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

ESPN’s Mel Kiper and his 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 - knowing the Cowboys had two bona fide draft busts over that span in Morris Claiborne and Taco Charlton.

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 2012 through 2021.

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.

You know and I know that if we had included 2011 and Tyron Smith in this table, this would have looked much better for the Cowboys, but 10 years was the cutoff for this post, so there we go.

But even without Smith, that’s a pretty impressive haul. 19 Pro Bowl seasons, 39 out of a maximum of 45 starter seasons, 583 games started and a strong Weighted Career Approximate Value (wAV) of 339.

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 Morris Claiborne and Taco Charlton. Overall, the Cowboys rank third in the NFL with their 339 wAV points behind the Rams (381) and Vikings (380), and slightly ahead of the Bucs (334) and Chargers (325).

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.

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

Kiper’s picks would have been an okay draft haul for the Cowboys, but not a great one. For the most part, Kiper would have had the Cowboys drafting solid starters, but the players he picked lack the accolades the Cowboys picks garnered, and more importantly, the longevity. Coples, Williams, and Shazier all had short NFL careers, and that drops Kiper’s wAV to 247 points, which would rank this collection of picks just 23rd in the league.

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

McShay gives the Cowboys a run for their money, and if he hadn’t fallen for the Manziel hype in 2014, he might have beaten the Cowboys. Of course, if the Cowboys hadn’t picked Taco Charlton, they’d look much better as well, so that argument goes both ways.

Still, McShay’s collection of picks for the Cowboys over the last 10 years would have ranked 10th overall in terms of wAV points.

The Cowboys did well in the last 10 drafts, and they would still be among the Top 10 teams if they had listened to McShay in those drafts; they certainly would have done better with McShay than they would have with the majority of NFL GMs out there.

But in the end, if you had to pick between Will McClay, Kiper, or McShay, you’d probably stick with McClay, the Cowboys’ VP of Player Personnel.

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 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 wAV would add up to:

Apart from illustrating the vagaries of drafting a QB in the first round, the table shows that even for the worst teams in the league, there is some 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.