Kaiir Elam can become a sneaky good add for the Cowboys

The Cowboys really love former first-round picks.

The Cowboys continue to add former first-round picks to their roster. A day after signing Solomon Thomas and Payton Turner, they traded for Bills cornerback Kaiir Elam. Dallas gave up a fifth-round pick this year, as well as a seventh in next year’s draft, for Elam and a 2025 sixth-rounder.

Elam comes from a football family. The Florida native’s father is Abram Elam, who played eight seasons in the NFL, including two different stints for the Cowboys in 2006 and 2011. He is also the nephew to Matt Elam, a safety who was drafted in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft by the Ravens.

Kaiir Elam was hyped early on as the best in his lineage, though. Ranked the 74th best high school player in the nation, and the ninth best player in the talent-rich Florida, Elam chose to stay close to home and play for the Gators.

Elam saw playing time right away, snagging three picks as a true freshman and being named to the SEC All-Freshman list. His second season saw continued dominance, earning a second team All-SEC recognition. That significantly raised the expectations going into 2021, but Elam took a bit of a step back in production.

Still, the Bills felt strongly enough about him to select Elam with the 23rd pick in the draft. Prior to the pick, Dane Brugler of The Athletic offered this report on Elam:

Elam checks boxes for size, strength, physicality and athleticism, mixing it up with receivers and crowding the catch point downfield. He will surrender spacing on stop and comeback routes, which can be masked by coaching and scheme, but slight stiffness in his mirror and transitions will always be there.

Overall, Elam needs to tidy up his timing and processing issues, but he is a good-sized athlete with natural cover talent and NFL-ready intangibles. With his physicality for press-man, he compares favorably to Tampa Bay’s Carlton Davis when he was coming out of Auburn.

Brugler also ranked Elam as the fifth-best cornerback in the draft – ironically, one spot behind now-former Cowboy Andrew Booth Jr. – and the 45th best overall player. The comparison to Carlton Davis evoked a very clear sense of Elam’s ceiling, which was also reflected with NFL Network’s Lance Zierlein comparing him to Bears cornerback, and former Matt Eberflus pupil, Jaylon Johnson:

Of course, Buffalo just traded Elam away for a couple of late-round draft picks, so his time there clearly hasn’t lived up to the draft night expectations. Still, Elam has put good football on tape over his three seasons in Buffalo.

As a rookie, Elam’s play was inconsistent, which is about what you expect from a rookie cornerback. He finished the year with a 71.7% completion rate allowed, giving up two touchdowns but also picking off three passes. His passer rating allowed of 83.6 was only slightly behind veteran starters Tre’Davious White and Dane Jackson and was sixth-best among rookie corners.

Elam’s growth was stunted going into his second season when he suffered an injury that landed him on the injured reserve for much of the year. In total, Elam played just three games in 2023 after coming in with expectations to make the next jump in production.

That led to this past year, where Elam found himself trying to make up for lost time. Ultimately, he fell behind others on the depth chart, and he made just six starts throughout the season; three of those came in the final weeks of the season, due to injuries ahead of him on the depth chart, but Elam was a healthy scratch in four of the Bills’ last seven regular season games.

Statistically speaking, Elam is coming off his worst season as a pro. That explains why his cost was so low. But Elam still possesses exciting traits with elite size and length. Most Bills beat writers characterized Elam as a player who had all the ability but just lacked the consistency to become a trusted starter.

In Dallas, he’ll work alongside Eberflus and a coaching staff with a strong track record of developing defensive backs. Given Elam’s physical abilities and play style, he seems to be a perfect fit in this defense moving forward.

Elam has almost exclusively been an outside cornerback, so his addition could signal the Cowboys’ plan to move DaRon Bland back into the slot after the loss of Jourdan Lewis. Even if Elam doesn’t end up working his way into the starting lineup, though, he offers starting-caliber athleticism and has experience – with 34 career games played and 89 targets – that is rare to find these days.

Like the Cowboys’ other moves thus far this offseason, Elam represents a very low risk move with a potentially high reward.