As Dallas Cowboys fans, the inability of the team to get anywhere in the playoffs for the last three decades hangs like a dark cloud over our collective fandom. And for many of us, this often diminishes or even invalidates some of the positive things the Cowboys do or have done.
Dak an MVP candidate?
No es posible, because playoffs. Jerry Jones wins NFL Executive of the Year in 2014? Ridonculous, because Super Bowl drought. Three consecutive 12-5 seasons? All hat, no cattle without postseason success.
So, as we embark on our Consensus Board exercise today, it’s important to understand that the Cowboys draft very well overall. You may not like every pick, you may quibble with some decisions, and yes, the draft success has not translated into the postseason success we’re all looking for, but the data here is very clear.
Over the last decade, the Cowboys rank No. 2 overall in terms of Weighted Approximate Value (wAV) for the players they drafted. wAV comes courtesy of
Pro-Football-Reference.com and is their attempt to put a single number on the seasonal value of a player at any position from any year. Here’s the full list of all teams over the last decade.
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First-round AV points by team, 2016-2025
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But what about Taco Charlton, Mazi Smith, or Trysten Hill, the inquiring mind wants to know? No team has a 100% hit rate, every team misses on draft picks. The Cowboys have done well
despite those misses.
The Cowboys have also been fortunate in that they’ve had more draft picks than the average team, in part because they (like Baltimore) have done very well in collecting compensatory draft picks. Their 87 picks rank ninth in the league.
And the Cowboys have done well despite a relative lack of draft capital which comes in part from being a Top 10 team in regular season wins and in part from trading away a first-round pick for Amari Cooper. They rank just 27th in draft capital available over the last decade.
If we look beyond just Total wAV and divide it by the number of picks and draft capital, the Cowboys are still a Top 5 team. Here’s a breakdown of the Top 5 teams for each metric.
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| Total wAV | wAV/No. of Picks | wAV/Draft Capital | |
| | | |
| | | |
| DAL | #2 | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| DAL | #5 | DAL | #5 |
Any way you look at it, the Cowboys have drafted well. But that doesn’t mean we can just “trust the process”, sit back, and relax. Far from it.
Case in point: The Cowboys’ draft success swings wildly by round. We saw that the Cowboys ranked N0. 2 overall by wAV, but here’s how they rank by round:
- 1st round: 12th
- 2nd round: 23rd
- 3rd round: 5th
- 4th-7th round: 6th
That second-round dip does not look good, but before we rush to judgement, let’s look at how the Top 5 teams by total wAV rank across draft.
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wAV by round, 2016-2025
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The first thing that catches the eye is that four out of the Top 5 teams have one round in which they rank in the bottom third of the league. So the Cowboys’ second-round dip is not unique, very few teams are consistent from round to round. And Baltimore, kings of the first round, are beggars in the second round.
The Cowboys are pretty consistent in rounds 3-7, but for a team ranked second overall in wAV, their first-round rank (12th) is also a little surprising. This is largely explained by the relative lack of first-round picks (trading away a first for Amari Cooper is a negative here) and low relative draft capital. Here’s what the Top 5 teams look like when we divide Total wAV by the number of picks and draft capital.
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By accounting for the number of picks and the available draft capital, the Cowboys rank sixth and fourth respectively in the first round, but they still have that dip in the second round. And while that dip is not unique to the Cowboys, the reasons for that dip may be unique to the Cowboys.
My hypothesis going in, and one that we’ve looked at repeatedly here on
BloggingTheBoys, is that some of the issues come from the Cowboys deviating from a Consensus Big Board too much. So I went and compiled all the Cowboys round 1-3 draft picks over the last 10 drafts (2016-2025), looked at each pick’s wAV, and compared that to the average wAV of the Best 5 Players left on the Consensus Big Board at the time of the pick. Here are two examples of what that looks like:
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2022 – Consensus Best 5 Players available at #24
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Consensus Rank
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Jermaine Johnson
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George Karlaftis
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In 2022, Tyler Smith was ranked 35th on the Consensus Big Board (via MockDraftDatabase.com). He was picked at #24 overall, and at the time of the pick, the Consensus Best 5 Players were the five players listed above. Had the Cowboys followed the consensus board, one of those five guys likely would have been the pick. Those Best 5 Players combined for an average wAV of 18.8, which means that by picking Tyler Smith (33 wAV), the Cowboys created a
wAV Surplus of +14.2 points versus that basket of players.
The next example is Trevon Diggs. At the time he was drafted, three players ranked above him on the Consensus Board. Add the two players directly below Diggs on the Consensus Board and you’ve got the Best 5 Players averaging 22.6 wAV points, giving Diggs a
wAV Surplus of +10.4 points.
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2022 – Consensus Best 5 Players available at #24
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Consensus Rank
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Kristian Fulton
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Ezra Cleveland
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Two small caveats: I removed all quarterbacks from the calculation; their wAV can be quite wonky and can drive wAV Surplus significantly in both directions. Also, I tweaked Leighton Vander Esch’s number to show only the AV until 2023 for him and his Best 5 players.
Once I had the surplus wAV for each player, I added additional metrics that I would use to analyze their impact on driving surplus wAV:
- Age when drafted
- Relative Athletic Score (RAS) as a marker for traits/athleticism
- Known pre-draft injury flags/character concerns
- Power Five School
- Level of reach/steal vs Consensus Big Board
That left me with the following unwieldy table:
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|
|
| 2.8 |
| 0.0 |
| 34.4 |
| -26.0 |
| 10.8 |
| 14.0 |
| 2.4 |
| 11.0 |
| -7.2 |
| -12.4 |
| 25.8 |
| 23.6 |
| 10.4 |
| 4.2 |
| 41.8 |
| -15.2 |
| 24.2 |
| -0.2 |
| -9.4 |
| 14.2 |
| -4.8 |
| -6.0 |
| -2.2 |
| -5.0 |
| 2.0 |
| -0.6 |
| -3.2 |
| 6.0 |
| 1.8 |
| 2.6 |
| 0.6 |
| -1.6 |
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Consensus Rank
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Top 5 Consensus wAV
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Ezekiel Elliott
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Maliek Collins
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Chidobe Awuzie
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Leighton Vander Esch*
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Connor Williams
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Michael Gallup
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Connor McGovern
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Neville Gallimore
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Osa Odighizuwa
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Chauncey Golston
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Nahshon Wright
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Luke Schoonmaker
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DeMarvion Overshown
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Marshawn Kneeland
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Donovan Ezeiruaku
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I understand that beyond “some cells are green, some are red” it’s very hard to read anything from this table, which is why we’ll break down the data set here into more digestible and hopefully meaningful insights.
If you want to be successful in the draft, you’ll want to maximize your surplus wAV, meaning more green cells and less red cells in the table above. One way to measure what is driving surplus wAV is to analyze the correlation between surplus wAV and any one of the metric above.
The value we get from a correlation analysis defines the strength of the relationship between two variables: r = 0 means there is no correlation. r = 1 means there is a perfect positive correlation. r = -1 means there is a perfect negative correlation.
1. Consensus Board: The Round Correlation
If we look separately at each round, the correlation between Consensus Rank and wAV Surplus is quite dramatic:
- Round 1 Correlation: r=−0.37
- Round 2 Correlation: r=−0.70
- Round 3 Correlation: r=-0.28
What this means, at least for the Cowboys, is that in Round 1, adhering to the consensus board is important (r=−0.37). In Round 2, adhering to the board is mandatory (r=−0.70), and in Round 3 it’s best ignored
(r=-0.28). Importantly, these correlations are for the Consensus Bord only. If we look at where each player was actually picked (as a proxy for the Cowboys’ Big Board), the numbers change quite considerably:
- Cowboys Round 1 Correlation: r=−0.46
- Cowboys Round 2 Correlation: r=+0.03
- Cowboys Round 3 Correlation: r=-0.43
The Cowboys are actually outperforming the Consensus Board in rounds 1 & 3, but in round 2, their picks have close to zero correlation with surplus wAV. For the most part, they would have done much better in the second round by following the consensus draft board than by following whatever decision-making process they use in the second round.
2. The Cowboys’ ability to “beat the board” depends on the tier of talent they are picking in.
The Elite Floor: When picking early in the first round (up until around pick 24), the Cowboys show a surplus wAV on
every single pick. Micah Parsons (+41.8 wAV Surplus), CeeDee Lamb (+23.6), and Tyler Smith (+14.2) are the obvious standouts, but Ezekiel Elliott, Leighton Vander Esch, and Tyler Booker all have a positive surplus. However, as they move into the late first round, the Cowboys’ ability to identify better players than the consensus board drops significantly.
The Second Tier Struggle: When picking late in the first and all the way to the end of the second round, the Cowboys often seem to reach for specific traits (RAS) and end up with neutral or negative value. Mazi Smith (-9 reach versus consensus board), Sam Williams (-33 reach), Trysten Hill (-48 reach), and Luke Schoonmaker (-42 reach) were all reaches with elite athletic traits (RAS > 9.5) and all delivered negative surplus value. Internally, the Cowboys likely justified these picks with the players’ elite athletic traits, but the data shows this to be a high-risk and net negative drafting strategy when it ignores the consensus board rank, and the Cowboys have repeatedly run into this “Trait Trap”.
The single strongest driver of value in Round 2 is Reach/Steal (r=0.78), or in simpler terms: Players picked later than consensus rank (“Steal”) combined for a wAV Surplus of 29.6 points, while players picked higher than their consensus rank (“Reach”) combined for a wAV of -37.4 points. That’s quite a swing.
Reaching for a player in the second round is the primary cause of value collapse for the Cowboys, while getting a steal is the primary generator of surplus.
The Third Round Rebound: In the third round, the Consensus Board is no longer a reliable predictor of success for Dallas. Round 3 is where the Cowboys’ internal scouting shines and the Trait Trap is less relevant. The Cowboys have found massive surplus value by reaching for players they specifically liked who were ignored by the consensus. Connor McGovern (reached by 40 spots) resulted in a +25.8 wAV Surplus; Osa Odighizuwa (reached by 34 spots) resulted in +24.2; Maliek Collins (reached by 12 spots) delivered a massive +34.4 surplus. In contrast, taking a “consensus steal” in Round 3 has not reliably led to overperformance.
The reason for this is because third-round performance in this model is driven by
Athleticism (RAS) (r=0.42),
Age (r=−0.64), and
Power Five status (r=0.66) much more than by consensus board ranking (-0.28) or even Reach/Steal (-0.24). The Cowboys win in Round 3 by identifying elite athletes from major programs who are still young.
In short, by the third round, the Consensus Big Board loses its warning power. This is the round where the Cowboys’ internal conviction picks actually pay off. While the consensus is great at identifying Round 1 and 2 talent, the Cowboys’ scouts have proven more adept at finding Round 3 contributors than the consensus board.
3. Young, athletic, and undervalued? Come to Dallas!
The following table summarizes the correlation of key variables with
wAV Surplus:
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Overall Correlation
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Age when drafted
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Negative. Younger players consistently provide higher long-term surplus, especially in Round 3 (−0.64).
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Positive. Overall a moderate driver, but becomes critical in Round 3 (+0.49), where athleticism separates hits from misses.
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Injury/Character Flag
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Negative. Flags are “value traps.” They are most damaging in Round 2 (−0.39), where high-risk picks often fail to return value.
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Positive. Offers a stability floor. Power 5 players provide more reliable surplus value than non-Power 5 players in the mid-rounds.
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Positive. In this dataset, a higher “Steal” value (picking after consensus) correlates with higher surplus, particularly in Round 2 (+0.78).
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4. RAS is not a “Reach License”
We saw above that RAS can be a driver of surplus wAV – in the right circumstances.
But there is a very specific subset of picks, Elite Athletes (RAS >9.5) picked between 25 and 64, that – depending on your view – show a fascinating and/or worrying “Jekyll and Hyde” dynamic in the Cowboys’ drafting strategy: There is a near-perfect correlation (+0.98) between Reach/Steal and wAV Surplus within this group.
- When the Cowboys wait for an athlete to fall to them (e.g., Connor Williams, Chidobe Awuzie), they generate massive surplus value.
- When the Cowboys chase an athlete by “reaching” ahead of the consensus board (e.g., Trysten Hill, Luke Schoonmaker), the elite athleticism almost never overcomes the technical or developmental deficiencies that caused the consensus board to rank them lower.
The data suggests the Cowboys often fall in love with athletic traits in the late first and second round and ignore the consensus warning. Specifically in the second round for the Cowboys, elite athleticism is a multiplier, not a substitute. It multiplies the value of a good football player (consensus high rank) into a potential star, but it cannot turn a project (consensus low rank/reach) into a surplus producer quickly enough to justify the draft capital.
In the 25–64 range, the Cowboys are at their best when they are patient. The data suggests they must resist the urge to use draft capital in that range on internal favorites who are ranked low by the consensus. In this range, the Cowboys should use the consensus as a boundary or sanity check to improve the quality of their own board.
5. Player clusters
The data also gives you six different player clusters, or rather: five clusters and Taco Charlton. I’m adding these because they essentially tell the same story of the Cowboys draft performance over the first three rounds, but in a simpler, more linear narrative
1. Blue Chip / Top 25 Assets (+87.4)
High-round, high-consensus players picked in the Top 25. In this range, the Cowboys board and the consensus board pretty much converge, and the Cowboys have consistently drafted surplus players in this range.
- Micah Parsons (Pick 12) — Overperformed (+41.8)
- CeeDee Lamb (Pick 17) — Overperformed (+23.6)
- Tyler Smith (Pick 24) — Overperformed (+14.2)
- Ezekiel Elliott (Pick 4) — Overperformed (+2.8)
- Tyler Booker (Pick 12) — Overperformed (+2.6)
- Leighton Vander Esch (Pick 19) — Overperformed (+2.4)
2. The Athletic Reaches (-20.0)
Pick 24-64 players drafted earlier than or at consensus (Reach) where elite athleticism (RAS >9.5) was probably the key driver of the selection.
- Trysten Hill (RAS: 9.49 / Non-P5) — Underperformed (-12.4)
- Mazi Smith (RAS: 9.61) — Underperformed (-2.2)
- Sam Williams (RAS: 9.72) — Underperformed (-4.8)
- Tyler Guyton (RAS: 9.73) — Underperformed (-0.6)
3. The Consensus Value Steals (+47.4)
Second or third round players who fell past their consensus rank and could be considered steals. This cluster has a very high success rate for surplus value, even with two underperformers in this cluster.
- Connor Williams (Round 2) — Overperformed (+11.0)
- Trevon Diggs (Round 2) — Overperformed (+10.4)
- Chidobe Awuzie (Round 2) — Overperformed (+10.8)
- Jourdan Lewis (Round 3) — Overperformed (+14.0)
- Neville Gallimore (Round 3) — Overperformed (+4.2)
- Cooper Beebe (Round 3) — Overperformed (+6.0)
- Donovan Ezeiruaku (Round 2) — Overperformed (+0.6)
- Jalen Tolbert (Round 3 / Non-P5) — Underperformed (-6.0)
- Marshawn Kneeland (Round 2 / Non-P5) — Underperformed (-3.2)
4. Red Flag Gambles (-21.8)
Players marked with an injury or character flag. This group has a 100% failure rate versus wAV surplus.
- Kelvin Joseph (Reach/Red Flag) — Underperformed (-15.2)
- Luke Schoonmaker (Reach/Medical) — Underperformed (-5.0)
- Jaylon Smith (Reach/Medical) — Underperformed (0.0)
- Shavon Revel (Steal/Medical/Non-P5) — Underperformed (-1.6)
5. The Late Reaches (+72.2)
Players reached for in Round 3 that the Cowboys identified correctly despite consensus being lower. Strong player cluster with a high surplus value, even if not every reach here is an automatic hit.
- Maliek Collins (Reach) — Overperformed (+34.4)
- Connor McGovern (Reach) — Overperformed (+25.8)
- Osa Odighizuwa (Reach) — Overperformed (+24.2)
- DeMarvion Overshown (Reach) — Overperformed (+2.8)
- Marist Liufau (Reach) — Overperformed (+1.8)
- Nahshon Wright (Reach) — Underperformed (-9.4)
- Michael Gallup (Reach / Non-P5) — Underperformed (-7.2)
- Chauncey Golston (Reach) — Underperformed (-0.2)
6. Others (-26.0)
Taco Charlton doesn’t fit any of the player clusters. He wasn’t athletic enough to join the Athletic Reach group, he’s not really a value steal, no flags, etc. In many ways, Taco Charlton was a unicorn, but not the type of unicorn you want to draft.
- Taco Charlton (RAS: 7.64) — Underperformed (-26.0)
6. Correlation Matrix
The table below summarizes the different correlations we’ve been looking at and splits them by round.
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| -0.40 | |
| +0.42 | |
| -0.44 | |
| +0.40 | +0.48 |
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Correlation Matrix
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Age when Drafted
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Injury/Character Flag
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Power Five Status
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Reach/Steal Value
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Consensus Rank
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The data presented here paints a very clear overall picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the Cowboys draft process. And, yes, there are limitations to this approach, starting with sample size overall, but also with trying to infer meaning from ever smaller clusters, and also with the broad sweeping generalizations made about the Cowboys draft process.
But at the end of the day, my question to you is this: Does what you’ve read here match what your gut has been telling you?
