After I released my last article, “2 Early Cowboys Mock Drafts: You Vote“, one thing immediately jumped out to me, not from the mock drafts themselves, but from the comments.
A few fans kept repeating the same idea:
Trade the second first-round pick, move out of 25 and pick up a 2nd and 3rd.
It didn’t matter whether they liked the players I mocked at 14 or 25. It didn’t matter how the board fell. The loudest reaction was that Dallas should automatically turn pick 25 into more draft capital.
When I pulled up the draft value chart, the numbers told a very different story. And honestly, I don’t know if fans, because I didn’t either, realize how far off the math really is.
The Draft Value Chart Changes the Conversation
Here are the Cowboys’ actual values from the draft value chart:
- Pick 14 – 1100 points
- Pick 25 – 720 points
- Pick 114 – 66 points
- Pick 154 – 29.8 points
- Pick 178 – 19.8 points
- Pick 179 – 19.4 points
- Pick 221 – 2.3 points
- Pick 233 – 1.0 points
Total draft capital: 1958.3 points
Most of the fan debate centered specifically on pick 25, the 720-point draft asset that everyone seems to want to move. Once you compare that value to what fans think Dallas can get in return, the argument falls apart quickly.
Fans Asked For a Trade, and It Doesn’t Add Up
On the value chart, the first picks of the 2nd and 3rd rounds look like this:
- First pick of Round 2–580 points
- First pick of Round 3–265 points
Add them up and we get 845 points. On paper, that would be a massive win for the Cowboys if they could trick the Tennessee Titans into taking this trade.
Here’s the part that is overlooked: no NFL team is giving up the top of the 2nd and the top of the 3rd for the 25th overall pick. Ever.
Those types of trades only happen when someone is moving into the top half of the draft, usually to grab a quarterback. Pick 25 doesn’t command that type of premium.
What Dallas Could Realistically Get for Pick 25
Here is where I noticed the value chart gets brutally honest. Historically, when teams trade out of the 20s, this is the return:
- A mid-2nd, worth around 300–360 points
- A mid-3rd, worth around 150–200 points
We will be generous here and use the high end: 360 + 200 = 560 points.
And now put that next to the Cowboys’ pick: Pick 25 = 720 points.
Dallas would be taking a 160-point loss. That would be the equivalent of giving up a late 3rd round pick for free.
It sounds like a no-brainer to just trade down, but the value chart says something else, something completely different.
Why Keeping Pick 25 Makes More Sense
Trading pick 25 for a 2nd and 3rd sounds good in theory, but it would be a loss of value, not a gain for the Cowboys.
Dallas finally has two first-rounders. That gives the team a shot at adding two high-value, high-impact players, something fans have been begging for.
Moving out of pick 25 only makes sense to me if a team called with a package that breaks the value chart.
We can be honest with ourselves, those offers are rare.
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The trade should be made to acquire at least two high draft picks before #4, one in each the second and third-round picks, if possible, at value to be made on the draft chart. No one asserted the lowest #1 could be traded for #2 and #3 within the top 5 in those rounds. Dallas has such a dearth of talent on its back 7 and OTs it is absolutely frightening that Jerry can think that 2-#1s will make the difference. This team is a mess. In FA it needs to look to signing some of Chanel, MLB, Q. Williams, OLB, Washington, S, Phillips, DE and KC CB, Watson or A. Samuel, CB.
I don’t like the OTs in FA, but I enjoyed both of your mock drafts. With no trade downs, I would target Sonny Styles or Allen, LBs with the highest pick, if not a CB without an injury history, and Mariagua, LOT or World, LOT. The first pick in #4 could be a RB like Moss or Singleton or a DE depth piece such as Dani-Sutton or Tyreeke.
We need to accumulate more picks and sign those such as mentioned above to have any chance.
This team isn’t a mess, we have really good players all over the defense, the players aren’t the problem, it’s the defensive coordinator!! That whole Detroit game was full of bad play calling from the defensive coordinator!! We could use a couple of better players on defense, but not near as much as you said!! We can probably use another corner, with how bad Bland played in Detroit, players were making him look like an idiot most of that game!! And we definitely need a new offensive tackle with how bad Steele played!! He was getting beat or getting called for a penalty the whole game, and we can’t keep putting up with that!! Thomas made a couple of mistakes in that game, but not near as much as Steele did!! So we can probably draft a new LT and then move Guyton to RT where he’s a more natural fit!! Guyton has gotten better at LT, but he’ll be better at RT!! And that’s the biggest things we need to do!! But like I said, this team isn’t a mess, we still have a chance to get into the playoffs this season with the players we have now, we just need our defensive coordinator to stop calling a bunch of garbage plays, and stop putting our man coverage corners in zone coverage and we’ll be fine!!
I’m not sure who would think it would be a good idea to trade the second 1st round pick away all together, just to get a early 2nd and 3rd round pick, but I know I didn’t say that!! But to be clear, just because it don’t add up, it don’t mean it can’t happen!! If a team like the Titans or giants wants to move up bad enough, they won’t care about the extra value they’re giving up!! They’ll probably tell us to throw in an extra 5th and get on with it because that’s how bad they wanna get back into the 1st round!! If I’m not mistaken, the giants did it in the last draft to get Dart!! But in my comment, I said we should trade down a few spots with our 1st pick and get an extra pick in the 2nd or 3rd, the return depending on how far we trade down, and then trade down a little bit with our other 1st round pick and get another extra pick, which if we’re trading down from 25, that’ll mean we’ll be getting a late 3rd round pick!! Like I said, I don’t think it would be a good idea to trade out of the 1st round, not even with the late 1st round pick, I would rather stay in the 1st round with both picks, but I would trade down in the 1st round with both picks and get back as much as I could since we don’t have a 2nd or 3rd round pick!! But with the way Steele and Bland played against Detroit, we definitely need to stay in the 1st round with both picks so we can get a better tackle and a better corner!! But we can’t go through the 2nd and 3rd rounds without a pick, so we need to trade down in the 1st round so we can get picks in at least one of them rounds!!
a Dallas Cowboys since the 70’s I know Jerry Jones is going to mess it up on draft day in the war room
a Dallas Cowboys fan, since the 70’s Jerry Jones is going to do something stupid in the war room during the N.F.L. draft