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As NFL preps for virtual draft, Gil Brandt remembers how the Cowboys were the founding fathers of digital innovation

Back in the 1960s, there were no war rooms set up in team facilities, just war tables.

The NFL draft will have team owners sitting at home with video screens, two cellphones, a land-line and maybe an IT guy in their presence.

Coaches, whether it’s the head coach or the assistants, will also be home, waiting for their turn to speak on a video software program about a potential draft selection.

Yes, the world has changed for the NFL when it comes to this year’s three-day draft, which begins Thursday.

With NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell expected to make draft announcements from the basement of his upstate New York home, Gil Brandt was reminded of how the draft used to be. Draft days would occur a day after the last regular-season games in a hotel ballroom.

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Brandt, 87, the former Cowboys executive who was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame last year, remembers when NFL teams made picks sitting at tables next to each other.

Back in the 1960s, there were no war rooms set up in team facilities, just war tables.

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Brandt conducted his first draft after the 1960 season preparing the Cowboys for Year 1 of their existence. The Cowboys joined other teams at the Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia and watched then-Commissioner Pete Rozelle write the names of draft picks on a chalkboard after teams handed him a card. And the draft that season was held the day after the final regular-season game. No scouting combine, no Senior Bowl, no East-West Shrine Game, no pro days, just evaluate from what you’ve seen during the season.

And if you think the NFL is advanced with technology this week when it comes to the draft, the Cowboys were the founding fathers of it.

“We devised a computer-driven evaluation system based on numbers that were inputted,” Brandt said. “IT was a system that took years to develop. It changed every year with success and failure.”

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Each player was evaluated on five traits: character, quickness/agility, mental awareness, strengths/explosion and competitiveness.

It was those computer evaluations that helped the Cowboys make decisions regarding trades. In today’s world, NFL teams make phone calls to each other when discussing draft day trades.

In the 1960s, there was less secrecy. Weeb Ewbank, who was head coach of the Baltimore Colts through 1962, approached a Cowboys scout with a trade offer. Instead of making a phone call, he just got up from his table and walked to the Cowboys’ table.

Back then it didn’t seem like a big deal, and some teams used it to trick others. When Brandt was an executive for the Los Angeles Rams for the 1956 draft, he left a note lying around that the team was interested in wide receiver Dick Donlin.

“We had no intention of drafting him,” Brandt said. “He was a basketball player, a sprinter, body beautiful. But he couldn’t play football.”

A scout from the Colts saw the note and was interested. The Colts, fearing the Rams might select him, drafted Donlin in the second round.

The Rams would draft linebacker Hugh Pitts of TCU. All was not lost for the Colts; they drafted Lenny Moore in the first round that year, and he would have a Hall of Fame career.

As for Donlin, he never played in a NFL game and years later encountered Brandt in Dallas.

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“Dick Halt was selling us Super Bowl rings to [former Cowboys team president Tex Schramm], and he came to our office,” Brandt said. “I told Dick to meet us where we practiced over on Forest Lane to try and finalize everything. He asked could he bring his boss. I said sure.”

When Halt arrived, he brought his boss, Donlin, that same player Brandt tricked the Colts into drafting.

“I’m laughing so hard, and Tex has no idea why,” Brandt said.

This NFL draft will be different from the way it was in the 1950s and 1960s, but if there is one common theme, it’s the computers being used. That’s never changed. At least from the Cowboys’ perspective.

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“Technology has made this world greater,” Brandt said. “It’s amazing what you can do. We did this 50 years ago. We understood how to use it to give us grades on any player we wanted.”

On Thursday night while team executives will sit in their living rooms or home offices picking players, Brandt will watch smiling, knowing he did it a different way, too.

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