What if Cowboys had listened to Mel Kiper and Todd McShay in the last 10 drafts?

Who would the Cowboys have drafted over the last decade if they listened to Mel Kiper and Todd McShay? We have the answers.

ESPN’s Mel Kiper and his former ESPN colleague Todd McShay are two of the biggest names in the mock draft business and have been for years. So today we ask ourselves what would have happened if the Cowboys had followed the pair’s mock draft suggestions in the first round of the last 10 drafts, and how that compares to what the Cowboys actually did – something we’ve done intermittently here on Blogging The Boys over the last decade or so.

In the mock draft world, there’s only one mock that ultimately counts: the final mock draft published before the actual draft. That doesn’t stop mock drafters from inundating us with countless mocks before that final one, but none of those carry any real weight. Which is why today we’ll only look at Kiper’s and McShay’s final mock drafts from 2014 through 2023.

Before we check out the two draft experts, here is a summary of the Cowboys’ first-round picks in the last 10 drafts, along with some metrics we’ll use to evaluate the picks.

Why the cutoff at 10 years? Simply because it’s a nice round number. At 11 years, we’d have included Travis Frederick, which would have made the Cowboys look even better. At 12 years, we’d have included Morris Claiborne, not a great look for the Cowboys. 13 years? Tyron Smith, plus-good. 14 years? Dez Bryant, double-plus-good. You get the drift.

But even with the limit at 10 years, with the Taco Charlton flop, and with no pick at all in 2019, the Cowboys put together a pretty impressive first-round draft haul: 11 first-team All Pro seasons, 21 Pro Bowl seasons, 38 out of a maximum of 50 starter seasons, 586 games started, and a strong Weighted Career Approximate Value (wAV) of 372.

Over the last 10 years, the Cowboys have had a lot of success with their first-round picks (as measured by wAV), despite whiffing on Taco Charlton. Overall, the Cowboys rank second in the NFL with their 372 wAV points behind only the Ravens (428) and ahead of the Giants (346) and, surprise, the Jaguars (343).

Here are the total wAV points for all first-round picks of the last 10 years by team:

Overall, the table establishes that the Cowboys have gotten more from their first-round picks over the last 10 years than most other teams. With that, let’s turn to Kiper and McShay to see how their picks for the Cowboys hold up in this comparison.

But before we do that, we have to recognize that this is not of course an apples-to-apples comparison. Kiper and McShay have to make assumptions about all the picks ahead of the Cowboys in their mock drafts, and then have to assign one of the remaining players to the Cowboys based on a first-round mock that is bound to be imperfect. We do not know which player each draftnik would have picked if he had been in charge of the Cowboys draft on draft night.

However, in some drafts, one or both draftniks have offered picks for the Cowboys where the players or positions selected were in the pre-draft favorites pool, so they at least partly reflect popular sentiment at the time.

Here are the players Mel Kiper had the Cowboys picking in his final mock drafts of each of the last 10 years:

The numbers at the bottom of the table don’t immediately show it, but Kiper’s picks would have been quite a good draft haul for the Cowboys. The main difference comes from 2014, where the Cowboys have Zack Martin, and Kiper picked Ryan Shazier. Exclude those two, and the Cowboys and Kiper have the exact same wAV at 270, and the other metrics are also pretty close.

For the most part, Kiper would have had the Cowboys drafting solid starters. And even if his picks are impacted by the very short career of Ryan Shazier, Kiper’s 297 total wAV points would rank this collection of picks 16th in the league.

On to McShay’s final mock picks for the Cowboys:

McShay fell for the Manziel hype in 2014, and followed that up with Shane Ray in 2015, which essentially dooms his picks from the start.

His collection of picks for the Cowboys over the last 10 years would have ranked just 24th overall in terms of wAV points.

What all the numbers above show is that the draft can be a precarious proposition, even in the first round where the best available talent is supposed to be found. Over the last 10 years, the Cowboys have been one of the most successful teams at mining this resource. And yes, this is about the first round only. Kiper and McShay do not include the other rounds in their final mock, so this is what we are comparing against.

And here, just to provide some pre-draft fun, are the best and worst first-round picks from each of the last 10 drafts and what their combined wAV would add up to:

The table here shows two things. First, even for the worst teams in the league, there is hope, as they could have drafted much worse, just as there is reason for the best teams to improve their efforts, as they are still far away from realizing the maximum potential possible. Second, seeing Johnny Manziel and Paxton Lynch on the list of the worst picks of the last decade, and knowing how close the Cowboys came to drafting each of them, should give you some idea of the great fun we’ll all have if the Cowboys fail to re-sign Dak Prescott.