What if Cowboys had listened to Mel Kiper and Daniel Jeremiah in the last 10 drafts?

Who would the Cowboys have drafted over the last decade if they listened to Mel Kiper and Daniel Jeremiah? We have the answers.

ESPN’s Mel Kiper and NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah are two of the biggest names in the mock draft business and have been for years. So today we ask ourselves what would have happened if the Cowboys had followed the pair’s mock draft suggestions in the first round of the last 10 drafts, and how that compares to what the Cowboys actually did – something we’ve done intermittently here on Blogging The Boys over the last decade or so, albeit Daniel Jeremiah now takes the place of Todd McShay, who’s out of the mock draft business for now.

In the mock draft world, there’s only one mock that ultimately counts: the final mock draft published before the actual draft. That doesn’t stop mock drafters from creating countless mocks before that final one, but most of those are entertainment for a long offseason. Which is why today we’ll only look at Kiper’s and Jeremiah’s final mock drafts from 2015 through 2024.

Before we check out the two draft experts, here is a summary of the Cowboys’ first-round picks in the last 10 drafts, along with some metrics we’ll use to evaluate the picks.

Why the cutoff at 10 years? Simply because it’s a nice round number. At 11 years, we’d have included Zack Martin, which would have made the Cowboys look a lot better. At 12 years, Travis Frederick would have been a strong add to the list, at 13 we’d have included Morris Claiborne, not a great look for the Cowboys. 14 years? Tyron Smith, plus-good. 15 years? Dez Bryant, double-plus-good.

And that’s a bit of an issue for the Cowboys’ draft record. That five-year stretch between 2010 and 2014 outperforms the next 10 years in every single metric on the table above: 11 All-Pro seasons, 25 Pro Bowl seasons, 40 starter seasons, 602 games started, and a strong Weighted Career Approximate Value (wAV) of 340.

Like many things in the Cowboys universe, the Cowboys’ draft record lives mostly on past glories, and I shudder to think what that record would look like had the team not lucked into Micah Parsons and CeeDee Lamb, or had gotten its hands on Paxton Lynch in 2016. Dallas is not the Pro Bowl factory it once was.

Here’s how the Cowboys’ draft record over the last 10 years compares to the rest of the league in terms of wAV.

Overall, the table establishes that the Cowboys have been a middling drafting team over the last 10 years, ranking close to average with their first-round picks. Of course, the numbers would be better without Taco Charlton, but every team whiffs on a first-rounder at some point. And yes, had they not traded away their 2019 first-rounder, they’d probably also look better. But it is what it is.

With that, let’s turn to Kiper and Jeremiah to see how their picks for the Cowboys hold up in this comparison.

But before we do that, we have to recognize that this is not of course an apples-to-apples comparison. Kiper and McShay have to make assumptions about all the picks ahead of the Cowboys in their mock drafts, and then have to assign one of the remaining players to the Cowboys based on a first-round mock that is bound to be imperfect. We do not know which player each draftnik would have picked if he had been in charge of the Cowboys draft on draft night, and going back and following their draft-night commentary to figure out who they suggested when the Cowboys were on the clock is just not feasible.

However, in some drafts, one or both draftniks have offered picks for the Cowboys where the players or positions selected were in the pre-draft favorites pool, so they at least partly reflect popular sentiment at the time.

Here are the players Mel Kiper had the Cowboys picking in his final mock drafts of each of the last 10 years:

We’ve been doing these types of comparisons here on Blogging The Boys off and on since 2015, and this is the first time any of the draftniks has come up ahead of the Cowboys. And in this case, Kiper outperforms the Cowboys by quite a bit: More All Pro seasons (6 vs 4), More starter seasons (43 vs 33), more games started (633 vs 507) and a higher wAV (324 vs 301).

The main difference is of course the Taco Charlton pick in 2017, where Kiper picked CB Marlon Humphrey instead. Humphrey went 16th overall, and the Cowboys picked up Charlton at #29. Excluding 2017 has Kiper and the Cowboys much more closely matched, but you can’t just exclude data that you don’t like.

For the most part, Kiper would have had the Cowboys drafting solid starters, and maybe there’s a lesson in that. Perhaps chasing needs in the draft is not the best strategy. In any case, Kiper’s 324 total wAV points would rank this collection of picks ninth overall in the league.

On to Jeremiah’s final mock picks for the Cowboys:

Jeremiah’s collection of picks for the Cowboys over the last 10 years falls far short of both the Cowboys’ actual haul and Kiper’s mock projection. The picks above would have ranked just 30th overall in terms of wAV points, and that’s despite the Jalen Ramsey boost in 2007. Excluding Ramsey, not a single pick on Jeremiah’s list would have exceeded 20 wAV points.

That’s not necessarily and indictment of Jeremiah’s mock drafting skills, but in this small sample he shows a high affinity for sending cornerbacks (4) and tight ends (2) to Dallas, perhaps because he was focusing more on needs than the Cowboys and Kiper did.

What all the numbers above show is that the draft can be a precarious proposition, even in the first round where the best available talent is supposed to be found. Over the last 10 years, the Cowboys have been pretty average at mining this resource. And yes, this is about the first round only. Kiper and McShay do not include the other rounds in their final mock, so this is what we are comparing against.

And here, just to provide some pre-draft fun, are the best and worst first-round picks from each of the last 10 drafts and what their combined wAV would add up to:

A few thoughts on this table.

First, even for the worst teams in the league, there is hope, as they could have drafted much worse, just as there is reason for the best teams to improve their efforts, as they are still far away from realizing the maximum potential possible.

Second, seeing Paxton Lynch on the list of the worst picks of the last decade, and knowing how close the Cowboys came to drafting him, should give you some idea of how precariously close the Cowboys have come to complete draft disasters.

Also, Jared Goff leads all QBs from the 2016 class with a wAV of 96. Right behind him with a wAV of 94 is none other than your favorite quarterback, Dak Prescott.