It seemed inevitable. There was no way that the Dallas Cowboys could keep it up. The conversation surrounding the team after the 2021 season was that their historic turnover tally would regress to the mean in 2022. Plenty of NFL history to that point supported that claim. This is true for a variety of reasons, but generally because turnovers are a difficult thing for a defense to completely control.

In a literal sense that was proven to be true. The Cowboys defense generated 34 turnovers in 2021 (shout out Trevon Diggs) and did not reach that mark a season later in 2022. The 2022 Dallas Cowboys generated a measly 33 turnovers, if you can believe it.

Amazing was it was, that was clearly an exception to the norm that is football history. Kudos to the now-departed Dan Quinn and the players on the team for upholding that level of consistency in a way that most people have not been able to.

It should come as no surprise to learn that Dallas dipped again in total turnovers in 2023 and generated only 26, although DaRon Bland set the NFL record for the most interceptions returned for a touchdown in the process. While that is technically regression, 26 is still an incredible number. Not quite an exception but it puts the Cowboys of the last three years in some rarified air.

What about year four?

History is not totally against the Cowboys defense continuing to generate turnovers

Personally speaking I have felt like the bottom just had to come out of the Cowboys this year. How could you not?

They have pulled off the impossible (relatively speaking) by continuing to generate so many turnovers, but with Dan Quinn now gone, an incredibly important piece of the puzzle is now different with Mike Zimmer in place. It has felt somewhat inevitable.

Recently I had the chance to sit down with the great Aaron Schatz from FTN Fantasy to discuss a number of things concerning the Cowboys but I wanted to specifically hit on this point. You can watch our entire conversation below.

Thankfully I’d prepped Schatz for this question and he was able to have some information handy that made me feel better about the 2024 Cowboys potentially not falling off of a cliff in this overall department.

If you head to about the eight-minute mark this is where the conversation starts. According to Schatz, there are four teams since 2000 that have ranked in the top five in terms of takeaways per drive for three straight years.

Of the 12 total seasons involved here, 11 featured a playoff appearance from the team involved. The only one here to miss out on the postseason were the 2020 Patriots, although there were obviously a lot of circumstances involved there to say the least. Tom Brady’s defection to Tampa was just one of them.

But on the subject of the Buccaneers, they cashed in on their run with a Super Bowl title in the final season of their three-year stretch. The first Patriots run included a Super Bowl appearance. Neither the second Patriots run or Dallas’ (obviously) included even a conference championship appearance.

What about the years following, though?

The 2003 Buccaneers missed out on the playoffs so the season was a failure in that sense, but defensively they didn’t exactly collapse in the turnover department. They finished sixth in takeaways per drive which is right outside of the top five.

Additionally the 2022 Patriots followed up their run with a sixth-place finish in the metric we are looking at. The sample size is small, but two of the three teams hung right around the same realm in year number four.

Something significant does separate the Cowboys, though. While there has been no turnover at head coach in Mike McCarthy, he was obviously not the architect of what took place defensively for Dallas over the last thousand days. Dan Quinn is out and that will play a role here in a way that the other teams didn’t have affecting them.

Tampa Bay’s defensive coordinator at the time was and remained Monte Kiffin (this whole exercise is just so much fun, isn’t it) and Bill Belichick was at the helm for all of the Patriots seasons involved. It goes without saying that there is immense pressure on Mike Zimmer to uphold the standard, but history is technically on his side which is encouraging.