Stephen Jones downplays trade-up talk: Cowboys looking for ‘best player on our board’

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made news recently when he hinted that trading up in the draft might be part of the team’s plan for augmenting the roster’s overall talent level with an elite college star.

But Stephen Jones sounded less amenable to that notion than his father.

“You do have a feeling in terms of the historic values that it takes to move up certain spots,” explained the Cowboys executive vice president on 105.3 The Fan during a Tuesday interview. “Certainly, in the first round in particular, to move up, you’re going to be giving up a really good football player. You’re going to be going one player for two, so it’s got to be worth it. There are certainly players that we’re very interested in as you move up, but we also know that this draft is probably deeper than it’s been in years.”

Jones especially likes the depth at wide receiver and defensive line in this year’s class; both are considered positions that Dallas needs to address after saying goodbye to Amari Cooper and Randy Gregory, respectively.

But when one door closes, another one opens. And those departures could present huge opportunities for current players to step up; he cited CeeDee Lamb and Michael Gallup from the receiving corps and Dorance Armstrong at the edge rusher spot.

Then, of course, there’s the unexpected. Jones pointed out that at this time last year, the club didn’t think they’d be drafting linebacker Micah Parsons.

And at this time last week, the team likely thought they were fairly well set at cornerback, counting on second-year man Kelvin Joseph to figure prominently into the mix.

That was before he was discovered to be connected to the mid-March shooting death of a 20-year-old outside a Dallas bar. Joseph has not been charged in the case, but investigations are still pending. And suddenly, the Cowboys find themselves wondering if they might have to rearrange their board to go shopping for a new corner.

“We are always into taking the best player on our board,” Jones said when asked if the Joseph situation will change the team’s draft strategy. “Not unlike we did with CeeDee, we took the best player there when we weren’t necessarily needing a wide receiver.”

That particular roll of the dice has worked out. Not all of them do. Jones admits that grading players this time of year is as much about things like personality and character as it is speed and strength.

“It’s huge. You go into that with every player,” he said. “You certainly give grades on their character risk, and we go in-depth. I would say at least 25% of the report is based on the guy’s character: football character, personal character, on and off the field, all the things that go into the makeup of what a football player’s going to be like and what you project him to be like when he gets into the NFL. It’s certainly a big part of the evaluation process.”

With the draft just nine days away, there are plenty of questions surrounding the 2022 Cowboys.

If ownership has the answers, they’re not letting on.

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