Sturm: The Monday Stack–Sims, Gary, & Even More Sims

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The Monday Stack–Sims, Gary, & Even More Sims​

We look at Rashan Gary and have 31 days to go until the draft, so we begin the simulations!​

Bob Sturm
Mar 23, 2026



We are back and ready to roll, but as you can see above there are just 31 days to go until draft day.

That is not enough time to get us to where we need to be, so as usual, I will stress this out and try to get ready as well as we can.

So far, the Sturm 60 has profiled 42 players so I think I have a pretty good idea about the grouping. But, as you know, that is not the normal 60 to 75 players I want to get done. You will also note – if you are extra observant – that I have done 42 defensive players so far (and will do 3 more in the next few days before finally moving on to the offense).

In other words, I expect the draft to be all defense in the first few days, but I have been wrong before as many of you well know.

Somehow in the next month, we will have Opening Day for Rangers, the Masters, the start of the playoffs for the Stars, and I am sure a surprise or two. But, I must get to the finish line for this and I think I would like to knock out all 75 this year.

In the words of the great Jerry Reed, "We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there."

Today, we plan on cracking the top of a Monday regular the rest of the way – the mocks and simulations to help us know the plan at No. 12 and No. 20 if they stay there and make their picks.

THE MONDAY STACK​

A quick word on mock drafts for the new folks – I don’t do them.

I have no idea what the Cowboys are doing with their picks, so to act like I know what Miami and New Orleans are doing is a waste of time. I won’t do it. But, I will allow others to do it, but please know that it is mostly fiction. Given that I know how impossible guessing one team’s plans are, I would argue knowing 32 teams intentions is as easy as picking a perfect bracket this past weekend would be. Simply impossible.

That said, I do love the simulators because they make us look at what is available and make a concrete decision. There are several simulators that you can play around with, but for this first one today, let’s use the one at FanSpeak.com that many have been using.

I will set it to three rounds and that means the Cowboys will have three picks. Let’s see if we are ready for this:

SIMULATED DRAFT NO. 1​

OK, I press start and in our very first simulation, I see that we already have a far-fetched surprise on our hands. Here are the top 10 available according to their rankings and this might be close to a CeeDee Lamb surprise in 2020:



Now, I have four players who have a high-first round grade that I have done so far. Caleb Downs, David Bailey, Reuben Bain, and Arvell Reese. I am certainly excited that Sonny Styles has fallen to me, but I do not have him as high as I have Arvell Reese.

In the absurd world where Reese gets to me at No. 12, I must take him. That is a player who looks like there is a ceiling where he could be in the universe of Micah Parsons and a true double-digit sack guy.

So, he is all of the things we look for: a position of great need, a premium position, and my highest graded player.

We must not walk away from Arvell Reese even though it seems like an incredibly unlikely scenario. I am putting in that pick.

DALLAS COWBOYS NO. 12 – EDGE ARVELL REESE, OHIO STATE​

We got the player, but now the names start falling off the board that we would like to secure before we get to No. 20.

Look at them go.



I would love a world where Styles, Mesidor, or Thieneman get to me at No. 20. Of course, I also realize that if I get Reese, I probably don’t need to worry about Akheem Mesidor anymore.

Let’s look at who is there.



Let me also note that everyone at LB is still up besides Sonny Styles, but I would feel a bit odd grabbing anyone besides CJ Allen at No. 20. I think Jacob Rodriguez would be in a trade back scenario for me. If not Allen, then Avieon Terrell is the corner that so many swear by (but I am not quite in love with at this point).

My highest player on the board is going to be that LB CJ Allen from Georgia. I am grabbing him there.

DALLAS COWBOYS NO. 20 – LB CJ ALLEN, GEORGIA​

And now we have knocked out Edge and LB and I feel great. But, I don’t feel great about how long we now have to wait before we can pick again and all of the great names that go off the board between here and 92. This does make me wonder if we could trade back from 20. Just about every simulation I have seen makes me want to get out of there and go backwards to try to split that pick into a few.

But, in this case, nothing materialized, so we have Reese and Allen and I would obviously love that because I think they are both dynamite prospects.

But, it takes hours and hours to get all the way to 92. The board gets wiped out.

We finally get on the clock at No. 92 and here are the Top 10. I see only one of my profiled players here at all and it is the Penn State safety Wheatley.



However, I will say that there are several offensive pieces I really like here. Two of the top RBs are on the board in Emmett Johnson and Jonah Coleman as well as Deion Burks and Michael Trigg from Baylor.

I have not done enough on these RBs, but I think I would rather have Wheatley than Burks or Trigg. This tells me that I better spend some time on the possibility of a 3rd round RB (although I know that would frustrate the Jaydon Blue lobby quite a bit).

I will put in the name of Zakee Wheatley because he seems like another safety candidate that Christian Parker covets, but I promise to get up to speed on this wave of running backs because I can see a scenario where the 228 pound Coleman might really be something Dallas would like to grab there.

DALLAS COWBOYS NO. 92 – S ZAKEE WHEATLEY, PENN STATE​

OK, there it is.

FanSpeak gave me a “D" and thinks that Reese is a LB and not an edge so they are killing me for taking two guys at the same position. There is a universe where they are both off-ball LBs, but if I take Reese, we are putting him at OLB in a 3-4 and getting 12 sacks right away.



I would be quite pleased with this draft and would not give myself a D. Let’s do another one in a few minutes.

But, first….

ITS TIME TO TAKE A LOOK AT RASHAN GARY.​

The Cowboys have had a reasonably busy first two weeks of the new NFL League Year and we don’t just want to be “net spend” guys and note that by moving Osa Odighizuwa’s contract out and Jalen Thompson’s contract in they might actually be in roughly the same spending zone. We also don’t want to confuse activity for progress unless it is earned. You will note that last year about this time they had signed a bunch of new players to small 1-year deals and we were supposed to be convinced that they had done something to help their team.

They did not.

So, here we are looking down this list of eight newcomers and see that there are two larger moves:

• The Jalen Thompson deal which we spent considerable time on already.
• The Rashan Gary trade which we will cover now.
• We also note PJ Locke and Cobie Durant are here, but those prices are so low that they hardly demonstrate anything close to a bold strike. Both can play and I will spend time on both of their tape collections, but I will also say that neither of those indicate anything resembling aggressiveness from the organization to go fix this thing post-haste. They were simply opportunities to plug holes and get those guys jobs for the 2026 season where they surely hope to regain larger value for 2027 – be it here or anywhere.

So, let’s answer the question that many are asking me – given my status as a practicing Cheesehead.

What is the deal with Rashan Gary?

I have many thoughts and I will start with saying that is a very good football player.



Here are his PFF grades over the seven seasons he played in Green Bay and given that we know that the grades can be a bit difficult to fully hash out, I want to remind you that this is how best to look at those color grades:

• 90.0+: Elite
• 80.0–89.9: High quality
• 70.0–79.9: Good
• 60.0–69.9: Above average / Solid starter
• 50.0–59.9: Average / Replacement level
• 40.0–49.9: Below average
• 39.9 or less: Poor

The quick summary is he is a very good run defender and has been most of his career. He is also a quite decent pass rusher, but admittedly has seen that decline from Elite to just Above Average over the last five years and that doesn’t help given that his money has been going up dramatically in those same five years.

Now, let’s look at some tape from 2025. First, I made a reel of all of his sacks. You will notice they were all in the first half of the season which is well documented:


I think when you look at that montage, you see the ability and you see – at worst – he is a fine replacement for Jadeveon Clowney in 2026. I assume they saw Clowney up close and saw Gary from afar and thought that if the money is going to be similar, let’s spend it on someone much younger who has much more to prove and that wants to go through our entire offseason program to be a part of our squad. Gary is 28 and Clowney is 33 and while peak Clowney is better than Gary, I would say that right here and now, they are very comparable pieces and one could conceivably be here much longer than the other.

And yes, one would seem to have both feet in the boat with much more motivation to touch every rung in the ladder in our team building operation than the other.

The best way to explain his pass rush ability is to say that he is very similar to DeMarcus Lawrence once upon a time. He is a fine pass rusher, but not an elite one. And paying him as if he is an elite one is not going to make him one. That is often the issue in this sport. It has little to do with the player’s ability, but rather what you are paying him for that ability.

At $8m this player is very good. At $28 million he is absurdly overpriced. Valuation is key and we see this all over the league and the Packer just saw it with Rashan Gary. When he was making his rookie deal from 2019-2023, he was on about $4m per season. Then, they locked him down on a $24 million AAV and even if he is the same player, he will never be viewed the same way. We are seeing that already with DaRon Bland. Until last season, Bland was making less than $1 million per year and had all of those big Pick-6’s. Now, he is making $22.5m AAV and it seems ridiculous. The player didn’t change – the paycheck did.

So, it happens all over the league and there is a reason he is no longer in Green Bay, but it wasn’t because he was awful. It was because the money changed the perception and they were willing to pay double that for Micah Parsons because he is the rare talent where he seems either underpaid or properly paid at nearly any price. At some point, that will change, of course. But, not for now.

Anyway, back to Gary. Christian Parker was in Green Bay in 2019 and 2020 which were Gary’s first two years in the NFL. He was known then as a very good run stopper and he still is. I know there are horror stories and isolated clips of him fizzling late in the season when Micah was injured and they looked to Gary to take over, but if you look at the body of work, I think it is clear that Gary is fully engaged and very good at stopping the run. Here are some snaps that jumped out at me in my study:


It is plenty of what you want to see from an edge in this type of scheme. Can he take on runs at him? Yes. Can he take on runs away from him? Yes. Does he make the right reads with his eyes? Yes. And does he win with shedding and getting in on the action? Yes. He will be quite solid as a player who fits well in this scheme.

I would not be super eager to drop him in coverage, but I wouldn’t do that with Tank or Clowney, either. This is a quality edge. Just not a lead dog, necessarily.

Finally, I want to show you his work in the playoff game for Green Bay which will be his final game there. Again, Cheeseheads will tell you he was embarrassing at the end, but I think an emotionless look at the tape will demonstrate he is winning a fair number of reps here, too, in trying to get to Caleb Williams.


Green Bay was not the same defense without Micah and Devonte Wyatt who are both excellent pieces who were lost for the year down the stretch. They definitely wanted the $24 million AAV man to take over, but the facts are pretty clear. Once they did the Parsons trade, Gary was done in Green Bay. It wasn’t that he was bad, it was that he was paid to be a superstar and was never that.

But, at his reduced money in Dallas and back inside a scheme that makes sense, I am optimistic that he can be a fine upgrade and piece moving forward. I wanted Clowney back, but this does make more sense to me for the reasons detailed above. And 2/$32m puts him back in a spot where he can justify that money.

It is not a home run move, but it is a solid double off the wall.

SIMULATED DRAFT NO. 2​

Ok, let’s try the PFF Draft Simulator for our second spin today on the 3-round sim.

Away we go and here we sit at No. 12 with the following “Top 10” names available.



This to me is the ideal scenario as you know my affection for Mansoor Delane, the corner from LSU. I think he is fantastic and if I could wish upon a star in this draft, he is high amongst the guys I want to see when Dallas is on the clock. I am locking him in without hesitation.

DALLAS COWBOYS NO. 12 – CB MANSOOR DELANE, LSU​

Ok, here we go on the trip from 13-19, we see the names we like vanish again:

This time CJ Allen is gone and Dillon Thieneman actually was gone at No. 11.

This is where I need to figure out TJ Parker versus Akheem Mesidor and Kayden McDonald is also very nice, too. I love all three of these players and I do think that Mesidor is the right pick, but I want to convince as many of you as possible that I think TJ Parker is getting a pretty bad rap locally. McDonald also might be a perfect fit in this 3-4 front as everything that Odighizuwa was too small to be.



These are interesting options.

I will go back to the 3-year window theory and probably grab Mesidor, but this gives me plenty to clear up in the next 31 days.

DALLAS COWBOYS NO. 20 – EDGE AKHEEM MESIDOR, MIAMI​

Now, are we cleaned out again at No. 92?

Yes, we are.

On this list of the Top 10 available, I am definitely eyeing Notre Dame’s Huge WR Malachi Fields, as well as some of my DB’s I have recently done like Wheatley, Malik Muhammad, and Will Lee are all around, but I think I might get the two corners a chance to get to me in Round 4.



Instead, in the event that one of my QBs are looking at me at No. 92 and I have a chance to get my next guy who can sit behind Dak Prescott for a few years, I think I would be insane to not consider it.

If Garrett Nussmeier is even close to No. 92, we have to grab him there.

DALLAS COWBOYS NO. 92 – QB GARRETT NUSSMEIER.​

No, I have not done a full report on Nussmeier yet, but I definitely have one planned. But, if I get to the end of Round 3 with this haul, we are having a nice beverage.



Ok, that is it for today.

This week at SturmStack​

Folks, we have a new team to add to our weekly schedule. It is officially baseball season!



With that in mind, please expect a Rangers piece from me on Thursday Morning and a Stars piece is planned for Wednesday Morning. Other than that, we will wait and see, but I will continue to hammer out more draft prospects as this week we begin our journey through some offensive skill position players.

 

[boozeman]

Nussmeier?

No.