The Dallas Cowboys are a good football team with a talented roster, but as we have learned over the last several years, good has not been good enough. And with the two teams representing the NFC in the conference championship game both coming from their division, things aren’t getting any easier for them. The Cowboys must get better.

Recently, we discussed the idea that the Cowboys should consider spending a little more to retain their talent. Whether that means extending George Pickens and paying big money to two wide receivers. or extending DaRon Bland and paying big money to two cornerbacks, they must be willing to spend more money to retain good players.

Most are aware that the Philadelphia Eagles are big spenders. Whether it’s from trades or free agency, they go out and get talent. But it’s not just the Eagles who are being aggressive. The Washington Commanders are putting their foot on the gas as well. In fact, of their 10 most expensive players on the roster, seven of them have come from trades or free agent signings.

That’s okay. The Cowboys are draft savants. We know they’re not going to hold a candle to other teams when it comes to spending money on outside players, so as long as they dominate the draft, they’ll have some good talent.

But are they dominating the draft amongst the teams in their division? That is a question of great importance because if Dallas starts to falter in that department, it could mean bad things for an organization that puts so much weight on that part of roster building.

When you look at the most recent drafts, all the Cowboys’ NFC East foes have added some quality talent. We can talk about the financial wizardry of Howie Roseman all we want, but landing two quality starting corners in Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean with back-to-back picks last year was pretty snazzy. The Commanders selected last year’s offensive rookie of the year in Jayden Daniels. Even the New York Giants are making good picks as they have landed Malik Nabers, Kayvon Thibodeaux, and Evan Neal in recent drafts.

But even with the improvement in drafting of their divisional opponents, the Cowboys have still out-drafted their division rivals over the past five seasons. When you look at the average approximate value per year (courtesy of Pro Football Reference) for each player drafted over the last five seasons (2020-2024), the Cowboys have the highest value despite having far less draft capital. This is a testament to the great job Will McClay and company do.

Some nuggets of information about the players these teams have drafted during this span.

Pro Bowlers

Cowboys = 7
Eagles = 4
Commanders = 2
Giants = 2

The Cowboys have drafted almost the same number of Pro Bowlers as the rest of the division combined. And if you don’t put much weight into Pro Bowlers, how about first-team All-Pros?

All-Pros

Cowboys = 4
Giants = 1
Eagles = 0
Commanders = 0

The Cowboys dominate this stat. The Giants are the only other team that has drafted an All-Pro, Xavier McKinney, who ironically didn’t become an All-Pro until last year when he played for the Green Bay Packers. But this is about drafting good players, not coaching them up, so the Giants get credit for McKinney. All of this to say what most of us already knew. The Cowboys are better at drafting than the rest of the NFC East. But are those other teams starting to catch up?

Using that same AV metric, the Cowboys actually finished last in their division last season. The Cowboys, who were knocking it out of the park thanks to picks like CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons, and Tyler Smith, have shown a decline over the past two seasons. Should we be worried?

There are some things in the graph we want to talk about. Let’s run through what’s going on with each team.

Starting with the Eagles, they benefited in 2020 from the Jalen Hurts pick. Quarterbacks rack up the AV points. They also got some good scores from DeVonta Smith and Jalen Carter, but outside of those guys, there aren’t a lot of players contributing to their scores. We’ll get to that in a minute.

The Commanders got a huge boost from Jayden Daniels, whose score of 20 is higher than any player drafted from these teams over the last five years. But before last year, they had been consistently unimpressive.

Things are looking to take a turn for the better in New York, but they have benefited from some premium draft capital. The Giants have four players selected in the top seven of the draft over this span. How could they not come away with something decent?

So, that’s the lowdown of what’s been happening, but what does all this mean going forward?

The Eagles benefited immensely from flipping Carson Wentz into what ended up being draft picks that helped them land A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Jalen Carter, and Cooper DeJean. If there is anything Roseman deserves an enormous amount of credit for, it’s taking the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints to the woodshed to acquire all those picks.

But those Wentz residuals are now over. The Eagles don’t have that premium draft capital to play with anymore. That’s not good news for them in terms of drafting because they don’t do well without premium picks. During our five-year window, the Eagles have only drafted two players outside the first two rounds who have an average AV of three or better. And they barely qualify as those players are Nakobe Dean and Kenneth Gainwell. In contrast, the Cowboys have nine players outside the first two rounds with an AV score of three or better.

While the Giants earn great draft capital because of their sucktitude, they aren’t doing much with it. They have finished with six or fewer wins in seven of the last eight seasons. If there is a team that we shouldn’t fear having good draft capital, it’s the Giants.

The Commanders are the ones to keep a close eye on. New general manager Adam Peters is coming off a great season, both in the draft and free agency. In the past, Washington has been notoriously not good at either of those things, so if they suddenly start improving, that could be a problem.

When you lay everything on the table, the Cowboys are still doing good work in the draft. If history is an indicator, their AV scores should rise this year thanks to better draft capital. And outside of the change in management in Washington, there is no reason to think the Cowboys won’t continue to hold an advantage. But that might not be enough. The Cowboys must show a willingness to step outside the draft to produce quality players. The Eagles are super aggressive, the Commanders have turned a corner, and the Giants, well, they’re still the Giants, but the Cowboys must figure out a way to step it up.