Building a Cowboys draft board with superior athletes on defense

In any case, a player’s athleticism should already have been integrated into his overall draft grade, but it doesn’t hurt to look at it separately.

The 2026 cornerback class offers elite athletes across all rounds of the draft. 14 of the 24 prospects above have a RAS score right at or above 9.0. It’s also notable that the Cowboys had 11 players on this list in for an official 30 visit or for a Dallas Day visit, and outside of Delane and Terrell, every one of those visitors scored a RAS of around 9.0 or higher.

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If you’re looking at two prospects with roughly similar grades, your chances of success will likely increase if you pick the prospect with the better athleticism markers. If you don’t have the athleticism to compete at the next level, your odds of success are lower.

Same procedure for defensive ends:

Overall, this is a tightly clustered defensive end class in terms of athleticism, with 11 of the 18 players tightly bunched in the top right of the chart. If you want elite athleticism, you’ll have to draft a DE early, most of the top guys here will likely be gone when the Cowboys are on the clock with the #92 pick. And at that point, the question becomes whether any of the remaining options are a substantial improvement over what they already have.

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Next up: safeties.

There are only 12 players on this graph, including two for which we don’t have an RAS score. That’s not a lot, and in some ways it predetermines your draft strategy. You either get your hands on one of the top three guys in the first round, or you pick up somebody in the 3rd/4th round. But the question is, will that mid-round safety improve on what you already have?

Linebackers, at least to me, is the most interesting graph here. The Cowboys can of course hope against all odds that Sonny Styles drops to them at #12. But if that doesn’t happen, there’s a jackpot of linebackers with elite athletic traits waiting for them at the bottom of the first/top of the second round.

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Oddly though, we have yet to receive word that Anthony Hill, Jacob Rodriguez, or Jake Golday have been brought in for official visits, though the Cowboys did have a formal dinner with Anthony Hill and Jacob Rodriguez, so there is some interest for sure.

And even if the Cowboys don’t go for a linebacker early, there are still some very athletic prospects in the later rounds to choose form – or to double-dip at the position.

Overall, athleticism isn’t everything, but it’s part of the package teams are looking for. For new Cowboys DC Christian Parker height/weight/speed still matter, but there is a premium on the brain when looking for players.

“You want guys to be able to process those things quickly. But you can’t go out there with just a bunch of height, weight, speed guys, either. This is not an operation where we’re gonna roll the ball out in the Whataburger parking lot and just play seven-on-seven. We got to be able to process and do those things the right way.”

“I still think that you want a lot of athletic, fast guys because there are gonna be times where there is space, and you have to eliminate it,” he said last week on The Fan. “We’re not trotting out a YMCA basketball team. We still want to be fast and aggressive, but I will say, there’s a premium on instincts, there’s a premium on the brain. At different spots, they have to handle a different mental workload in terms of where their eyes have to be.”

Using the ‘Little Board’ format that rabblerousr has championed here on BTB, here’s what draft board full of superior athletes could look like on the defensive side of the ball. We have 31 players with an RAS of 9.0 or higher, seven players with no RAS at all, and five players with an RAS below 9.0 but who were invited for a pre-draft visit in Dallas. Note that the legend here is slightly different than in the graphs above. Red denotes a player with no RAS grade, green marks a player who’s been to a visit in Dallas, and players with a (*) have an RAS below 9.0.

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Overall, as you’d expect, many of the top athletes show up at the top of the draft. But enough superior athletes slip through into the later rounds to give the Cowboys a lot of options later in the draft. And while athleticism by itself is no guarantee of future NFL success, the chances of superior athletes making it are probably better than those of average athletes.

There are 43 defensive players on this little board, all with above average athleticism. There should be enough names here for the Cowboys to find some future contributors.

Who are your top prospects from this list?