Which of this year’s Day 3 draft picks are you most excited about?
It’s been a while since the Cowboys found a starter, or even a key role player, with one of their sixth- or seventh-round draft picks. This didn’t used to be so unusual in Dallas, but lately, it’s been a dry spell. Hopefully, one of their 2025 late-round rookies will end the drought.
You can quickly get into a semantics argument about the term “late-round pick,” with some arguing that fifth-rounders or even all Day 3 picks qualify. And even if we did include fifth-round picks, you wouldn’t have much to show from recent history beyond CB DaRon Bland. The jury’s still out on guys like Asim Richards and Caelen Carson. But for today, we’re focusing on those final two rounds.
When the Cowboys go to training camp this year, only Donovan Wilson and Israel Mukuamu will be late-round guys who aren’t still on their original contracts. And from that latter group, there’s nobody left from 2022 and only Deuce Vaughn and Jalen Brooks from 2023. Ryan Flournoy and Nathan Thomas are still here from last year’s draft. So is Justin Rogers, but only after not making it past final cuts, spending most of last year on the Bengals’ practice squad, and getting poached by Dallas in late December.
Obviously, none of these guys outside of Wilson is a starter or even expected to play a major role this season. Right now, most of them are on the roster bubble at best. This isn’t a surprise for most late-round picks, but it’s unfortunate that the Cowboys haven’t found more from their McCarthy-era drafts.
Before 2020, we generally came away with a least one useful player from the sixth and seventh rounds. The most notable during Jason Garrett’s tenure was CB Anthony Brown in 2016, who stuck around for seven years and started 69 games. We also got S Kavon Frazier that year, who played out his rookie deal in a backup role. 2017 brought S Xavier Woods, who started nearly every game during his four years. Special teams ace Dwayne Harris came in 2011, as did memorable offensive role players like Geoff Swaim (2015) and James Hanna (2012) at tight end and Noah Brown (2017) and Cedrick Wilson (2018) at receiver. Even guys who didn’t stick long in Dallas, like CB Terrance Mitchell (2014) and DT Sean Lissemore (2010), found traction with other teams after leaving.
If not for back and neck injuries which cut his career short, 2013 sixth-round pick DeVonte Holloman might have been the best of the bunch. He looked like a budding playmaker at linebacker when he did get on the field as a rookie, but a preseason neck injury in 2014 led to his early retirement and one of the sadder “we’ll never know” stories.
So yeah, we either used to be better at finding late-round talent or at least had better luck with them. Either way, it’d be nice to get back to it with these 2025 picks. Several are poised to play significant roles, perhaps even as rookies, if they can hit the ground running.
Take sixth-round OL Ajani Cornelius. While we’re not looking for him to challenge Tyler Guyton or Terence Steele for their starting jobs, could he make a push for swing tackle? Asim Richards has the job right now by default, and it’d be nice to more competitive there. If Cornelius can provide versatile depth at tackle and guard, that can help Dallas with its roster decisions come August.
Many are excited about seventh-round RB Phil Mafah’s potential as the thunder to Jaydon Blue’s lightning. Outside of FB Hunter Luepke, whose value as a ball carrier is still questionable, no other current option has a real power game. Mafah could be very important in certain game situations, rounding out the depth chart with his strengths.
DT Jay Toia could be Dallas’ leading nose tackle right out of the gate. Mazi Smith will still have a say in that, but Toia comes out of college with more experience and natural fitness for the role. If Smith gets recast in Matt Eberflus’ scheme, or perhaps falls out of favor completely, Toia could be asked to handle some heavy burdens early. His fellow seventh-rounder, Tommy Akingbesote, could also be competitive at what’s currently a thin DT depth chart.
Even before the last five years, there were plenty of late-round picks who we saw little to nothing from. For every good name we mentioned before there were even more like Jalen Jelks, Mike Weber, Markques White, Darius Jackson, Rico Gathers, Mark Nzeocha, Ben Gardner, Caleb McSurdy, and others who came and went. That’s the norm for sixth- and seventh-rounders, but at least with all those misses we usually had at least one hit every year or two. Hopefully, this 2025 group will help get our batting average back up.
