{"id":867697,"date":"2026-04-16T13:10:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T13:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/867697\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T13:10:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T13:10:43","slug":"espn-analyst-reveals-dallas-cowboys-perfect-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/867697\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN analyst reveals Dallas Cowboys’ perfect NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESPN analyst reveals Dallas Cowboys’ perfect NFL Draft<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The good news for the Dallas Cowboys<\/a> is that they have two first-round picks in the 2026 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n

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The tougher reality is that they’ve got a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

The Cowboys need, as ESPN’s Ben Solak<\/a> puts it: “Defense, defense, defense.”<\/p>\n

In a new article on Thursday, Solak broke down how the Cowboys can “ace” their draft.<\/p>\n

Overall, they’ve got picks 12, 20, 92, 112, 152, 177, 180 and 218. That’s a lot of chances to pick defense.<\/p>\n

“Let’s start in the trenches and work backward,” Solak writes. “They need an additional pass rusher badly, as\u00a0Rashan Gary\u00a0and\u00a0Donovan Ezeiruaku\u00a0are useful players but not every-down dominators. Could the Cowboys package pick Nos. 12 and 20 to move up into the top five for\u00a0Arvell Reese\u00a0(Ohio State) or\u00a0David Bailey\u00a0(Texas Tech)? Or would they instead play the patient game, either to wait for\u00a0Rueben Bain Jr.\u00a0(Miami) or go another direction in\u00a0Caleb Downs\u00a0(Ohio State safety) or\u00a0Sonny Styles\u00a0(Ohio State linebacker)?”<\/p>\n

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MORE:\u00a0How the NFL Draft impacts Eagles-Patriots A.J. Brown trade rumors<\/a><\/p>\n

Solak goes on to suggest that linebackers like CJ Allen and Jacob Rodriguez would be quality targets if the Cowboys don’t trade up — but that they might be best acquired by trading down from No. 20 into the second round somewhere.<\/p>\n

He then explains that a nickel corner or a boundary corner could both help, and would determine what happens with DaRon Bland.<\/p>\n

“Because the Cowboys have two top-20 picks then no selection until 92, how they address their needs is highly conditional on the players and trades available,” Solak writes. “They should be an active trading team, and whether it be up or down depends on how the board falls.”<\/p>\n

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That might be the most fascinating part of all of this. The Cowboys have plenty of incentive to trade as the draft goes along, which could create some headline-grabbing scenarios and plenty of potential for analysis as the action goes along.<\/p>\n

More NFL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN analyst reveals Dallas Cowboys’ perfect NFL Draft originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4955,8694,16499,613,257,3430,285,7,216,6,15,1446,3996,2239,1119],"class_list":{"0":"post-867697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-a-j-brown","10":"tag-ben-solak","11":"tag-caleb-downs","12":"tag-dallas-cowboys","13":"tag-daron-bland","14":"tag-donovan-ezeiruaku","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-miami","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-nfl-draft","19":"tag-ohio-state","20":"tag-rashan-gary","21":"tag-sonny-styles","22":"tag-the-cowboys"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116414558389778064","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867697","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=867697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}