Breaking down the Cowboys draft pick by pick, and seeing what they still need

If I were to come up with a theme for the Dallas Cowboys’ 2023 NFL Draft, it would be that you don’t know what you don’t know. We all obsessed about how the team needed to go heavy on offense this year to add weapons and better protection for Dak Prescott. Instead, they would wind up with a 50/50 split, but also using three of their first four picks on defense, including their first-round pick, defensive tackle Mazi Smith. If you consider the first four rounds as the premium picks in the draft, the only one they used on offense was in the second, for TE Luke Schoonmaker. (Fun fact: Schoonmaker is Dutch for cleaner.)

Obviously, we were completely off on what the team wanted to accomplish. Looking at the draft as a whole and assuming this reflects their priorities, it is fairly clear that they were pretty content with the state of the passing game on both sides of the ball, but really needed to shore up the run game, again on both sides of the line, while filling one of the main concerns on offense, replacing Prescott safety blanket Dalton Schultz