2016 Cowboys’ Draft Class Was Best Ever For Rookie Approximate Value

We just used Approximate Value, a metric developed by Pro Football Reference, to create a comparison between Ezekiel Elliott and Jalen Ramsey from the 2016 draft. Now we are going to use that same statistical metric to evaluate the Cowboys drafts all the way back to 1961.

Here’s the table. It’s a very long one, but it’s easiest to see the point this way. Thanks to Pro Football Reference’s player season finder query for these results.

(To read the table, rank, player, year and age are easy to understand. Draft is the round and the overall pick number. For 1966 and before, some players were drafted by the NFL and the AFL, thus the two numbers. Games, games started, Pro Bowl, All-Pro, and approximate value round out the chart.)

Only players with an AV of 4 were included to keep this manageable. And this is only for the player’s rookie season. So Hall of Famer Randy White does not appear, because he played out of position as a rookie and had an AV of 2. Even in his second year it was a 4. Then he was moved to defensive tackle, scored a 9, and was in double digits for the next eight years. Roger Staubach started only one game as a rookie, and put up a 2 AV. He didn’t hit a consistent stride until his fifth season. Troy Aikman was 0-11 as a rookie, and scored a 2 AV.

With that in mind, the 2016 draft was off-the-charts good.

• It was the only Cowboys’ draft with more than two rookies scoring double digit AVs.
• It had the two highest scoring rookies of all time, scoring 16 AV. Only Tony Dorsett also scored a 16 AV his rookie year. Mel Renfro is next at 15 AV, followed by Zack Martin at 14 AV, Herschel Walker at 12 AV, Calvin Hill and Bob Hayes at 11 AV, Everson Walls and Roy Williams at 10 AV.
• The cumulative total of the four players who ranked in 2016 - Elliott, Prescott, Maliek Collins and Anthony Brown - was 43. The next highest was the 1962 draft, with eight players scoring 39 AV, then 1977 with 32 AV, 1970 with 31 AV, 1973 with 28 AV, 1961 with 26 AV, 2005 with 25 AV, 2002 with 24 AV, 1975 with 23 AV, and 1987 and 2011 with 20 AV.
• Maliek Collins, who scored a 7 AV as a rookie, is tied with eight others for 22nd all-time.

The 2016 draft also has three red-shirt players in Jaylon Smith, Charles Tapper, and Rico Gathers. Kavon Frazier played very little.

The claim here is not that 2016 was the best Cowboys’ draft of all time, though it has the potential to be if Prescott, Elliott, and Smith have stellar careers, and Collins, Tapper, and Brown turn into solid to above-average contributors, with Frazier and Gathers as wild cards.

The claim is that it was the highest value draft in the player’s rookie season, which is all we have to go on at the moment.

It also means, as the Cowboys approach the 2017 draft, that fans shouldn’t expect anything approaching a repeat of last year’s draft. For some perspective, please see this article on the Cowboys’ last seven drafts.