Brian Schottenheimer is dug in on the 2026 NFL Draft.
AUSTIN — Brian Schottenheimer has said he’s good when it comes to the football side of being a head coach.
“But I’m great with people,” the Cowboys‘ head coach once said.
So it should come as no surprise that Schottenheimer was working the room on a hot March day in Austin. Or, more specifically, the bubble where the Texas Longhorns practice indoors. Schottenheimer not only chatted with people during the Longhorns’ pro day, he also had extensive conversations with them. First, Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian. Later, Athletes First super agent David Mulugheta, a Texas alum who also represents the Cowboys’ two most recent polarizing negotiations the last two seasons: Micah Parsons and now wide receiver George Pickens.
Finally, with pro day coming to an end, Schottenheimer spoke with Texas quarterback Arch Manning and, to a lesser extent, star receiver Cam Coleman. They’re both draft prospects who could be selected early — in the 2027 NFL draft.
“He grabbed me,” Schottenheimer said jokingly. “I’m not allowed to talk to those guys.
“I couldn’t be rude.”
Joking aside, at the very least, the scene captures a change in Schottenheimer from his first offseason as a head coach.
“He’s like a budding spring flower. He’s just — you can just feel him,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said this week from the annual owners meetings in Phoenix. “You can feel him growing.”
Here are the dates for the Cowboys’ offseason activities.
May
May 1-4/May 8-11: Rookie minicamps (clubs must pick one of the two weekends)
May 13-17: NFLPA Rookie Premiere (Los Angeles)
Mid-May (TBD): 2026 NFL Schedule Release
May 20-21: Spring League Meeting (Orlando)
June
June 1-2, June 8-9, June 11: Mandatory OTAs
June 16-18: Mandatory minicamp
July
July 15: Deadline for franchise tagged players to sign multi-year extension
Late-July (TBD): Training Camp Begins
Could Tennessee cornerback Jermod McCoy be in play for the Cowboys after his Pro Day workout?
Their top first-round pick, No. 12 overall, is one they need to get right to turn around one of the worst defenses in franchise history. Using it on a player who last played in January of 2025 (and skipped the combine) seemed like a risk to big to take.
But after McCoy ran a 4.38 40-yard dash in the Tennessee Pro Day, could Dallas take a swing? The latest draft intel suggests so.
Did Jermod McCoy’s Pro Day boost his draft stock?
It’s difficult to know how much stock to put on McCoy’s Pro Day. His testing numbers were impressive, but is it enough to answer questions about the “ring rust” after so long without playing football?
It seems like the NFL thinks so. In a recent ESPN article, insider Matt Miller revealed McCoy’s stock is on the rise.
“The feedback I received from teams was that McCoy is back in the running for CB1,” Miller wrote. “There were some questions even from the morning of the workout about what drills he would participate in. But he did everything, including positional drills.”
Interested buzz surrounding the Cowboys in the first round.
Is this another case of much ado about nothing? A few weeks ago, Cowboys Nation was put into a tizzy when phenomenal beat writer Nick Harris of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram said that he had heard the Dallas Cowboys were having internal discussions about trading for Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks and Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shahir. That quickly morphed, thanks to social media’s version of telephone tag, into reports that Dallas was in talks with those teams; which wasn’t the case.
Today, a tweet circulated by a Twitter account of an Arizona Cardinals podcast puts the Cowboys in a light that the original source didn’t actually shine. The tweet claims that Todd McShay, formerly of ESPN, said the Cardinals have “had draft day trade talks with the Dallas Cowboys centered around David Bailey.” But when you do the work, that’s not what McShay said at all.
Here’s the segment in question from McShay’s podcast, The McShay Show
This is a prime pick for the Cowboys to trade back and gain some extra draft capital.
Meeting with the media at the NFL Owner’s Meetings, Dallas Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer said the team has the capital to move up or move down when it comes to the draft. Jerry Jones, Stephen Jones, and Schotty believe they are well-positioned to draft the “best player available,” but the defense could still use a few dart throws on that side of the ball.
If the Cowboys are looking to get a few more bites at the apple in the upcoming draft, it would make sense to try to find a trade partner at picks 12 or 20. Logic would say the better-graded player would be staring the Cowboys in the face with their first first-round pick, so it might be less likely they move off that pick unless they are blown away by a team.
Pick 20 always felt like a great spot for a team, either in the back part of the first round or at the start of the second, to move up to Dallas’ second pick in the first round and get their guy. Daniel Jeremiah, lead draft analyst for NFL Network, sent out an interesting draft nugget on X (formerly Twitter) yesterday.
The Arizona Cardinals released their former franchise quarterback, Kyler Murray, so them swimming in the Ty Simpson waters to potentially be their next signal-caller makes sense. The Los Angeles Rams could be in play if they wanted to move up one spot with the Cowboys at pick 13, similar to the 2021 pick swap with the Eagles. However, the Rams could just wait it out and land Simpson there without giving up draft capital.
So let’s build out a trade scenario based on Jeremiah’s intel between the Cowboys and Cardinals. (I’ll be using this trade value chart to show the pick compensation in the trade)
Dallas is officially on the clock at pick 20, and their phone rings at The Star. Caller ID shows it’s Monty Ossenfort, the general manager of the Cardinals. They’ve heard rumblings that the Pittsburgh Steelers want to take Ty Simpson with their first-round pick after Dallas, so they want to trade up in front of them and make sure they get their guy. Here’s the offered compensation.