Sarah Mallepalle, Strategic Football Analyst for the Dallas Cowboys

How did you get your start in a career in football?

When I was a senior at Carnegie Mellon University, I used to tweet about football analytics, so I got connected to a lot of staffers in the NFL through Twitter connections. In May 2019, I received a message from a manager at the Baltimore Ravens, who were looking to add an analyst to the team. I interviewed and started full-time as a player personnel analyst at the beginning of training camp in 2019, and I was with the team for four seasons and four drafts. When John Park got hired by the Dallas Cowboys in June 2023 as the director of strategic football operations, I joined his team a week later.

Where did your love for football and/or analytics come from?

I have always loved football, and the story I always tell is this: My parents got married in 1985, and that’s when my dad came to the United States from India. He talks a lot about how his first experiences feeling like an American was through watching the 1985 Chicago Bears. He especially loved Walter Payton, and he fell in love with the game immediately. Throughout my life, he’s told me the way to becoming an American is through sports. I grew up watching football with him and fell in love with the game, as well.

I went to college at CMU in Pittsburgh, and Karim Kassam, who ran the analytics department for the Pittsburgh Steelers at the time, spoke in one of my classes during my sophomore year. We come from very similar areas of study, and from that day on, I knew this was something I wanted to pursue with my degree in statistics and computer science.

Those are great stories. Looking at your current role, what does it entail?

There is in-season and out-of-season work. During the season, which is training camp through the postseason, my primary focus is assisting our offense, supporting our coaches and players during the week and on gamedays. It is a very regimented schedule. I am meeting with offensive coaches to see what kind of support they need weekly, analyzing our next opponent or from two weeks out, doing our own self-scouting and also in unit and position meetings. There is a constant barrage of requests on how we can become 1 percent better. For example, we might be looking at certain tendencies of our opponents, whether we want to implement certain things into our own game plan or how we fare in a particular game situation over a specific span of games. It’s constantly buzzing, and I love it.

During the offseason, we are primarily focused on the draft and roster-building, supporting our scouts leading up to the draft. I went to the Senior Bowl and the NFL Scouting Combine this year, and I am doing anything I can do to save our scouts even a few minutes of time, whether that’s pulling up certain stats or organizing information on prospects. Right now, we are doing prospect rankings and assisting our staff with prospect measurables and stats, providing value for the draft in that way.