What if Cowboys had listened to Mel Kiper, Daniel Jeremiah in the last 6 drafts?

ESPN’s Mel Kiper and NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah are two of the biggest names in the mock draft business and have been for years. So today we ask ourselves what would have happened if the Cowboys had followed the pair’s mock draft suggestions in the first round of the last six drafts, and how that compares to what the Cowboys actually did – something we’ve done intermittently here on Blogging The Boys over the last decade or so.

In the mock draft world, there’s only one mock that ultimately counts: the final mock draft published before the actual draft. That doesn’t stop mock drafters from creating countless mocks before that final one, but most of those are entertainment for a long offseason. Which is why today we’ll only look at Kiper’s and Jeremiah’s final mock drafts from 2020 through 2025.

Why the cutoff at six years? Mainly because that marks the transition from the Garrett years (2010-2019) to the McCarthy/Shottenheimer years (2020-2025).

So before we compare the Cowboys with Kiper and Jeremiah, we’ll first look at the Garrett years to establish a sort of baseline of how we’ll approach the comparisons. In the table below you’ll find an overview of all 32 teams and their first-round picks from 2010-2019 and the 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.

Overall, the table shows that the Cowboys have drafted well during the Garrett era, ranking eighth overall in wAV. Of course, the numbers would be better without Taco Charlton and Morris Claiborne, but every team whiffs on a first-rounder at some point. And yes, had they not traded away their 2019 first-rounder, they’d probably also look better. In fact, if you were to calculate the wAV per draft pick, the Cowboys would average 54.4 points per pick and rank third in the NFL behind only the Rams (61.8) and Panthers (59.1).

With that, let’s turn to Kiper and Jeremiah to see how their picks for the Cowboys hold up in this comparison.

But before we do that, we have to recognize that this is not of course an apples-to-apples comparison. Kiper and Jeremiah have to make assumptions about all the picks ahead of the Cowboys in their mock drafts, and then have to assign one of the remaining players to the Cowboys based on a first-round mock that is bound to be imperfect. We do not know which player each draftnik would have picked if he had been in charge of the Cowboys draft on draft night, and going back and following their draft-night commentary to figure out who they suggested when the Cowboys were on the clock is just not feasible.

However, in some drafts, one or both draftniks have offered picks for the Cowboys where the players or positions selected were in the pre-draft favorites pool, so they at least partly reflect popular sentiment at the time.

Before we check out the two draft experts, here is a summary of the Cowboys’ first-round picks in the last six drafts, along with some metrics we’ll use to evaluate the picks.

The Cowboys have an obvious bust in Mazi Smith, but balance that with two, maybe three, home runs in Ceedee Lamb, Micah Parsons, and Tyler Smith.

Here are the players Mel Kiper had the Cowboys picking in his final mock drafts of each of the last six years:

For the most part, Kiper would have had the Cowboys drafting solid starters, avoided the Mazi Smith pick, and even got the Tyler Smith and Tyler Guyton picks right. However, he can’t match the Lamb/Parsons picks in 20/21. In any case, Kiper’s 156 total wAV points would rank this collection of picks eighth overall in the league, so that’s a good showing for the oft-maligned Kiper.

On to Jeremiah’s final mock picks for the Cowboys.

Jeremiah’s collection of picks for the Cowboys over the last six years falls far short of both the Cowboys’ actual haul and Kiper’s mock projection. The picks above would have ranked just 26th overall in terms of wAV points. In Jeremiah’s defense, his last last three picks have a combined wAV of 30, just two short of Kiper and four more than the Cowboys.

That’s not necessarily and indictment of Jeremiah’s mock drafting skills, perhaps he was focusing more on needs than the Cowboys and Kiper did. And keep in mind that in many ways, the Cowboys lucked into both Lamb and Parsons.

We’ll add an extra look here as another point of reference.

For each Cowboys first-round pick, we’ll look at the top player still available at the time the Cowboys were on the clock that would have been the best player available (BPA) according to the consensus big board from NFLMockdraftdatabase.com, who curate their consensus big board by compiling hundreds of big boards, first-round mocks, and team-based mocks into one giant big board.

The consensus board comes in just two points below Kiper, and would also be good for eighth overall in the league. The big difference to the Cowboys haul is that the consensus board had Rashawn Slater ranked above Micah Parsons.

What all the numbers above show is that the draft can be a precarious proposition, even in the first round where the best available talent is supposed to be found. Over the last six years, the Cowboys have been pretty good at mining this resource. And yes, this is about the first round only. Kiper and Jeremiah do not include the other rounds in their final mock, so this is what we are comparing against.

Here’s how the Cowboys’ draft record over the last six years compares to the rest of the league in terms of wAV.

This table, to my surprise, shows that the Cowboys have drafted quite well during the McCarthy/Schottenheimer era, ranking fifth overall in wAV, ahead of where they ranked in the Garrett era. And if we again calculate the wAV per draft pick, the Cowboys would average 32.2 points points per pick and rank first in the NFL ahead of the Texans (28.8), Chargers (28.0), and Broncos (27.5).

The Cowboys have two first-round picks in this year’s draft. If they stay true to their board and avoid chasing needs, they may well get some generational talent again. But the last time the Cowboys had two firsts, they drafted Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins in 2008, so that should also give Cowboys fans pause. Yes, that was a long time ago, but Jones and Jenkins combined for a miserly 54 wAV over their career. That’s less than Dez Bryant (61), Tyron Smith (91), Travis Frederick (60), Zack Martin (103), Zeke Elliott (68), and even Lamb (65) and Parsons (68), who are still in the middle of their NFL careers.

But three years before that the Cowboys also had two firsts in the 2005 NFL draft and landed DeMarcus Ware (100) and Marcus Spears (36). Such are the vagaries of the NFL draft. Let’s hope for more of 2005 and less of 2008.