Frank SchwabSenior writerFri, April 24, 2026 at 3:50 AM UTC·10 min readJust about everyone knows how long it has been since the Dallas Cowboys have been to the NFC championship game. It’s brought up all the time.
What doesn’t get mentioned enough, as people fire off jokes about team owner Jerry Jones, is that the Cowboys have hit some absolute home runs in the NFL Draft. And they did it again Thursday night.
The Cowboys played the first night of the draft better than anyone. It helped to have two first-round picks, as a result of the debatable decision to trade Micah Parsons, but they maximized those selections. It included taking a prospect who might end up being the best player in the draft.
The Cowboys saw Ohio State safety Caleb Downs slipping, so they made a low-cost trade to move up one spot to No. 11 and take him. The Cowboys traded picks 177 and 180 overall to the Miami Dolphins. They’d make that up later.
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With Downs, the Cowboys got a player many (including Yahoo Sports’ Charles McDonald) thought was the best prospect in the draft. He is a versatile safety who can impact the game from all over the field. It’s hard to see him being a bust. Here’s what McDonald said before the draft about Downs, who could turn into the next Kyle Hamilton, a great safety who slipped because safeties are still undervalued in the NFL:
Downs has been arguably the best defensive back in college football since his freshman year at Alabama. He won’t be the first pick in the draft because safeties tend to slide on draft day, but he has all the skills and smarts to immediately be one of the better safeties in the league from Day 1 with upside to be an elite, premier player in the league.
To get Downs without having to give up any valuable draft capital was an absolute steal. We could look back on that as the best pick of this draft, especially in terms of value.
And if that’s all the Cowboys did, it would have been a good night. Dallas wasn’t done. The Cowboys traded down three spots with the Eagles from No. 20 to No. 23, collecting picks 114 and 137 while shipping off a seventh-rounder (218th overall). The Cowboys moved up to No. 11 in the first round and somehow, by the end of the round, ended up with better draft capital than they started with. That’s how you work a draft.
With the 23rd pick, the Cowboys drafted UCF defensive end Malachi Lawrence, a big and explosive edge rusher who can help right away.
The Cowboys have done well to fix their defense this offseason, starting with firing coordinator Matt Eberflus and hiring Eagles passing game coordinator and defensive backs coach Christian Parker to replace him. They have added defensive ends Rashan Gary and Lawrence, safeties Jalen Thompson and Downs, and get a full season from defensive tackle Quinnen Williams. The Cowboys’ offense will be very good as long as George Pickens is engaged on the franchise tag, and certainly that’s a concern. But if that works itself out and the defensive additions click, the Cowboys will be dangerous.
The Cowboys haven’t had ultimate success in a long, long time. Cowboys haters will remind you often that the 1995 season was the last time they reached the conference championship round. But they usually do pretty well in the draft, and they nailed it Thursday night.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from the first round of the NFL Draft:
Ty Simpson: The Los Angeles Rams’ side of the Simpson pick will be debated. They could have taken one of a number of players who would help them now as they chase a Super Bowl. Simpson had just one season of being a starter in college and some questions about his level as a prospect.
But it’s hard to argue that Simpson fell into the right situation.
Going to a team like the Jets or Cardinals, who never get quarterback right and would have jammed Simpson into the starting lineup too early, would have likely led to a terrible result. The Rams can let Simpson sit and learn. In a perfect world, Simpson won’t play a meaningful snap for the Rams all season. And he’s a rare first-round quarterback who needs to sit and learn, after just 15 college starts. That’s a good match.
Organizations fail quarterbacks way more often than the other way around, the saying goes. Many of teams that could have picked Simpson might have put him in a bad spot. The Rams’ choice will be debated, but the braintrust of Les Snead and Sean McVay deserve the benefit of the doubt. And if Simpson is going to turn into a top-end NFL starter, he fell into the right spot to make that happen.
Aaron Glenn: The New York Jets coach enters this season on the hot seat. But he’ll have some help to get off it.
Glenn had to be pleased when the Jets chose Texas Tech pass rusher David Bailey with the second overall pick, selecting him over Ohio State edge/linebacker Arvell Reese. Reese might have a higher upside, but Bailey helps more right now. That’s good for Glenn.
Then the Jets got two offensive pieces later in the round. They took Oregon tight end Kenyon Sadiq with the 16th pick and then traded back up into the first round to take Indiana receiver Omar Cooper Jr. with the 29th pick when Cooper fell a bit. The offense needed to add some firepower and got it.