The Cowboys haven’t done much of anything this offseason, and very little of what has been done could be characterized as smart. Such is life when Dallas allowed the best offensive tackle in franchise history to walk in the name of financial austerity, only to position itself to pay more in extensions to Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and Micah Parsons by playing hardball instead of cutting deals before other teams could reset the market. When a 32-year-old off-ball linebacker is the only plausible candidate for signing of the offseason, things have gone horribly, horribly awry. “All in,” this was not.
So the team could not have picked a better time to go back to doing good business in the NFL Draft. Last year’s poultry-lean crop notwithstanding, April has been Dallas’ domain, which made it rather unfortunate that the team walked into the festivities already down a fourth-round pick (shipped out in last year’s Trey Lance trade) with no shortage of holes to fill on the roster.
The team responded by making three very logical decisions out of the gate.
First, it capitalized on a flush offensive line board and picked up an early third-round pick to move down from No. 24 to No. 29.
Dallas then spent that 29th overall pick on Oklahoma tackle Tyler Guyton, a Winnebago-size tackle (6-foot-8, 322 pounds) who maneuvers like a Prius and by most accounts was on the team’s shortlist five spots earlier. Like Tyron Smith before him, Guyton spent his college career on the right side, and there’s no telling whether he’ll be able to handle life on Dak Prescott’s blind side. And unlike Tyron Smith before him, Guyton probably isn’t ready to be thrust into a starting lineup early in his rookie year. You are well within your rights to question the utility of inserting a down-the-road player onto a win-now roster–Parsons hardly appeared thrilled by the selection—but Dallas had to nab Smith’s heir somewhere in the draft, and Guyton’s tools are tantalizing enough to look beyond the tape considering where the team landed him and what the team got to slide back a few spots.
Finally, there was the knock-on effect of Guyton ensuring Tyler Smith remains at left guard, where he’s maturing into one of the NFL’s very best, instead of left tackle, the position he’s less equipped to handle and where he turned in more erratic film as a rookie in 2022. With Zack Martin turning 34 in November, Dallas badly needs future offensive line pillars. No matter what happens with Guyton, his selection guarantees Dallas has at least one by virtue of the guy playing next to him.
The Cowboys currently have seven more picks to make over the next two days, and they’ll need to nail several for this to be a full-fledged rebound over the 2023 group that has yet to yield a single impact player. But so far, they’re on the right track.
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