Cowboys VP of player personnel Will McClay when asked about needing last year’s draft class (Mazi Smith, Luke Schoonmaker, DeMarvion Overshown, Viliami Fehoko, etc.) to make a Year 2 jump:
“Those guys have to make a jump for us to succeed. They’ve been in the system for a year. Now, we’ve got a little different defensive scheme, but they’ve been around here. They’ve been a part of the process.
“When you have a good team and we’ve won 36 games in three years, we haven’t won the big one, but that’s highly productive to win that many games. To do that, you have to have a number of good players.
So when you draft players, those players don’t always immediately step in and fill that role. But when you’re drafting a player, you’re drafting them for the four to five years of their contract, and you’re trying to get a return on investment.
“We need those guys to take a jump now based on the cap and the way things are. And they just have to step up. At the end of the day, that’s exactly what it is. We’ll continue to try and fill holes and add players as we go through this process. But guys just have to step up. It’s their time now.
“We’ve lost a number of really quality vets that have been on our roster, that have been with us for a while. These young guys need to step up. There’s no other way about it.”
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