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.
ARI receives:
- Pick 20 (1st-round pick/850 points)
- Pick 152 (5th-round pick/30.6 points)
DAL receives:
- Pick No. 34 (2nd round-pick/560 point value)
- Pick No. 65 (3rd round-pick/265 point value)
- 2027 2nd-round pick
The trade compensation stems from the Baltimore Ravens’ move to trade up for Lamar Jackson in the 2018 draft. The Ravens moved up to the final pick in the first round from the Philadelphia Eagles, giving up their second- and fourth-round picks in that draft, along with a future second-round pick in 2019. The Cardinals are moving up to a higher draft position than Pick No. 32, so they will need to pay more than the Ravens did. 2018’s price is not the same as 2026’s.
Asking for a 2027 second-round pick shouldn’t be too much for Arizona to part with. Dallas throws in the higher of their 2026 fifth-round picks back to Arizona, so it looks like they didn’t get completely steamrolled in this trade. There will always be a quarterback tax in these trades, where the team trading up gives up a little more than expected. If Simpson hits as their next “face of the franchise,” no one will remember the second-round pick they had to give up.
Plus, desperate times call for desperate measures. Ossenfort is the last man standing from the old regime. That means there’s no one left to point the finger at if Arizona continues to crumble. Drafting a young quarterback on a rookie contract cools his seat a little bit and takes some pressure off him to win right away.
Pairing a rookie quarterback with a new head coach, and Sean McVay disciple, Mike LaFleur, is an easy sell to ownership considering fans need some hope to feel good about the direction of their team. The Cowboys might have to turn off their war room cam for this one, because they would be doing backflips if this trade happened. Dallas would own four Top 100 picks and get another Top 100 pick in the 2027 draft.
If they want to start thinking about the future at the quarterback position themselves, having two second-round picks would give them the capital to trade up in the first round and select one of the supposedly “can’t miss” prospects at the position coming out in the 2027 class. If they are 7-2 nearing the trade deadline with Dak Prescott playing at an MVP level, then maybe they do revisit the Maxx Crosby trade and ship two second-round picks off for him or another defensive playmaker instead. The options for Dallas would be endless.
So if you were Jerry Jones, would you make this trade? How do you feel about the trade compensation? Would you be okay with moving back in the first round all the way to pick 34 with the fear of losing some of the better linebacker prospects in CJ Allen and Jacob Rodriguez? Comment below on how you feel about this trade hypothetical.
