Will McClay, Cowboys wanted to avoid ‘pack mentality’ in NFL draft — they stuck to the plan, for better or worse

Resist the compulsive drive to grade the Cowboys draft more than a week before the class reports to The Star for practice.

Put aside your insistence that the club would be better off if it had packaged a few picks to move up in certain rounds instead of staying put to use all 11 picks.

Here’s why Dallas took the approach it did.

When the team was on the clock late in the third round, before it settled on cornerback Nahshon Wright at No. 99, Jerry Jones said there were six to seven players under discussion. The Cowboys got one of those players, linebacker Jabril Cox, early in the fourth round.

It got two more later.

“We ended up getting four of the six that we were talking about at that time [No. 99],’' the Cowboys owner declared. “I think my numbers are correct.

“Don’t let me exaggerate.’'

Will McClay, the vice president of player personnel who was sitting next to Jones, nodded. It was no exaggeration.

Debate whether the Cowboys made wise choices with their picks. That’s fair. Disagree with their plan if you want.

But there was a plan. Dallas looked at a landscape fractured by the pandemic, adjusted its scale to minimize the groupthink that tends to permeate the process and clung even more to the values assigned to their candidates.

Scouts went to games. Nothing more. They weren’t allowed on campus. There was no combine.

Area scouts played an even more vital role than they normally do in gathering information. How did the player mature as a person and athlete since his freshman year? It was up to them to provide a historical context to what others in the building were seeing on tape.

And the scouting department and coaches reviewed more tape than they did when access to the players wasn’t as limited.

“It was a huge challenge,’' McClay said. “It was just a different way of doing it, and guys bought in and did it the right way.’'

The biggest challenge of getting ready for this draft?

“It was a lack of information,’' McClay said. “Everybody was on their own board.

“Typically, scouts and organizations are all on the road together. There’s kind of a pack mentality. Here it’s who did the work, how you did the work and how you valued the players for your team.

“When you put together a board you put it together for your team, not everyone else’s team.’'

Before COVID-19 scouts were on the road constantly for the Cowboys during the college season. McClay would talk to them maybe once a week.

He spoke to them every day this past season because they were with him at The Star.

The scouts spent more time talking among themselves in the weeks and months leading up to the draft than they have before.

A consensus was built in the building that eliminated the groupthink from around the league that traditionally creeps into the evaluations.

“When you travel in a pack, everybody sees it,’' McClay said. “You hear the same things. You might think a little alike.

“Now when you’re separate, you formulate your own opinions and decide for yourself. And that’s what we were able to do more, was put our emphasis on, without the outside influences, to what you may hear or may not.

“We decided by what we saw. We didn’t let anything outside of that influence us.’'

The majority of mock drafts and top 100 boards in the media had the four players the Cowboys took on Day 2 — cornerback Kelvin Joseph (No. 44), defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa (No. 75), defensive end Chauncey Golston (No. 84) and Wright (No. 99) — rated lower than where they were picked by Dallas.

Stephen Jones said all four of those players were rated higher on their board than where they were selected. The team’s executive vice president didn’t declare the Cowboys were right and everyone else was wrong. He shared that information to illustrate how the club was true to its talent evaluation.

Other than the first round, when the Cowboys lost out on the chance to select Jaycee Horn or Patrick Surtain, moved back two spots to acquire an additional pick and still took the player they wanted in linebacker Micah Parsons, the club stayed put for a reason.

“We were confident in the guys we had and the value we put on them,’' McClay said. “That’s why you follow the board and you get the players that you like at the value you can get them.’'

The Cowboys got Wright at No. 99. The club got Cox 16 picks later. Offensive tackle Josh Ball (No. 138) and receiver Simi Fehoko (No. 179) were next to go, indicating they were part of the discussion when Wright was taken.

“I think that’s the story of the draft,’' Jerry Jones said.

Now, back to those grades…

Find more Cowboys coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.