B+
Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys worked the phones like thieves and earned a B+.
by hostlecj ·
2025 NFL Draft
· 20 picks
· 10 steals
· 6 reaches
The Tyreak Sapp pick is the one that will follow the Cowboys into the fall. They took him 96 spots ahead of his grade, and the board is not shy about saying so. Solid and sensible more than spectacular: a B+.
Whatever else happened, they won the night they took Knight Jr.. The dealing alone would carry a lesser class.
A whole weekend of picks and quarterback is somehow still a want. It is not that Starks is a bad player; it is that the Cowboys had louder needs to answer first.
Good work on the whole, with quarterback the one box left unchecked.
Pick-by-Pick
In No. 3 they get a ballhawk on the outside. The biggest hole, addressed.
In pick No. 4 they get a quarterback's worst nightmare at fair value. Need was not the driver here.
In Round 1, Pick 12 they get a disruptive interior force. A real need, handled.
A top-tier safety at a bargain, Nick Emmanwori in the Round 2 slot, plain and simple. Not urgent, but hardly pointless.
The needs board was loud and they turned it down, spending slot 38 on Malaki Starks with quarterback unsolved.
Good things come to war rooms that wait, and Emeka Egbuka at pick 44 is the proof. A must-fix position, and they treated it like one.
They will replay Omarion Hampton at the Round 3 slot for years; that is how good the value is. A sensible fit for a spot that needed help.
This one needs a full-page explanation: Charles Grant in the 69th overall pick, miles early. The one spot they could not leave alone, and did not.
A big swing on Hayden Conner at No. 76, well ahead of any board in the building. A glaring weakness, addressed head on.
No drama and no debate, Darien Porter went about where he belonged in pick 77. They walked in needing this and walked out with it.
A wild overpay on CJ West in Round 4, Pick 2, the sort that defines a class for the wrong reasons. It shores up a spot that genuinely needed the help.
TreVeyon Henderson at slot 104 is daylight robbery; nobody expected him to last. Another box on the needs board, quietly ticked.
They let Jay Higgins come to them and pounced at the 134th pick. This was priority one on the needs board, and now it is handled.
Taking Demetrius Knight Jr. in pick No. 143 is close to grand larceny; a linebacker that good had no business lasting this long. It also answers one of the loudest questions on the roster.
A swing that ignored the value entirely, O'Donnell Fortune well ahead of where he belonged. Better still, it is exactly the hole they had to fill.
A real head-scratcher, Clay Webb in No. 153 is miles ahead of his ranking. It answers the question that was keeping the coaches up at night.
The board fumbled Kevin Winston Jr. all the way to the 168th pick, and they scooped it up. They added to a strength when a need was still open elsewhere.
Tyreak Sapp at pick No. 170 is the kind of overdraft that needs everything to break right. Insurance at a position that did not really ask for it.
Oronde Gadsden II in pick 173 is a gift, value that borders on unfair. The roster fit checks out.
They barely believed it either: Chris Paul Jr. still on the board at the Round 6 slot. The biggest hole on the depth chart just got a whole lot smaller.