Finally, some good news. Football Christmas is here! Thursday night, the NFL begins their annual three-day player-selection spectacular, this time in Green Bay. Football fans, rejoice! And it’s just in time, too.
We’re only four months in, but 2025 is already shaping up to be an all-timer for bummer years in local sports. Since the calendar flipped, the Cowboys followed up a playoff-missing season by replacing a resumed former Super Bowl-winning skipper with an uninspiring nepo-baby whom no NFL organization has considered head-coaching material in more than a decade. The Mavericks managed to turn an NBA finals participant, boasting an undisputed Top-3 player, from a year ago into an oversized, offensively impotent, failed play-in team by sending said Top-3 player to the NBA’s Yankees at a liquidation price and alienating their entire fanbase in the process. The Stars, just a few weeks ago, were vying for No. 1 playoff seeding and were the odds-on favorites to eventually hoist Lord Stanley’s silver sipper. Yet, due to a bewildering propensity for third-period meltdowns, the boys in Victory Green™ backed into the playoffs riding a seven-game losing streak and suddenly find themselves in lucky-to-get-out-of-the-first-round territory.
And this is just local sports. Add to it the terrifyingly chaotic economy, the revenge tour of the measles virus, and a modern-day American gestapo shipping legal residents off to foreign concentration camps — to say we’re all going through it is woefully understated.
Despite it all, like the warm rays of a rising sun cutting through a blanket of industrial smog, I’m here to offer a salve for our battered sports psyches. That’s right. I’m here to offer some hope! The new Brian Schottenheimer regime in Cowboys-land is an unknown, which means we don’t technically know they’re going to be bad. Could be that head coach Son-of-Marty has just been some overlooked coaching savant and could be the key to reversing three decades of Cowboy underachievement. Sure, it’s probably misguided and no doubt naïve to consider the possibility (why would anything good ever happen?), but I’m consciously making a choice to live in that unknown and see it all the way out. I’m too broken to carry any more hopeless sports despair. I’ve been too full of the gloomies. So, I am opting for hope — at least until reality inevitably decides to slap me in the kisser and I’m forced to relent.
For now, let’s assume Schotty is the inexplicable answer to the Cowboys’ never-ending-math-equation and the Silver and Blue are headed for greatness this year! The new bench, however, is not going to be able to do it alone. Due to a massive expiring contract-player exodus and Dallas’ requisite discount bin-shopper’s attempt at replacing them in free agency — are you a former first- or second-round draftee who’s busted in the NFL so far? The Dallas Cowboys would like to have a word — the ’Boys’ roster has more holes than my favorite pair of boxer shorts. As “building through the draft” has been the M.O. of Jerry and his Merry Band of Hill-billionaires for 10 years, it’s all up to what happens this weekend to improve their roster and help Schotty bring us to glory.
Dallas has a mess of picks (10 in all), though the overwhelming majority are latter Day-3 selections, and they have no fourth-round pick at all. That’s not going to cut it for the type of overhaul this inevitable Super Bowl victory is going to demand. It’s going to take some of Jones’ patented Arkansan wheelin’ and dealin’ to get it all done. Luckily for Johnny Walker Blue’s favorite customer, I’ve already done his work for him. The following is the roadmap to follow if freshman HC Schottenheimer is to do what no Cowboys coach has been able to since the Clinton administration (the first one).
Round 1
The good thing about having so many holes and picking in the top third of the order is that you almost can’t go wrong. Whether you feel Dallas’ top need is O-line, wide receiver, an edge to play opposite future highest-paid-defensive-player-in-NFL-history Micah Parsons, or a corner to hold down the outside while Trevon Diggs continues to heal from his (second) season-ending injury, there are plenty of options. Aside from superstar running back Ashton Jeanty (who will likely go in the Top 6), I think the biggest immediate impact would be to give your $60M quarterback a legitimate target who is not named CeeDee Lamb. Another top-tier pass catcher could open up an offense that stagnated last year even before QB Dak Prescott went down with a torn hammy. With two-way freak Travis Hunter and Arizona prototypical X receiver Tetairoa McMillan almost certainly off the board by the time the Cowboys pick at 12, the smart money is moving to former Longhorn speedster Matthew Golden to be the next WR to don the star. He has elite speed (4.29 40!) and a wide catch radius, a skillset that fits perfectly for what has been missing in this offense.
Pick 1/12: Matthew Golden, wide receiver, Texas
Round 2
With several picks in the later rounds and that missing fourth rounder thanks to the failed Trey Lance experiment, Jerry and Co. are going to have to make some moves to try and grab the number of starters they need to fill. Thankfully, in this, our dream draft scenario, Arizona picks up the phone and offers us that missing fourth to drop just two spots. We trade our pick at 44 and take the Cards’ pick at 46 and pocket 118 in Round 4. The biggest need on the defensive side of the ball, a weakness that has plagued Dallas for years, is a big run-stuffing D-tackle. We take the opportunity to take the player everyone hoped Mazi Smith would be but hasn’t been, going back to the UT well and selecting big boi Alfred Collins. It might be a bit of a reach — some mocks have Collins in the third — but difference-making nose tackles won’t be there at 76 when Dallas picks again. Better to overpay than lose out. Collins has the size and tenacity to eventually prove he was worth it.
Pick 2/46 (via Arizona): Alfred Collins, defensive tackle, Texas
Round 3
Many, if asked what the Cowboys’ absolute must-have position in the draft is, would say running back. I share that opinion. Thankfully, this is a deep draft at halfback. Yet the front office was burned last year by waiting too long in a similarly stacked RB class and missed out completely. Let’s make sure we don’t do that again. At 76, we’re going to take Arizona State wrecking ball Cameron Skattebo. With the violence with which he runs, he’ll quickly become a fan favorite and the best-selling jersey on the squad.
Pick 3/76: Cameron Skattebo, running back, Arizona State
Round 4
With the retirement of future first-ballot HOFer Zack Martin, O-line is suddenly a big need for Dallas. We lucked into the pick at 118, but this deep into the draft, players who can potentially push Brock Hoffman and TJ Bass to start are fading fast. We take some of the later Day-3 draft capital and make a package to move up to Buffalo’s pick at 109 and take LSU’s Miles Frazier, likely the last startable guard. Whether he starts Week 1 or has to earn it over the course of the season, Frazier has the scheme-specific skillset to knock off either of the former UDFAs vying for the position.
Pick 4/109 (via Buffalo): Miles Frazier, guard, LSU
Round 5
With Jourdan Lewis now in Jacksonville and Diggs an unknown to start the season, the cornerback room is a blinking red light. Dallas traded for former first-rounder Kaiir Elam, but there’s a reason the Bills bailed on him after just three years. California’s Nohl Williams is a big, long corner with the ball-hawking skills (7 INTs in 2024) to match Diggs and Daron Bland, who each have led the league in interceptions. He can play outside while Diggs is gone with Bland shifting to the slot upon his return. Opposing QBs beware.
Pick 5/149: Nohl Williams, cornerback, California
Round 6
Unhappy to sit with two picks in the 200s in Round 6, we’re looking for depth at tight end, specifically of the run-blocking variety. We’re packaging our picks at 204 and 211 and moving all the way up to Vegas at 180 to get one. Luke Schoonmaker has been a disappointment so far and you can never have enough tall, athletic bruisers. We add another Luke at the position with Iowa’s Luke Lachey.
Pick 6/180 (via Las Vegas): Luke Lachey, tight end, Iowa
Round 7
By this point, we’re really just hunting priority UDFAs to keep from fighting other teams for them after Mr. Irrelevant is selected. With three picks in the final round, we’re looking to add special teams depth and camp bodies. To close out the day, we’ll take a dart throw edge rusher in North Carolina’s Kaimon Rucker at 217 and some linebacker depth in Okie State’s Nick Martin at pick 239. Word is that despite pulling of a trade that sends a fifth-round pick to New England in exchange for cannon-armed Joe Milton III, the Cowboys could still look to add a signal caller to the roster, knocking off ill-fated Will Grier. Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke has prototypical size and poise in the pocket and can be a nice scout team passer and, someday, maybe more. He’s worth the 247th selection it will cost to add him to a revamped QB room.
Pick 7/217: Kaimon Rucker, edge rusher, North Carolina
Pick 7/239: Nick Martin, linebacker, Oklahoma State
Pick 7/247: Kurtis Rourke, quarterback, Indiana
