be done"), [Jane Later](/pundits/jane-later), [Danny Parkins](/pundits/danny-parkins), [Dan Patrick](/pundits/dan-patrick) and Eisen again on August 6 ("there's no way they're gonna trade them").

We have no graded call in the database predicting he would leave. Not one.

The other two graded roster-spot calls were both correct and both low-difficulty: Hill [saying Dallas franchise-tags and keeps](/opinions/620497c0-179b-4c0e-81d7-7a3989e7ed6b) [George Pickens](/nfl/players/george-pickens) (100), and Pelissero [reporting Trevon Diggs would play](/opinions/c3cf6d1e-6e2e-4b6b-8e86-0eb2ab0fa679) (100). Both scored zero skill — the naive answer was already right.

## What else carries a grade

![Where the Cowboys record actually grades](/posts/visuals/00240117-08b0-4c84-83ab-338506761408.png)

Mock drafts are the workhorse and the bright spot: 85 graded picks at 54.8 percent accuracy and +35.89 skill. The 2026 first round is why. Dallas took Ohio State safety [Caleb Downs](/nfl/players/caleb-downs) at No. 11, and three separate pundits had him to the Cowboys at 12 — [Daniel Jeremiah](/pundits/daniel-jeremiah) in his [final mock](/opinions/0fbc7597-86ee-4037-a1e6-4b062ff9f12c) ("Look who just fell in their lap"), [Pat Fitzmaurice](/pundits/pat-fitzmaurice), and [Lance Zierlein](/pundits/lance-zierlein) — each grading 95.76. Downs' four graded takes average 92.0.

Game-outcome picks are the opposite: 24 graded, 31.3 percent accuracy, −51.15 skill. Playoff picks, as noted, 14.3 percent. Trade-and-signing calls (24 graded, 66.7 percent) and depth-chart calls (8 graded, 97.9 percent) hold up, though the depth-chart sample is too small to mean much and its skill delta of +0.52 says those calls were nearly all naive.

![Accuracy by Cowboys subject](/posts/visuals/8cdae1e1-8feb-47b7-81d7-e35a80ed032a.png)

Thirteen pundits have five or more graded Cowboys takes. [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright) leads with 13 (46.8 percent, +26.5), followed by [Kyle Crabbs](/pundits/kyle-crabbs) at 12 (37.3, +38.0), Rosenthal at 11 (33.5, −70.84), [Derek Brown](/pundits/derek-brown) at 10 (68.5, +124.97) and Eisen at nine (44.4, −24.67). Derek Brown's numbers are the best of that group, but ten graded takes is not a record to rank anyone on, and we won't.

By outlet, The Herd with Colin Cowherd has the most graded Dallas material (51 at 51.2 percent). The most prolific source is local: the DLLS Dallas Cowboys podcast, 135 logged takes — but only 14 graded, the lowest grade rate of any outlet in the sample. Daily-cadence local coverage generates enormous volume and comparatively few claims that resolve cleanly.

## The summary

Dallas is not under-covered by the sources we track; it is over-covered relative to how much of that coverage grades out. The draft analysts did their job in April. Everyone else spent August 2025 explaining, ten different ways, why Micah Parsons was staying, and 2026's cutdown verdicts are still waiting on the scoreboard.