The real cause of a lot of our problems - bad drafts

[cml750]

I think if you compare the NFL as a whole we're probably in the middle when it comes to drafting. Some are better. Pittsburg Seattle Carolina.. Bad coaching is the real problem.

 

[KJJ]

One guy? I didn't realize that Romo, Murray, and Bryant were one guy. This is quite possibly the dumbest post I have ever read. Congratulations.

According to many here we didn't need Murray because our OL was suppose to make the combination of average backs we had just as productive. Did you forget all the posts last summer claiming the McFadden and Randle combined would at least come close if not surpass what Murray produced in 2014? As for Dez it took 5 seasons with him before we ever broke 500 and made the playoffs. The success of the Cowboys depends on Romo being on the field. We have an offense that's geared towards him it's Romo friendly. Minus a solid lead back and with a defense loaded with holes everything revolves around Romo. We were 3-1 with him and 1-11 without him last season.

 

[MikeT22]

There's two truths in this thread. We have had subpar drafting after round 1 most of the last 15+ years. There's an exception here and there but overall we haven't really hit big on many second day players and hardly no day 3 guys.
Also, our coaching is average at best. Jerry once even mentioned Garrett and training wheels. Why you hire a HC knowing that he is training on the job is beyond me. But leave it to Jerry to put his comfort ahead of winning. Heaven forbid we have a strong HC who may overshadow 'ol Jer again.

 

[Wolfpack]

There is some Jerry Jones style drafting of the high risk players that fall. That's always a mixed bag of success.

More important however, is the long standing trend of drafting players on measurables. They may or may not plug into your system but I think little thought is given to what system Dallas really plays or wants. It's more a function of scouts finding pure talent and the somewhat inflexible coaching staff having to make that work vs the other way around.

Lots of hope in the front office strategy as usual vs an actual plan.

 

[skinsscalper]

Why would you include Murray? Dallas could have retained him or replaced him. Free agency is a fact of life in the NFL. Don't point to someone else's willingness to pony up cash as a "loss" for your team.

Romo and Dez are a completely different story.

The OP mentioned Murray. I was just stating that an offensive unit that is missing that many factors from a previous (successful) season is going to feel the pain when ALL of them are gone.

 

[Echo9]

No, we're not interested in the "rest of the league". If we want to get to the playoffs and beyond, we need to be far greater than the "rest of the league".

The rest of the league sit at home watching the Super Bowl.

You are missing the point entirely. The original argument is that we are drafting poorly. The statements to back this up were that we a bad in the laters round. What defines bad? It would be bad if we are markedly worse than other teams. If every team in the league is also bad in the later rounds, then the conclusion is that finding a long term starter in those later rounds is difficult and rare occurrence. Thinking that achieving that rare occurrence should be the norm is not realisitic thinking. However, IF the rest of the league (or even 10 teams) are consistently better over a multi year span, then yes, our mid to late round drafting is a problem. Either way, what the rest of the league does matters.

 

[Echo9]

Agreed. Anything less than drafting at least one more rookie pro bowler in each round than every other team does is a failure.

Might wan't to add this to the end of your post: </sarcasm>

ya know... just in case.

 

[Techsass]

You want to see some REALLY bad drafts go pre-2010.
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/dal/draft.htm

I do agree though that we haven't done too well in the latter rounds. Now I realize there's usually only a few scattered diamonds in the rough & it's mainly backup types, but we haven't even gotten many keepers in round 3.

 

[SilverStarCowboy]

Is true 'Leadership' Coaching, GM or Players?

Well if you watch the truly consistent, New England, Seattle and Pittsburgh are the example. What makes them successful beyond GM and Players, in the NFL the Head Coach creates the culture - unless he's not really trusted end of sentence

 

[LocimusPrime]

Here's a chart that shows how long draft picks last with the team. It's broken down by round. Doesn't look promising



how to do a screen shot

 

[jobberone]

It's not bad drafting: I don't think we're worse at finding talent with our picks than other teams are. I'd need to see some data on that one.

It is, at least partially, bad draft management: we give picks away too easily. The best way to get good players in the draft is to get lots of players in the draft.

Since 2010 (6 drafts), Dallas has picked 28 guys in the first 5 rounds of the draft, and 45 guys overall. The Patriots have picked 35 in the first 5 rounds, and 55 overall. Yes, we did pick a dozen guys in the nightmare draft of 2009, all in the 3rd-7th rounds. Of course, that same year, the Patriots also picked 12 guys...including four 2nd-rounders.

We simply don't value draft picks highly enough.

Good post and we need to do better accumulating picks. No one seems to do as well as NE does getting multiple picks in the top rounds.

 

[jobberone]

I did a draft study last year to get an idea what the value of draft picks is. I looked at a number of criteria but the simplest one was just seeing how many games each pick played.I used the draft years 2002-2005. My standard for a successful pick was at least 80 games played. Enough time had gone by that it's unlikely anyone who hadn't met the standard would. (could be wrong)

The results of picks that met the standard in each round:
1st round 73.4%
2nd round 57.8%
3rd round 41.7%
4th round 36.2%
5th round 22.9%
6th round 17.3%
7th round 11.4%

Nice. They have done this with Pro Bowls, snaps, and snaps as starters. My bottom line is good teams get between 1.5 and 1.9 starters R3-7/draft year. We are closer to 0.5 lately.

When you start looking at quality, snaps, depth and quantity it gets more difficult.

Our main problem is overall talent looking at the entire roster. Until you get the players it will be difficult to make any substantive statements about coaching quality. Personally I'd put Coach in the 50-60th percentile.

 

[casmith07]

Whether people like it or not, Jerry has the highest % of Pro Bowlers drafted of any GM in the league. And that doesn't count the UDFA's where I think Dallas is likely the best in the league at hitting big-time on UDFA's (Romo, Beasley, Miles Austin, etc).

Where we have struggled is in the 2nd round. It used to be that 2nd round picks were the best picks to have because their cost was far less than 1st round picks and therefore the potential rewards of the pick (many 2nd rounders turn into great players) greatly outweighed the risk (cost of the pick). For some reason we can never quite hit the 2nd round pick. If we do, they are oft-injured. Part of the issue is that we've gone after TE in the 2nd round despite having Witten. And we're not exactly the best organization at finding TE's. Fasano is an NFL quality JAG, Bennett was a coach-killer and Escobar is a representation of the problem with TE's these days.
The other issue I see is that we don't know how to draft DB's. We have looked for cover corners that can't tackle and don't play zone well in a league where you have to play zone (and play man as well). Opposing offenses know when we are playing man or zone and the QB knows where to go with the ball and it becomes a question if the opposing offense can make the play instead of getting the opposing offense to make a mistake in recognizing the defense and capitalizing on that defense.

And we are really poor at safety. I think we still like the idea of the traditional SS role where the SS plays in the box and is responsible for stuffing the run, blitzing occasionally and playing short and intermediate coverage. That really doesn't work these days unless you have a great FS like an Earl Thomas that can do so many things that the SS can play a limited role. Most teams have the FS and SS playing basically the same roles and there's a lot to be asked from them which is why it's so important to have good safeties. We have failed to find the safety talent and we have failed to find a quality safety in FA and we have failed to find an assistant coach that can coach these safeties. And it's not by coincidence that most of your great safeties are going to be found in the 2nd round which is where the team struggles in the draft.

As far as Crawford goes, when healthy he's far better than Lawrence. He was really a dynamic player in 2014. It didn't show up in the stat sheet, but watching him o All-22 you couldn't deny his ability to consistently disrupt plays and opposing teams couldn't prevent him from doing that. This past year basically played on 1 arm and was still better than average. Lawrence came along nicely in the 2nd half of this past season and showed some real promise as a run defender in the first half, but I don't see that disruptive, lead dog type of force.

The main issue for Crawford, besides health, is that his tackling is horrendous. It's another issue with this team...we can't stay healthy and we don't tackle well.

Such is life.




YR

Tackling across the NFL is piss poor.

 

[Califan007]

You are missing the point entirely. The original argument is that we are drafting poorly. The statements to back this up were that we a bad in the laters round. What defines bad? It would be bad if we are markedly worse than other teams. If every team in the league is also bad in the later rounds, then the conclusion is that finding a long term starter in those later rounds is difficult and rare occurrence. Thinking that achieving that rare occurrence should be the norm is not realisitic thinking. However, IF the rest of the league (or even 10 teams) are consistently better over a multi year span, then yes, our mid to late round drafting is a problem. Either way, what the rest of the league does matters.

I can help with at least the Commanders lol...

Drafted players who became starters since 2010:

3rd rd
Morgan Moses (RT)
Matt Jones (RB - will be starter in 2016)
Jordan Reed (TE)

4th rd
Kirk Cousins (QB)
Bashaud Breeland (DB - he's the guy who basically shut down Dez in the first 2014 game)
Jamison Crowder (WR - supplanted Andre Roberts as the slot receiver, 2nd only to Amari Cooper last year for most receptions by a rookie WR, Ranked #1 in catch percentage by a rookie *min 20 receptions*)
Perry Riley (ILB)
Keenan Robinson (ILB - he's the guy who injured Romo's back when sacking him in that same first game of 2014; signed with the Giants this offseason, could be starting ILB for them)

5th rd
Niles Paul (TE - was actually named the starter last offseason--yes, ahead of Jordan Reed--but had a season-ending injury in preseason)

6th rd
Alfred Morris (RB - Signed to the Cowboys now, which still pisses me off lol)

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Tackling across the NFL is piss poor.

Ours is on the bottom of the list of teams in the league. That's what stood out when watching the playoffs...every team tackled better than the Cowboys do. And pretty much every team tackled far better than the Cowboys do. The Skins were the only team that I didn't see as a far better tackling team.




YR

 

[conner01]

A better question is how many contributors. And if we're talking scouting, you've got to consider UDFA and other sources.

Starting in 2010, we got Lissemore. Bill Nagy and Dwayne Harris in 2011. Wilber and Hanna in 2012. Holloman in 2013. Hitchens in 2014.

Udfas Beasley, Church, Collins, Leary, Jones, Bailey, and Heath all contributed last year.

Parnell off a practice squad.

Seems a decent take at spots where you have low success rates league-wide

The problem is some fans have no clue what is good drafting. They just assume every other team is hitting on every pick which is very far from true

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

So let me get this straight: A team that lost it's top QB, WR ,and RB from the previous season struggled to win games? You don't say. I hate to break it to you, but there hasn't been a team in the history of the league that has drafted well enough to thrive under those circumstances.

With that being said, the Cowboys do need to hit on players more often in later rounds but McClay has only been front running two drafts. We may want to give some of these kids a little time before we start calling the drafting of them complete failures, eh?

I wasn't expecting the team to thrive when they lost top offensive players...but it exposed a lot on the team. depth at WR...bad....Williams isn't a #2 that's for sure and romo, dez hide a lot of his weaknesses. behind Williams, we had nothing....how many WRs have we drafted in the past 5 years....

If not for a comeback season by McFadden. RB looked ugly.

the DL sucked even with Hardy. the LB were average at best DB field was weak. weak weak.

our defense was over rated despite its seemingly improvements. teams came in and didn't have a sophisticated game plan.

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

One guy? I didn't realize that Romo, Murray, and Bryant were one guy. This is quite possibly the dumbest post I have ever read. Congratulations.

some how other teams suffer major injuries and they win games and come close to playoffs. we were one bad Commanders play away from the top pick.....

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

As it is with all of these threads, what's the basis for concluding we're bad at drafting again?

quality of play when those draft picks got a chance to play. there is no denying that room, murray and dez did a lot for this team last year. yes, we lost all three, but we looked really bad up and down the team. its not about starts....its about quality starts....4-12? from 11-5? that's embarrassing.

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

Less than average in what way?

4-12? their production has been abysmal....how can you deny that?