A quarter of a century has gone by since the Dallas Cowboys played in and won a Super Bowl. Or played in and won a conference championship game. Or even won a divisional playoff game. Perspective? Dak Prescott was 2 years old the last time that happened. Cedee Lamb wasn’t born yet. Nearly half our current roster wasn’t even born yet. Tony Romo was 15. This could go on....
But I was curious about how this organization invested its roster building capital the last 25 years.
By that I mean which positions did the organization spend the most draft and trade capital to build a roster? The answer to that question reveals a big reason why this organization can’t seem to build a playoff winner.
Here are the positions this FO has spent most of its roster and draft capital on the last 25 years showing what they value most:
- WR- Surprise! The Cowboys have drafted 18 WRs in the last 25 drafts, and have also used 4 number one draft picks in trades for Joey Galloway, Roy Williams, and Amari Cooper. That makes a whopping 22 draft picks used to acquire WRs!
- DEs- The Cowboys have used 20 draft picks to acquire DEs the last 25 years.
- LBs- The next most popular position has been LB with 18 draft picks.
- CBs- Next most popular is corner backs with 13 picks.
- DTs- only 11 have been drafted over 25 years, and 3 of those were in the last 2 years.
- I’m not going to go position by position but the bottom two roster positions valued after P and K was also no surprise- S (only 7 drafted in 25 years) and QB (only 6)
If you want to know what an organization values, look at where they spend their roster capital. For the Cowboys the last 25 years, that position is WR. That says a lot about why we can’t seem to get over the playoff hump the last quarter century.
Here is a link I used to look up Cowboys draft history on Pro Football Reference, a free site with lots of good info.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/dal/draft.htm