5 observations from the Cowboys draft picks over the last 10 years

What can we learn from the last decade of Cowboys draft selections?

The Dallas Cowboys are a good drafting team. And it’s a good thing too because we all know they aren’t very active in free agency. “Build through the draft” and “keep free agent expenses to a minimum” have been Stephen Jones’ modus operandi for years now. If your player personnel department is sharp and they can draft well, this is a great strategy to employ. After all, spending money on outside free agents is a house game that largely results in overspending.

While the Cowboys approach is the right one in the mind of some fans, it’s going to be a little trickier to operate this season because as we have mentioned before, the Cowboys are a little lighter in terms of their draft capital. Due to trades made last year, the Cowboys don’t have their original fourth- and fifth-round picks. Their current picks in the 2024 NFL Draft are as follows:

• 1st Round (pick 24)
• 2nd Round (pick 56)
• 3rd Round (pick 88)
• 5th Round (compensatory pick, roughly 174ish)
• 6th Round – (compensatory pick, roughly 214ish)
• 7th Round (pick 234 from Raiders)
• 7th Round (pick 245)

With no pick between 89 and 173ish, what type of impact will this have on the upcoming draft? To answer that, we embark on an investigation into the success of the Cowboys draft over the last 10 years. We chose 10 years not just because it’s a nice round number, but because it also marks the beginning of when Will McClay took over as the Assistant Director of Player Personnel. One might remember there was a disconnect during the 2013 Cowboys draft that resulted in McClay taking over the draft process the following year. The first draft under his control was in 2014, so we’re starting there. Here are all the Cowboys draft picks over the last 10 years.

The players in green are players who turned into everyday starters. As you can see, there are nine instances where the Cowboys didn’t have a pick in a certain round of the draft because of a trade they made. Most of these trades were low-risk Day 3 trades that occurred after the fourth round.

The bottom of the graphic shows the team’s success rate in landing a starter from each round. As you can see, the Cowboys are really good early in the draft as there’s a lot of green over the first four rounds. It’s great that the Cowboys still have their first three picks considering how valuable they are to a team that drafts this well, but it also stings a bit for them to not have their fourth-round pick as their 50% hit rate in that round is rather impressive.

Observation #1: The Cowboys are in line to make some noise in the first three rounds

Observation #2: Not having a fourth-round pick hurts

After that, it gets scarce as the team’s starter success rate drops. In rounds five through seven, the Cowboys have landed nine starters with 43 picks (21%). Basically, one out of five picks after the fourth round will turn into a starter. This lone statistic serves as sound reasoning to give up these late-round picks to acquire a veteran starter as they’ve done with the Brandon Cooks and Stephon Gilmore trades.

Observation #3: Using late-round picks for proven commodities is the way to go

One alarming thing on the graphic is that there is no green in the 2023 row. None at all. Now, we know it’s early and those picks still have time to manifest into good players, but as we can see from the other years, it doesn’t take long for players to show that they are starter-worthy. In 2022, we had a good sense that Jake Ferguson, DaRon Bland, and Damone Clark were going to be starters real soon. Not only were they all starters this past season, two of them were Pro Bowlers.

We would be hard-pressed to project any type of optimism on any of last year’s draft selections. And when you consider you can almost set your watch to the Cowboys landing four starters per draft, it’s rather unsettling to come out of a draft with a goose egg. Hopefully, this serves more as an anomaly than a new development in their draft evaluations.

Observation #4: Last year’s draft class was drastically underwhelming

Collecting starters is always a good thing, but it’s even better if they can find players who play at a high level. We all know the Cowboys are exceptional at finding those players in the first round, but how do they rate in the other rounds? Here is their Pro Bowl success rate with these same draft picks.

Again, first round, no shocker although it’s still rather impressive to see them hit a 78% success rate on Day 1. And again, while it’s still early to judge Mazi Smith, we usually have a great sense right away if those picks are good. It didn’t look good early for that other Michigan fella, Taco Charlton, and we all know how that turned out.

What is surprising about this list is how the Cowboys have completely whiffed in round three, but then turn around and have great success in round four. This has to be some type of coincidence, right?

Observation #5: Trading their third for a couple of fourths might be the way to go

Now, this isn’t to suggest that they’re just magically better in round four than they are in round three, but they have a good history of drafting well in the fourth. Maybe quantity for quality is the way to go there if they have proven to be equal or better in that round.

We realize the dynamic of the draft may dictate other things and these are merely observations as something in the past doesn’t mean a similar result is coming in the future. Is there anything about this information that makes you believe the Cowboys should take a different approach in the upcoming draft? Let us know in the comments.