Blogging The Boys
What do you think is the biggest reason why the Cowboys can turn their talented rosters into serious playoff contenders?
The Dallas Cowboys are good at building a roster. This argument is heavily debated, but if you take a look at everything they do, it’s hard not to acknowledge that they assemble a pretty good group of talent. It all starts in the draft, and it all starts on Day 1. The Cowboys are absolutely lights out at drafting players in the first round. This is something we’ve always been privy to, but it may not be fully appreciated because some may not be aware of the disparity between the Cowboys and the rest of the teams in the NFL.
Over the last 15 drafts (we won’t count 2025 because players haven’t played yet), the Cowboys have drafted 10 players in the first round who have become All-Pros. For those doing the math, that’s a 67% All-Pro hit rate. That’s insane. To wrap your mind around just how incredibly high that is, the average All-Pro hit rate of all the other 31 teams in the NFL during that period is just three.
Cowboys = 10
Rest of the NFL (average) = 3
That’s a huge difference. If we broke down all the All-Pros from each team during these 15 years, it looks like this:
The next highest teams are the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs, each with six. If you look at the teams with at least four, most of them have been some of the better teams in the league in recent years. That shouldn’t be too surprising. Teams with great players tend to do well.
The Cowboys lead the pack, and it’s not even close. If you’re curious about which 10 players it is for Dallas, NFL on Prime Video made a nice little graphic for us.
Just to be clear, the players included in this data set are both first- and second-team All-Pros, so if you have higher standards, feel free to bump Byron Jones, Leighton Vander Esch, and Tyler Smith off the list. Of course, seven is still pretty good, and most of the other teams also drop as well.
A stat like this brings out a lot of “yeah, buts.” They are great in the first round, but what about the other rounds? Well, the Cowboys also do pretty well there, too. During that same time, they have drafted 12 additional players who have earned All-Pro and/or Pro Bowl honors. Those players include:
Dak Prescott, Sean Lee, DeMarcus Lawrence, Trevon Diggs, DaRon Bland, DeMarco Murray, Tony Pollard, Jake Ferguson, Tyler Biadasz, Dwayne Harris, Jaylon Smith, and Connor McGovern. Side note - McGovern battled injuries early on and made the Pro Bowl last year as a member of the Buffalo Bills, but regardless, he still counts as a good player the team drafted.
That is a total of 22 good players over 15 years. That equates to 1.5 quality players per year. That’s a good...
