The Dallas Cowboys 2025 season is officially over. After dropping their Week 18 game to the New York Giants 34-17, the Cowboys head into the offseason with a lot of work to be done. While the offense was as good as we have seen it in recent years, the Dallas defense gave up more than 500 points in the 2025 season and ranked near the bottom of the league in every advanced metric tracked by RBSDM.com.<\/p>\n
With free agency just a few months away, we will bring you a first-round mock draft today as the Cowboys hope to improve their defense before the 2026 kicks off.<\/p>\n
Rueben Bain Jr. EDGE, Miami<\/p>\n
After dropping Sunday\u2019s game to the Giants, the Cowboys got help from the Atlanta Falcons to move them up in the draft order a few spots. By doing so, the Cowboys have a real shot at adding an impact defender just outside the top ten.<\/p>\n
Rueben Bain Jr. was mocked rather consistently in the top five early on in the season, but concerns about his arm length and the resurgence of Texas Tech\u2019s David Bailey has seen Bain fall down the board a bit. Despite his lack of arm length, Bain checks almost every box off the edge with great size, explosiveness, and bend for a bigger edge rusher.<\/p>\n
Bain\u2019s aggression and demeanor on the defensive side of the ball is much needed in Dallas, and his ability to impact the pocket off the edge and at times from the interior would be a fantastic fit in Dallas, regardless of whoever the defensive coordinator may be.<\/p>\n
(1:20 & 6:177 for 1:28 & 2:60)<\/p>\n
Note: Trade value is a little uneven depending on the chart you use, but the mock draft simulator at PFF accepted it so we went with it. <\/p>\n
The Cowboys only posses two picks in the first three rounds of the 2026 NFL draft. With so much work to be done on the defensive side of the ball, do not be surprised if the Cowboys aggressively look to trade back in the first round.<\/p>\n
As bad as the pass rusher and secondary was this year, the linebacker play may have been worse, which is saying a lot. Needing help at pretty much every position on defense expect for defensive tackle puts the Cowboys in a really tough spot with limited draft selections, but it is almost a must that the Cowboys address the defensive end and linebacker room as early as possible in this draft.<\/p>\n
Georgia\u2019s CJ Allen is a big, fast, and explosive downhill thumper that plays with reliable eyes and instincts in the run game. Allen is still just 20 years old, and would be an excellent addition to the front seven to play behind their new look defensive tackle room. Despite trades for Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark, the Cowboys struggled to stop the run at an alarming rate for most of the season due to the struggles in the second-level at linebacker. Allen would immediately improve the ability to stop the run and his effectiveness as a blitzer is an added bonus at the backend of the first round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Cowboys 2025 season is officially over. After dropping their Week 18 game to the New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[91200,437,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-663169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-dallas-cowboy-mock-drafts","9":"tag-dallas-cowboys-draft","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115858201593670050","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}