Cowboys draft options, who they might take with the 26th pick

After finishing their 2022 campaign with a divisional-round loss to the San Francisco 49ers, the Cowboys hold the No. 26 overall pick in the upcoming draft.

The Cowboys entered the 2023 offseason with negative cap space, so they weren’t able to improve their roster much in free agency.

Cowboys’ Owner, Team President, and General Manager Jerry Jones managed to get them back in the black by restructuring contracts (with a considerable amount of help from other front office staff like Vice President of Player Personnel Will McClay), allowing the team to retain some of their own key players like Middle Linebacker Leighton Vander Esch.

With the team still in a cap crunch, though, they’ll need to build through the draft (aided by the cheap contracts afforded to rookies through the collective bargaining agreement) in order to get back to the promised land.

The Cowboys currently have the seventh-best odds of winning it all in 2023, listed at +1600 at BetMGM Sportsbook.

Here’s a look at some of the Cowboys’ needs in the upcoming draft, as well as some players they could target in the first few rounds.

After shipping receiver Amari Cooper to the Cleveland Browns for a fifth-round pick (a comparable pittance, as they acquired him for a first rounder, but had to ship him out on the cheap in a desperate bid to cut salary) last season, the Cowboys found their once-stable receiving corps a position of considerable need.

While 2020 first-round pick CeeDee Lamb logged his best season as a professional last season, it didn’t help that Receiver Michael Gallup struggled mightily in 2022 on his way back from an ACL tear.

Lamb is set to hit free agency after the 2024 season, so the Cowboys could start preparing a replacement now if they aren’t able to field a competitive salary offer for him.

So far, they’ve been linked to a pair of receivers as potential first-round picks: Zay Flowers of Boston College, and Jordan Addison of USC, who won the Biletnikoff Award as the top receiver in the nation as a member of the Pittsburgh Panthers in 2021.

Flowers caught 78 passes for 1,077 yards and 12 touchdowns last season, while Addison struggled to adjust to USC’s offense, dealing with injuries that hampered his production on the Trojans’ loaded roster.

If Dallas goes after Flowers, you can bet Boston fans will be taking advantage of a BetMGM Massachusetts bonus code now that online sports betting is legal in the state of Massachusetts as they follow Flowers’s career in the NFL.

Both receivers are undersized, with Flowers (5-foot-9, 182 pounds) a bit stockier than Addison (5-foot-11, 173 pounds).

Flowers (4.42-second 40-yard dash) has more straight-line speed than Addison (4.49 seconds), but 40 times only tell a fraction of the story: Addison is a crafty route runner who established himself as one of the best receivers at creating separation during his time in college.

Addison played both inside and outside in college and has incredible hands, whereas Flowers is more of a prototypical slot receiver and struggles with drops at times.

That said, Flowers is adamant that he can play outside as well.

Both players possess a combination of tantalizing talent and frustrating shortcomings that could use polishing, which is why at least one of them will be available at the end of the first round for the Cowboys to choose, should they look to upgrade their receiver room.

With Vander Esch on a two-year deal and with a history of injuries, the Cowboys could look to bolster their linebacking corps as well.

Dallas hosted Arkansas Linebacker Drew Sanders in a pre-draft visit earlier this month.

Sanders is a tackling machine who also showed an affinity for rushing the passer during his time in Fayetteville. He’s a likely pick at some point in the first two rounds, and his versatility as a player means he could fulfill a number of roles in Dallas, making him a fascinating target.