I’ve always loved the wall-to-wall coverage The Ticket provides, and I’m stoked to be a part of it this year. (I’d also like to invite you to listen on Sports Radio 1310AM/96.7FM The Ticket, as my radio show, The Invasion, will be broadcasting live from Green Bay that Thursday and Friday, and we will be live on site from Lambeau Field for the entire draft through that weekend.)
The NFL Draft moved to a seven-round format beginning in 1994, and since then, the number one overall pick has been dominated by quarterbacks. Twenty of the last 30 drafts have begun with a QB getting the first awkward bro-hug from the commissioner. The top pick is again expected to be a QB, with many experts predicting the Tennessee Titans to select Cam Ward, out of the University of Miami.
The Dallas Cowboys' draft this year should be interesting. As of this writing, they own 10 draft picks, but only three of those are in the first 148 slots.
Here’s some advice for the Cowboys: You might want to get those right.
Outside of the first two days, Dallas has two picks in Round 5, two picks in Round 6 and three picks in Round 7. My, how exciting!
Who Are the Game Changers?
The key to moving this team forward next season might very well rest on how those first three picks are utilized. The good news is their greatest needs seem to align quite well with their first selection at No. 12. There’s a good chance they can get a high-level playmaker, even if they trade down a few spots to pick up an extra third or a fourth-round pick that they currently do not have. You might remember they traded this year’s fourth-round pick to the Carolina Panthers for wide receiver Johnathan Mingo. Hey, they liked him coming out of college (two years ago!) when he was a high Round 2 pick. Dallas traded for him despite the fact that Mingo has done absolutely nothing at the NFL level.
This roster has serious holes at running back, wide receiver and cornerback. They’ve tried to address running back during this offseason to some degree by signing Javonte Williams from Denver and Miles Sanders from Carolina. I’m not sure if it excites any of you that Carolina wanted now former Cowboys RB Rico Dowdle more than Miles Sanders, but they feel they’ve upgraded by taking a back the Cowboys decided cost them too much.
So, yes, there is a massive need for a running back. There’s a knock, for some reason, for taking a running back in the first round. I don’t get it. Ezekiel Elliott was taken fourth overall and led the league in rushing in two of his first three years. Isn’t that what you want? If the Cowboys take a back at No. 12 who comes in and leads the league in rushing in 2025, I’m going to qualify that as a very successful draft pick.
The idea with a first-round pick is that you want to draft a player who comes in and starts for you immediately. Running backs Ashton Jeanty from Boise State and Omarion Hampton from North Carolina could be nice picks if either is there for the Cowboys with that 12th pick. New Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer said at the league meetings last week in Florida, “You're always looking for game-changers when you're picking 12th. You're looking for guys who influence the game."
Could a running back in that Zeke mold who can lead the league in rushing be a game-changer? I think so.
Someone said Ashton Jeanty would love to play in Dallas pic.twitter.com/8CbdHXTrtM
— FergSZN (@FergSZN) April 14, 2025
There’s also a need at wide receiver for someone who can come in and complement All-Pro CeeDee Lamb. Currently, on the roster behind Lamb, you have a group including Jalen Tolbert, KaVonte Turpin, Johnathan Mingo, Jalen Brooks and Ryan Flournoy. There are a couple of practice-squad guys too, but when Lamb is putting up a season of 101 catches for 1,194 yards, it would be a tremendous help to have someone else who can influence the game opposite him.
Those five other receivers I mentioned combined for 107 catches and 1,355 yards. Combined. That’s five players who totaled just 6 catches and 161 more yards as a group than Lamb did by himself. The Cowboys need a legit WR2 on the roster. The good news? There is a very good chance the top WR on their board will be available at the No. 12 pick.
Tetairoa McMillan out of Arizona and Matthew Golden from Texas are expected to be the first two receivers taken. McMillan is a big, physical receiver who was third in the country in receiving yards last year, and Golden is a speed guy who ran a sub 4.29 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine and averaged over 17 yards a catch at Texas last year on 58 receptions. The Cowboys could use him quite well to help stretch the field.
Either of those players would fill Schottenheimer's other desire when drafting.
“You build it from the outside in,” he told the media recently. “You got corners and receivers. They get isolated one-on-one. Usually, that's the way I've looked at it. When you're building a roster, kind of think of it as you're building from the outside in based on guys that get isolated a lot."
Other Draft Needs
And that brings us to the other need on this roster: cornerback. Losing Jourdan Lewis in free agency to Jacksonville is a big loss both on the field at slot corner and in the locker room as a respected leader and veteran voice. Trevon Diggs will likely not be ready to return from injury until after the regular season starts. DaRon Bland will start at one spot. They traded for Kair Elam, a former first-round pick from Buffalo who fell out of favor and lost his starting spot with the Bills. Caelen Carson played some as a rookie fifth-round pick last year but didn’t offer much to be confident in as a full-time starter. Israel Mukuamu could play some slot, and they’ve got Josh Butler and Andrew Booth still around, but, again, early in the draft, you want those guys who can influence a game the way Bland or Diggs have in the past with their play-making abilities. One of the top corners in this draft is Will Johnson out of Michigan. Behind Colorado’s Travis Hunter, it’ll be Johnson and Texas’ Jahdae Barron, who are in the mix for the second corner selected and could be there at No. 12 for Dallas.
My belief is the Cowboys will follow Schotty’s desire and find game influencers who can make plays for them in an offense that desperately needs them. You have an offensive-minded head coach and have invested $60 million a year in your quarterback and $34 million a year in your top wide receiver. Keep investing in that offense, and whether you believe Dak Prescott is elite or not, you should give your quarterback weapons and give your offensive-minded head coach options to use in his offense.
I’d love to see McMillan or Golden taken at No. 12, followed by a running back in Round 2. There’s a group of RBs that would be fantastic picks at No. 44, including Ohio State’s TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins, Iowa’s Kaleb Johnson, Tennessee’s Dylan Sampson and Arizona State’s Cam Skattebo.
If the Cowboys are heading into Round 3 with, say, McMillan and Henderson secured with their top two picks, I’m in love with them. Maybe you can hope for a miracle that a Trey Amos from Ole Miss or Notre Dame’s Benjamin Morrison is there at No. 76 in the third round to fulfill that corner need, but regardless, they will be able to fulfill a big need defensively at that point.
With a roster like this, it’s hard to go wrong when you simply take the top guy on your board, and they have needs all over the field to plug and play whatever the selections happen to be. And before you freak out thinking the Cowboys will find a way to mess this up, too, keep this in mind, since 2005, they’ve had five picks at No. 12 or higher. Those five picks turned into DeMarcus Ware, Tyron Smith, Morris Claiborne, Ezekiel Elliott and Micah Parsons. That’s an 80% hit rate with three of those guys headed for the Hall of Fame and another who averaged 1,351 yards rushing per season during his first four seasons in the league.
If you’re a “draft and develop” team, as the Cowboys have told us many times they are, the end of April is where they can try and make us believe that once again, this is the year that drought ends and it’s OK to have some hope come September.
Then again, it’s the Cowboys. Why would anything ever change?
