The Dallas Cowboys have had some really solid draft picks in their history.
When it comes to NFL roster construction there is zero doubt that free agency is important. This is a message that we have tried to convey to the Dallas Cowboys for years, with little success, as they generally choose to play the role of wallflower when teams are handing out contracts to players on the open market.
America’s Team prefers to build the bulk of their roster by way of the NFL draft, which is certainly sound in theory, and in their defense they have good reason to believe that. The Cowboys have been a very good drafting team as of late, but they have been a particularly good drafting team across the whole of NFL history.
Recently the folks at ESPN put together a list of the best draft pick at every single draft position ever. Yes, you read that right. Ever.
Several Dallas Cowboys are the greatest draft pick ever at the spot they were taken
There were several Cowboys who made the worldwide leader’s list. To be clear here there were some players who suited up for Dallas that were initially drafted by other teams. You’ll see that the first of such kind was Deion Sanders and he was obviously originally drafted by the Atlanta Falcons. The spirit of the exercise was such that the players in question ideally (with some obvious exceptions) delivered for the team who selected them. Clearly there are players who also deliver elsewhere like Sanders.
Here is every Cowboys presence that came in on ESPN’s list (which you can view in its entirety here).
The only other unique situations aside from Sanders are Terrell Owens, Charles Haley and Steve Wisniewski. Obviously both Owens and Haley joined the Cowboys after being drafted by San Francisco, T.O. had a stop in Philadelphia before, and while Wisniewski is on this list he made his name more with the Raiders.
All told there are 14 players on this list and given that there were 262 total picks with listed names that means the Cowboys have had a hand in (one way or another) 5% of the greatest draft picks at every spot ever. Not too bad!
This is certainly a unique exercise and its nature offers players like Tony Hill, DeMarco Murray, Eugene Lockhart, Rayfield Wright, Kevin Gogan, Jay Ratliff and Gary Cobb to be remembered fondly. These players all contributed in different ways during their days in the silver and blue – Rayfield Wright is also in the Pro Football Hall of Fame so he was quite the return on investment – and particularly so relative to how they first landed on the team.
If it is not obvious, the number of picks in each round has grown over NFL history. This is why Kevin Gogan was taken a full numerical round after Jay Ratliff but 18 numerical picks ahead of him.
One might wonder if Dak Prescott would make it at pick number 135. He is certainly a divisive subject, but finding a franchise quarterback so late in the draft (Kirk Cousins is on this list at his spot to this point) is a huge hit.
Ben Solak, the author in question, went with Ken Riley and it is hard to not see why.
A tricky debate here. Riley was selected in 1969, 47 years before the Cowboys took quarterback Dak Prescott with the very same pick. It took Riley 35 years to make the Hall of Fame, which he finally did posthumously in 2022. I don’t think Prescott will make the Hall, but I’d argue his impact as a fourth-round quarterback in today’s game is equivalent to Riley’s impact on the Bengals of the 70s. Riley gets the edge as a Hall of Famer, but Prescott remains one of the best Day 3 picks in the history of the draft.
Not for nothing, but also at pick No. 135: Josh Sitton! Joe Horn! Rob Ninkovich! What a pick!
Herschel Walker is on this list as you can see and you can argue that he provided the biggest impact what with how the team leveraged him for assets that helped build the 1990s dynasty. It is a fascinating overall discussion in that sense.
Did ESPN leave anybody off in your opinion? If so, who?