The Dallas Cowboys are in the middle of a historic NFC Championship appearance drought. Their divisional rivals seem like the best of the NFC after this past season, with the hated Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl and the Washington Commanders cementing themselves among the NFC’s elite with an appearance in the NFC Championship game. The Cowboys, meanwhile, find themselves picking in the top half of the draft. To begin to close the gap between themselves and their divisional opponents, they Cowboys will have to hit a homerun with this draft class, finding starting caliber players at RB, WR, DT, and CB. As the draft nears, little nuggets and tidbits begin to leak about what certain teams are thinking. Using that trickle of inside information slowly being fed to the public by a small army of NFL insiders, we can begin to put together the puzzle of what the Cowboys will do on the first couple days of the draft.
ROUND 1
It’s not written in stone, but the pick here is beginning to feel inevitable. By the end of Thursday night, Texas WR Matthew Golden will in all likelihood be a Dallas Cowboy. That’s coming from a variety of sources, including NFL Network Cowboys insider Jane Slater. Golden brings a combination of speed, route running, and burst the Cowboys desperately need on the outside. The only way I don’t see him ending up on the Cowboys is if Arizona WR Tetairoa McMillan somehow falls to 12 or if the Cowboys receive a tempting trade back offer. Otherwise, this seems like a pretty safe name to pencil in.
ROUND 2
General consensus seems to be that the Cowboys will be looking to address the running back position with their second round pick. However, several Cowboys insiders including Todd Archer have warned that the Cowboys may opt to go another direction with the selection, perhaps focusing instead on help in the trenches or possibly a corner. If they do take a running back in the second round, it will have to be because the team loves the player. Jane Slater reported there is one such running back Cowboys fans should be keeping an eye on, Bhayshul Tuten out of Virginia Tech. Tuten has elite speed, great power and strong tackle breaking ability. There have been critiques about both his ball security and his vision, but the physical traits are there for Tuten to be a dominant playmaker in the NFL. Slater cautioned this would likely be a later second round pick or an early day three pick, hinting that the Cowboys may look to trade back from their current slot in the second round and possibly recoup the fourth round pick they traded this past season for WR Jonathan Mingo. Tuten would give the Cowboys an explosive playmaker in the backfield. While the Cowboys likely have other backs such as TreVeyon Henderson out of Ohio State higher on their board than Tuten, it is very unlikely they last until the Cowboys second round pick. Barring the fall of one of those other running backs or a prospect at another position really catching the Cowboys eye, Tuten seems like the pick with the highest chance of happening here.
ROUND 3
This pick is where the puzzle gets a little harder to solve. There haven’t been any notable tidbits about who the Cowboys could target here. The best guess we can make, then, comes from our own power of deduction. Earlier we listed four main positions of need for the Cowboys – WR, RB, CB, and DT. If the draft plays out in the first two rounds the way we expect, WR and RB will have already been addressed. That leaves CB and DT to be filled. Thankfully, the 2025 draft class is incredibly deep at DT. The Cowboys should be able to find a capable player later in the draft, freeing them up to target CB with this pick. Who that corner is, is anyone’s guess. So the name I’ll suggest is Nohl Williams from the California Golden Bears. Tall, lengthy, and physical, he fits the Eberflus prototype for a starting CB. My only doubt about Williams in the third honestly is if he lasts until the Cowboys are on the clock. Otherwise, I think he is a perfect fit for what the Cowboys want on defense, and would be ecstatic with the team if they manage to land him. Again, while there are no real nuggets of reporting to suggest who this pick could be, we can use the information we have about what the Cowboys will do beforehand and what kind of players they like to make an educated guess. So as of the writing of this, I believe Nohl Williams is the most likely Cowboys selection in the third round.
Wrap Up
To recap, the informed guesses I’m making for the Cowboys draft picks are as follows:
- Matthew Golden – WR, Texas
- Bhayshul Tuten – RB, Virginia Tech (with a possible trade down)
- Nohl Williams – CB, California Golden Bears
If Dallas walks away from the first three rounds with these players, I think a very good argument could be made that they successfully addressed three of the four positions they needed to bolster to regain any semblance of competitiveness in the NFC East, while setting themselves up to address the fourth position later on. Only time will tell what happens in the draft, and this one seemingly promises to be a crazy one, but as of right now, I feel confident this is the best guess we can make about what the Cowboys will do over the next couple days.
