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By Bob Sturm Apr 18, 2019
Each week during the buildup to the NFL Draft, we will take a look at around five prospects. The hope is to cover what we perceive as the very best players in this spring’s draft, as well as the Dallas Cowboys’ positions of greatest need in the first three rounds, using about 200 snaps of the most recent college tape from each of the prospects. I am certainly not an NFL scout, but I have found over the years that much can be learned from dedicating a few hours to each player and really studying how he might fit at the next level. With a little luck, we will be plenty familiar with the options when the draft arrives in late April.
Here we are at the final group of five draft prospects. I aspired to write 60 full player profiles, and today we offer you prospects No. 56-60. After 12 weeks of grinding, we finally made it. I am surely no Dane Brugler, but I did the best I could.
I always want to keep the final grouping flexible to sweep up what’s left. If the objective of this entire 12-week project is to know the players the Cowboys are considering in the first three rounds (top 100 picks) then I had to use these last five markers as “calculated guesses.”
For that, we look at team needs and the visit lists.
If you are unaware — and I highly doubt it, given that you are reading detailed draft profiles — each team is allowed 30 “official visits” to their facilities in the pre-draft buildup, in which they can spend additional time with each candidate. On top of that, they also look at local prospects on “Dallas Day,” and of course all of the chances to interact at other approved instances like the NFL Combine and collegiate Pro Days.
This gives us a chance to collect bread crumbs the Cowboys drop along their evaluation trail. Over the last several years, the Cowboys braintrust led by Will McClay and Stephen Jones have been said to lean toward players who visited their facility.
But is it actually true?
I was talking with one of my sources inside the organization and he suggested that this reputation is somewhat comical. In fact, he said that odds are pretty good they are right in line with the rest of the league in regard to drafting from players who visit the facility.
Let’s take a look. I wanted a five-year sample to go down the list. Accuracy was an objective here, but it is possible there could be a mistake or two. There is hardly an air-tight official record. But, to the best of our ability, we believe these findings to be accurate.
Here is what happened in 2018:
By Bob Sturm Apr 18, 2019
Each week during the buildup to the NFL Draft, we will take a look at around five prospects. The hope is to cover what we perceive as the very best players in this spring’s draft, as well as the Dallas Cowboys’ positions of greatest need in the first three rounds, using about 200 snaps of the most recent college tape from each of the prospects. I am certainly not an NFL scout, but I have found over the years that much can be learned from dedicating a few hours to each player and really studying how he might fit at the next level. With a little luck, we will be plenty familiar with the options when the draft arrives in late April.
Here we are at the final group of five draft prospects. I aspired to write 60 full player profiles, and today we offer you prospects No. 56-60. After 12 weeks of grinding, we finally made it. I am surely no Dane Brugler, but I did the best I could.
I always want to keep the final grouping flexible to sweep up what’s left. If the objective of this entire 12-week project is to know the players the Cowboys are considering in the first three rounds (top 100 picks) then I had to use these last five markers as “calculated guesses.”
For that, we look at team needs and the visit lists.
If you are unaware — and I highly doubt it, given that you are reading detailed draft profiles — each team is allowed 30 “official visits” to their facilities in the pre-draft buildup, in which they can spend additional time with each candidate. On top of that, they also look at local prospects on “Dallas Day,” and of course all of the chances to interact at other approved instances like the NFL Combine and collegiate Pro Days.
This gives us a chance to collect bread crumbs the Cowboys drop along their evaluation trail. Over the last several years, the Cowboys braintrust led by Will McClay and Stephen Jones have been said to lean toward players who visited their facility.
But is it actually true?
I was talking with one of my sources inside the organization and he suggested that this reputation is somewhat comical. In fact, he said that odds are pretty good they are right in line with the rest of the league in regard to drafting from players who visit the facility.
Let’s take a look. I wanted a five-year sample to go down the list. Accuracy was an objective here, but it is possible there could be a mistake or two. There is hardly an air-tight official record. But, to the best of our ability, we believe these findings to be accurate.
Here is what happened in 2018: