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Cowboys HC Brian Schottenheimer described the team’s draft process and said it took “long hours” to set their draft board.
“It took us a lot of long hours and long, hard conversations,” Schottenheimer said, via NY Times. “And the beauty of it was all that hard work came together because I really felt like when we got into the draft process, we trusted the process and we trusted the board. I think it just proves that rolling up your sleeves and going to work and having the hard conversations before the weekend hits (pays off). When the weekend hits, there’s emotion and there’s things going on. But I thought the leadership of (Jerry Jones, Stephen Jones and Will McClay) allowed us to stay true to the conversations that we had almost ad nauseam at times. Setting the board, but getting it set right, that allowed us to do that.”
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones praised Schottenheimer for his knowledge of the prospects within the draft.
“At any point in the draft, someone might mention a player, (and) we hadn’t been sitting there studying and looking in his computer to see,” Jones recalled. “Without even blinking, he knew (the) player. … (He) just knew him as well as anybody in the room. He had obviously given that kind of effort to learn these players. I’ll tell you this right now, I don’t know if he’s ever had the opportunity or been in a position of where he could show that in a draft room, but as head coach he can sure show it in this draft room, and does. So, my hat’s off to Schotty. You’ve really done your homework.”
Schottenheimer added that the draft was a collective decision and there were a lot of conversations about potential prospects.
“I knew going in that, obviously, there’s some incredible minds that have been doing this a long, long, long time at a high level,” Schottenheimer said, “but I was made to feel very comfortable that this would be an organizational decision. The disagreements we had two and three weeks ago that we worked out and decided: ‘OK, well, let’s maybe go do a little bit more work on this guy. Hey, let’s throw the film on with the scouts and a couple of the coaches.’ Those things made it to where it was very, very easy. And so, when we debated and had some of these conversations, I feel like we gave Jerry and Stephen the ideas and our thoughts, and they were convicted. They were able to make the decisions, ultimately. That doesn’t happen without all the hours of work and disagreements and discussions that happened during the draft readings that we did for three to four weeks.”
