Is the addition of Hankins the final piece in the Cowboys’ Super Bowl puzzle...?

29 October 2022

Among the players moving teams in the runup to the NFL’s November 1 trade deadline was DT Johnathan Hankins, who went from the Las Vegas Raiders to the Dallas Cowboys.

And while the deal didn’t make nearly as many waves among NFL fandom and the betting public as did Christian McCaffrey-to-San Francisco, NFLbets believes that we may yet look back on the acquisition of Hankins as the final piece in the puzzle to getting Dallas into Super Bowl LVII.

The odds for the Dallas Cowboys to win the NFC are 20/1 currently; crazily enough, those odds have grown from the earliest preseason odds of 18/1. Granted, the 5-2 SU/ATS Cowboys have already taken an L against the steamrolling Philadelphia Eagles and the offense is bottom-10 in scoring no matter who’s quarterbacking.

(Specifically, the Dallas O averages just 16.6 points per game while the under is 5-1-1 in Cowboys games, with the one over hitting by a single point.)

But, see here pardner: This here is 2022, when scoring is at its lowest since 2010 and defense just might carry a conference champion like the 2000 Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the 2015 Denver Broncos. And Hankins should certainly boost this Cowboys’ stronger side of the ball.

Hankins is hardly an every-down lineman, having played on just about one-third of Raiders snaps in 2021 and ’22 – however, he is a run-stuffing specialist, perfect for a rare area of slight concern for the defense. While allowing the second-fewest points in the NFL, the Cowboys defense nevertheless is losing in time of possession by an average ratio of 34:26. Hankins should assist in forcing opposition offenses to take to throwing, where the Cowboys clearly want the ball.

But don’t take our word for it; we’ll get to see how effective Hankins is against certain realities of 2022 NFL football, e.g. the scrambling, mad-dashing QB. The Bears have one of the interesting young wildly improvisational yard-scavenging QBs in the league in Justin Fields. We saw what Fields et al did to the New England Patriots last week, but this Cowboys defense already looked a level above Belichick’s guys – and the addition of Hankins is gravy.

You’ll see. Probably.

– written by Os Davis