Jerry Jump-Up: Cowboys Owner Poised to Again Trade Higher in NFL Draft?
At Wednesday's press conference at AT&T Stadium announcing a landmark partnership with a cryptocurrency, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones confused his Monica's.
In applying context to making the NFL’s first crypto deal, Jones was reflecting on changing the league in the 1990s with his Pepsi and Nike agreements. He spoke of the excitement of being on the sidelines of the team's 1995 opener with Nike’s Phil Knight and tennis star Monica Seles. Except, um, he misremembered Seles as "Lewinski."
Oops.
Jones, however, was crystal clear when outlining his strategy for the upcoming NFL Draft. Known for his ground-breaking moves on and off the field, the Cowboys ballsy broker is poised to again move his team's position.
"I would trade up in this draft," Jones said when asked about his 2022 draft philosophy by CowboysSI.com. "Just going in, as much as you can say about it, until you see what's there and who's on the other end of the line. Yeah, I would trade up ... since we're down as low as we are in those first two or three rounds. If we had a chance to, and somebody we really coveted was sitting at the bottom - like Frederick - we'd trade up and get him."
In the April 28 draft, the Cowboys own the 24th (first round), 56th (second) and 88th (third) picks.
Jones has never been afraid to trade - up or down - on draft day. In 2013 he traded down from 18 to 31 to select Wisconsin center Travis Frederick, who blossomed into a perennial All-Pro player.
In 2012, Jones aggressively traded up from 14th to sixth to draft LSU cornerback Morris Claiborne. He has also famously traded up (from 27 to 24) to land receiver Dez Bryant and linebacker Sean Lee (in the second round) in 2010. And in 2020, he moved from 164 to 146 in the fourth round to draft a potential replacement for Frederick in Wisconsin's Tyler Biadasz.
Last Spring, however, Jones sat patiently while coveted cornerbacks Jaycee Horn and Patrick Surtain III went off the board ahead of Dallas and wound up "settling" on Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons, who won NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year.
The Cowboys have glaring holes to fill along both the defensive and offensive lines. Jones - who recently boasted that his "reckless" attitude hadn't faded - reiterated Wednesday that he has the ambition and ammunition to fill them.
