They’re going to give Charbonnet a heavy dose of carries and that man runs hard. I also don’t love our DB matchups with their WRs.

those Clemson guys are just odd

The next one isn’t a guarantee.

You’re acting like a bunch of first round picks weren’t layups or supposed to be good- they should 100% get those right if they’re so smart. I’ll give you Bland and Wilson, etc. But they’ve fucked up too many picks and this year’s draft is a complete washout. Overshown was their best chance at an impact player and he blew his knee and will need to be replaced

Yeah, and I hated it as well- you can go back and read it all. I still want Rashawn Slater because I’d rather have an elite OL than an elite pass rusher.

I’m not talking glamour. I’m talking about doing smart, if not outright clever draft picks and personnel decisions that marry value and need. Not desperate “last chopper out of Saigon” energy. Which means not taking college backups in the 2nd round, or 2-down players in the first. Or overpaying guys with significant injury histories, etc.

Smart = high picks on QBs, EDGE, OL, CB, WR

Dumb = high picks on TE, LB, RB, IDL, and S

Dallas is 50-50 on which bucket they pick out of each year early. When they don’t overthink it you get a Diggs-Lamb combo early. When they do overthink, you get a Mazi-86 pu pu platter. Or you trade your first for Amari Cooper and take Trysten Hill over DK Metcalf/AJ Brown. Or you take Taco over TJ Watt, and so on.

I am not drinking kool aid. I think Will McClays history at drafting earns some level of respect. I think MMs resume as an NFL HC earns some respect that he knows the pro game and knows what he is doing.

You can ride McClay’s nuts all you want. I won’t do that. I haven’t forgotten Trysten Hill or Kelvin Joseph or Nashon Wright or a hundred other guys he took for whatever inscrutable reasons despite it being completely obvious they weren’t NFL prospects. I measure draft classes on wins and losses in the playoffs, because that’s all I care about. Pet picks and coach’s projects aren’t my cup of tea.

Mike McCarthy’s best offenses in his career had Jermichael Finley or Jared Cook at TE. He grew to love the Andrew Quarless/Richard Rodgers type bums TEs- which is where he’s at based on who this team drafts- but he was better when he had that movable chess piece type.

Your comments that “this selection was a mistake” and the fact that you commented multiple times throughout this post show that you find your analysis of the situation to be more educated than those two guys who are paid millions of dollars to pick players for Dallas, despite being recognized as some of the best in the business at doing so. That to me is a red flag when it comes to respecting your opinion.

It is. I have maintained time and time again that the draft and scouting process isn’t secret knowledge. Anyone can acquire the ability to ID good players and avoid the bad ones with enough work and a clear mind. In my case, it is simple common sense- I’m also not getting a bunch of scouts or assistant coaches up my ass about this guy they like or that guy they saw, either. I operate free of their own limitations. Of course I trust my own thinking more than a pair of guys who haven’t won a damn thing here.

In regards to college production, that isn’t always the tell of the tape. Translating college production to NFL potential is not an exact science, as you can see from the many Heisman winners who put up elite stats and struggled in the NFL. Michigan has a physical offense that doesn’t spread out and run up passing stats. Daron Bland had 2 picks in college. He has 12 in the pro’s and was a 5th round draft pick. Tom Brady was a 6th rounder out of Michigan and is the all time greatest QB to ever live. So all the stats and metrics are only a piece of the puzzle of projecting a player.

Playing DB isn’t about production. It is about traits. That is something Nashon Wright lacked when he was picked, for example. If you can’t be productive or good in college, you won’t be good in the NFL and those rare exceptions are seldom taken with a top-60 pick with the expectations that are connected to that draft status. If your argument consists of defaulting to Tom Brady, the biggest exception in NFL history, then your premise is perhaps weak.

I don’t try to say that LS is going to be an elite playmaker and pro bowler. I just see a guy who can block, is athletic enough to get open and has potential to be a contributor on a winning team. He is already doing that and will only get better. I concede that he probably won’t see a second contract here since Dallas doesn’t seem to want to spend big on even Schultz who played very well here and was a solid playmaker, and security blanket for Dak. They chose to replace that production on a rookie deal and will likely do so again in 4-5 years.

Let’s hope that they don’t take someone in a nursing home with that replacement pick.

Damn, you guys are really drinking the Kool-Aid. Sheesh.

Let me tell you as a guy who watches a lot of Big Ten football. This guy was anonymous despite playing at one of the loudest, most public-facing teams in the conference. To call him a passenger would be a hilarious understatement. He’s not good.

He has elite athletic traits and he was drafted to compete for the starting role.

This is the kind of shit that absolutely fucking pisses me off about people who defend this pick. The only fucking thing you 86ers have to defend this pick is this stupid, arbitrary RAS number. However, I’ll play along-

• Since we have clearly established that this is something y’all care about more than actual in-game performance, production, or injury histories, I’ll take this opportunity to point out that our very own Jake Ferguson had a RAS below 7 and is somehow a vastly superior player and was as a prospect AND went in the 4th round instead #58 overall. He was a better player in college despite this so-called limited athletic ability and they threw a damn Top-60 pick on a guy who was a lesser player despite all those supposed built-in athletic advantages and better players he had supporting him.

It’s almost like the actual ability to play the game matters and that being a damn athletic freak at this position doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. 86’s RAS score puts him firmly in between Rob Housler and Dan Campbell as prospects- guys who were never anything more than #2 TEs at best in their entire careers. James Hanna had a 9.9 athletic score and fuck-all in his career to show for it. He wasn’t a hugely productive player in college either and that athletic ability didn’t translate to the NFL either. Who does that remind me of…?

Tl;DR - Athletic ability isn’t the benchmark the NFL thinks it is at TE because it is a hard-ass position to play that requires more than athletic ability to be successful at, and that Luke Schoonmaker lacks. Sorry to burst your bubble. I don’t care what he was drafted for- his selection was a mistake and he was no better than 5th or a 6th round pick at best in my eyes. And yes, I was totally fine with rolling with Ferguson as the #1 for this year and waiting to see what happened. I didn’t need data point that to justify not taking an injury prone college bum with zero production at 58 overall, because his red flags were sufficiently obvious.

Preparing for that would mean having a viable young player ready to step in and replace him in the future to me. Not “fingers crossed”

Well, what I did was go sit at Texas Live and have a post-game drink/appetizer and wait it out. It was doable for me since I was travelling alone, but may not be for you.

Traffic is awful after games.

You don’t take blocking TEs who don’t help your passing offense or defense in the 2nd round. Those guys are late round picks or UDFAs for good reason- they are plentiful and low-impact for the ROI you get. Probably why Philly has 1 good receiving TE and a bunch of late round stiffs and still get more production out of those guys than Dallas does out of their 2nd round project.

He won’t stay healthy. Just a simple fact that they need to be ready for, and aren’t.

Schoonmaker pick is borderline just as bad, if not worse, than the Joseph pick. Joseph was at least a justifiable need position at the time, 86 was simply a terrible panic pick or a stupid pet pick for McCarthy/Lunda Wells. He probably won’t be a part of a murder investigation, but he won’t be much more than a James Hanna type, either. He’s certainly far below what Geoff Swaim was as a blocking TE for us. It was really a terrible, terrible pick. In the 5th, ok, whatever. In the 2nd? Absolutely not. You can’t take a guy who was a backup for the entirety of his career at Michigan until Erick All (who since transferred to Iowa), tore his ACL in 2022. He had an injury history in college, despite limited playoff time, and virtually no production to speak of. By the way, in addition to All, he also backed up McKeon and Zach Gentry while he was at Michigan. Guy was somehow drafted 100 or more picks ahead of those guys but his own damn college coaches saw him as a stopgap/backup type and the Cowboys took him in the 2nd like he was some rock solid slam dunk contributor. What a fucking joke.

They should have gone Torrence at a bare minimum (and I don’t give a shit that he had a 4 on their damn board) or whoever their BPA was instead, whether that was Drew Sanders or whoever. If that 4th round grade bothers you so much, then take someone, literally anyone else. It was clear based on last year that Ferguson was going to be a useful pro and TE could be back-burnered in the draft but they chose this guy of all the possible options. Completely and totally inexcusable.

Do Ferguson’s rookie year vs Schoonmaker’s now.

“Why you let some guys walk and don’t take 25 year old college backups to replace them with a top 60 pick” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, no matter how prescient.

LMFAO. Galaxy brain here.

No. He’s a mercenary and the year they won the Super Bowl, he missed half the year. He is an All-Timer but if you think T.O. shouldn’t be in the ROH, then neither should Deion.

Why the hell is this getting downvoted? Guy can’t celebrate the WolfPack on a post about one of their players?

No thank you to non-value first round positions. The next 1st has to be a QB, WR, OT, CB, or EDGE. You can make legit cases for each of these positions as well. If the BPA isn’t at one of those positions or isn’t considered a generational type like Brock Bowers who falls to the 20s, then trade down.

And also, no more Dan Quinn pet projects in the draft while we’re at it

I have never heard Cowboys Nation in my entire life