News: BTB: 2014 NFL Draft: Dallas Cowboys UDFA Tracker

[NewsBot]

As the draft winds down, the next stage of talent acquisition gets into high gear, as teams start to chase down the remaining players they had draftable grades on.

The Cowboys had a league-high five undrafted free agents on their roster starting games in 2013: Tony Romo, Miles Austin, Barry Church, Ronald Leary and Jeff Heath all went undrafted and took a sometimes circuitous route to the NFL. Here's a tweet (that we like to show around at this time of the year) from Andrew Brandt, who recounts an experience he had while working for the Packers in 2003:

After '03 Draft, scout yelled out to room "Anyone want to sign this QB Tony Romo? He's from Wisconsin, wants to sign here." Silence.

— Andrew Brandt (@adbrandt) April 27, 2013​

The Cowboys ended up signing Romo, and while that was a highlight UDFA signing, it certainly wasn't the only one for the Cowboys, who have excelled at finding undrafted free agents, and have added Dan Bailey, Phillip Tanner, Chris Jones, Ben Bass, Cole Beasley, Cam Lawrence, Leary, and Heath over the last three years.

And one of the reasons for the Cowboys success with UDFAs is that Chris Hall, director of college scouting for the Cowboys and the guy with the long hair on the bottom right of the warroom camera over the last three days, doesn’t allow scouts to "come off grade". If they have a grade on a guy before the draft, they have to stick with it after the draft. Which means that after the draft, they try and sign every guy still left on their draft board, as they feel those players effectively amount to extra draft picks.

And that's why we also make a point of tracking these UDFA signings. Full disclaimer here before you go any further, tracking and confirming actual signings of undrafted free agents can be tricky. The sources of these transactions come from all over, Twitter included, and sometimes they are not 100% reliable. So, with that in mind, below is a list of players who have been reported to have signed with your Dallas Cowboys. We'll update the list as new names are reported and other names are removed from the list.

Rank Player POS School Source
331​

Cody Madell

P​

Alabama Instagram

369​

Dustin Vaughan

QB​

West Texas A&M NEPatriotsDraft.com

372​

Chris Whaley*

DT​

Texas Twitter

383​

Brian Clarke

OG​

Bloomsburg Twitter

496​

Dontavis Sapp

LB​

Tennessee Twitter

786​

Ryan Smith

S​

Auburn Twitter

799​

Keith Smith

ILB​

San Jose State Twitter

836​

Ronald Patrick

OG​

South Carolina Twitter

850​

Jerrod Pughsley

OT​

Akron Twitter

968​

Marvin Robinson

S​

Ferris State Twitter​

'Rank' is per the CBSSports big board
(*) denotes players who had a pre-draft visit with the Cowboys​

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