How the third time could be the charm for the Cowboys trading for a top 50 cornerback

Kaiir Elam is really impressing so far.

The Dallas Cowboys have been wheeling and dealing this offseason. They made a huge splash when they gave a third-round pick to the Pittsburgh Steelers for wide receiver George Pickens. They also excited fans when they snared Joe Milton from the New England Patriots for an exchange of late-round picks. And before all that happened, they swapped late-round picks to get Tennessee Titans linebacker Kenneth Murray. The Cowboys addressed three key position groups by way of trade.

While those are the biggest names the Cowboys have traded for, there’s one other player who’s easy to forget about. Kaiir Elam. Dallas sent a fifth-round pick (with some late-round swaps again) to the Buffalo Bills for Elam, who is in the final year of his rookie deal. The former Florida corner was selected 23rd overall in the 2022 NFL Draft, but his time in Buffalo hasn’t gone according to plan. Over three years, he’s played in 29 games, starting 12 of them, but his struggles last year were enough for Buffalo, so they decided to move on.

The Cowboys love to roll the dice on young cornerbacks who were drafted early but have fallen short of expectations. They feel it’s a low-risk move that contains the upside of untapping the potential of this once highly-touted defender. With the acquisition of Elam, this makes the third straight year the Cowboys have traded for a cornerback who was selected in the top 50 of their respective drafts.

• 2023: Noah Igbinoghene, selected 30th overall by the Miami Dolphins
• 2024: Andrew Booth, selected 42nd overall by the Minnesota Vikings
• 2025: Kaiir Elam, selected 23rd overall by the Buffalo Bills

The Cowboys traded away their own underperforming cornerbacks for Igbinoghene and Booth (Kelvin Joseph and Nahshon Wright, respectively), whereas Elam was acquired for Day 3 draft capital. Suffice it to say, these first two deals didn’t work out for Dallas, but that’s not to say this third one won’t.

When you look at Buffalo’s willingness to let him go and his body of work over his first three years, it’s natural to be skeptical about this move. At the same time, there are attributes to his game that can provide value to a Cowboys team that is in desperate need of cornerback depth, as a couple of key pieces are recovering from knee injuries.

Elam is off to a good start in Dallas. From OTAs to minicamp to now training camp, he has been impressing the coaching staff. New head coach Brian Schottenheimer repeatedly mentions Elam when discussing how players are performing. A couple of months ago, during OTAs, he praised him for his speed, noting he was consistently one of their top speed guys in coverage. He also said that Elam was doing a good job taking in the information from the coaching staff.

And the compliments keep coming. During the first week of training camp, Schottenheimer reiterated that he looks very comfortable and is playing smart.

“He plays the game the right way,” Schottenheimer said. “He studies, he’s on top of splits, awareness, and relating to receivers based on their splits.”

Saying good things about a player isn’t anything worth getting excited about, but hearing the coaching staff repeat those things as more and more time passes starts to instill a little bit of optimism that things are certainly going in a positive direction. Things can change when the pads come on, but this is a promising start. Elam doesn’t need to rise from the ashes and be this first-round star that many thought he would be at one point, but if he can show enough promise to hold things down temporarily, this would be a huge win for the Cowboys.

Plus, he gave us this already iconic celebration at camp.