Cowboys draft capital number for 2026 is surprising

The notion of draft capital is a very simple one. You add up the value of each team’s picks on the Trade Value Chart to arrive at a total value for each team’s draft picks.

The Cowboys increased their 2026 draft capital by trading Osa Odighizuwa for a third-round pick, and with the final compensatory draft picks announced by the NFL two weeks ago, the Cowboys now hold the following picks and corresponding draft capital in the 2026 NFL draft:

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Round	Pick	Origin	Draft Capital
1	12	Original pick	1,200
1	20	From Packers (Micah Parsons trade)	850
3	92	From 49ers (Osa Odighizuwa trade)	132
4	112	Original pick	70
5	152	Original pick	31.8
5	177	Comp pick (DeMarcus Lawrence)	21.6
5	180	Comp pick (Jourdan Lewis)	20.4
7	218	From Titans (Solomon Thomas trade)	5.2
Total Draft Capital			2,331

The Cowboys’ 2026 draft capital is of course largely driven by their two first-round picks which account for 88% of their total draft capital. But that also means the combined draft capital for all eight picks must be pretty high. In fact, the Cowboys enter the 2026 NFL Draft with the most draft capital they’ve had since the 2016 NFL draft that delivered Ezekiel Elliott (4th overall pick), Jaylon Smith (34th), Maliek Collins (67th), Dak Prescott (135th), and Anthony Brown (189th) among others.

The last time the Cowboys had two first-round picks was in 2008, but the Cowboys “only” had 1,902 points of draft capital in that draft.

Previous to 2008, the Cowboys last had two picks in the first round of the franchise-defining 2005 draft (2,717 points) that delivered DeMarcus Ware (11th), Marcus Spears (20th), Marion Barber (109th), Chris Canty (132nd), and Jay Ratliff (224th).

The 2,331 points they have this year are the sixth most since 1992, when the Cowboys – still flush from the Herschel Walker trade – had two picks each in the first, second, and third rounds for a combined draft capital of 3,477 points.

Here’s an overview of the draft capital in each draft since 1992, ranked by the draft capital each year.

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Year	Draft Capital		Year	Draft Capital		Year	Draft Capital
1992	3,477		2025	1,759		2023	1,253
2016	2,779		2014	1,655		2015	1,192
2005	2,717		1995	1,635		2010	1,188
2003	2,597		2020	1,613		2017	1,143
2002	2,527		2018	1,610		2007	1,142
2026	2,331		2013	1,555		2004	1,131
2021	2,286		1997	1,549		2024	1,082
2011	2,221		2006	1,517		2001	962
1998	2,124		1996	1,505		2009	796
2012	1,945		1999	1,482		2019	570
2008	1,902		2022	1,381		2000	545
1994	1,901		1993	1,268

So what does that mean for the 2026 draft?

Let’s take a step back and first look at how to define “success” for a draft class. Some people might use the number of Pro Bowlers drafted, others might argue that number of starters is a better measure, others yet might use playing time as an argument.

All of that is combined in a metric called ”Weighted Approximate Value” (wAV) from Pro-Football-Reference.com. If we use wAV as a measure of draft success and plot it against the Cowboys draft capital since 2000, we get the following graphs, starting with the data from 2000-2013:

The data is divided into two parts, 2000-2013 and 2014-2022. For one thing, that gives a roughly even split between the two periods. It also separates the Will McClay drafts since 2013 from the previous scouting/personnel regime. And it accounts for the fact that the wAV for younger draft classes is incomplete (wAV values will continue to increase in the coming years), while the players drafted between 2000 and 2013 have all ended their careers – and we’ll look at the younger draft classes a little later in this post anyway.

What this chart shows is that the success of the Cowboys drafts between 2000 and 2009 has largely been a function of the draft capital available. Six drafts are right on the trendline, three drafts (2004, 2007, 2010) outperform the trendline slightly, three more underperform slightly (2006, 2009, 2002) and two show a strong deviation from the trend: 2005 is a strong outperformer and 2012 is a strong underperformer.

That draft is largely a function of the available draft capital runs counter to all the modern-day draft mythology about scouting prowess, insights generated from months of film study, or secret meetings with prospects.

In statistics, the relationship between two variables is called a correlation, and the strength of that correlation is measured by the “correlation coefficient”. This coefficient (r²) is expressed as a number between 1 and -1. The closer the r² number is to 1 or -1, the stronger the relationship between the two variables. The closer it is to zero, the weaker the relationship.

For the Cowboys, the correlation coefficient here is a whopping 0.67, which means that two thirds of the Cowboys draft results are explained entirely by the amount of draft capital alone. The rest may be down to scouting prowess, film insights, or secret meetings, though it’s much more likely to be down to pure luck.

It also means that historically, the Cowboys have drafted better the more draft capital they’ve had. This is not rocket science, you’re likely going to have more draft success picking at the top of each round than you will drafting at the bottom of each round.

In the next chart, I plotted the same data for 2014-2022:

I did not include the 2023-2025 draft classes because their wAV is incomplete at best, and completely misleading at worst.

Regardless, the correlation here (0.48) is not quite as strong as in the earlier graph, but keep in mind that the wAV values for the later drafts are bound to increase quite substantially over the coming years. If I were to exclude the 2020-2022 drafts (marked in red), the correlation coefficient jumps back to 0.75, again a very strong indicator that the Cowboys have drafted better the more draft capital they’ve had.

But back to the question at hand: What does the Cowboys’ draft capital mean for the 2026 draft?

With 2,331 points of draft capital, 2026 could end up right there with two of the more recent franchise-defining drafts.

• 2016 delivered Ezekiel Elliott and multiple other starters, and also saw the Cowboys luck into their franchise quarterback in the fourth round. That draft class was the key to an eight-year run that saw the Cowboys compile the third-best regular season W/L record (82-49) and make the playoffs five times, though it only resulted in two playoff wins.
• 2005 got the Cowboys DeMarcus Ware, Marcus Spears, Marion Barber, and Jay Ratliff to spearhead a turnaround that coincided with Tony Romo’s emergence, though that fizzled out after just five years and the eventual hiring of Jason Garrett. But from 2005-2010, the Cowboys ranked seventh overall with a 57-39 W/L record, had three playoff appearances, and one playoff win.

How the 2026 draft class ultimately turns out is anybody’s guess. Everybody will draw their own conclusions from the data above, but my expectation is that all three picks in the top 100 should deliver future starters, and they may get lucky with one of their picks in the later rounds.

And if the team finds a way to increase their picks in the top 100 by trading down, perhaps even trading down twice for five picks in the top 100, that would significantly increase their chances of landing future contributors, and may spur them on to a run similar to what they had with the 2005 and 2016 draft classes, though ideally with more playoff success.

The data presented here suggests the draft is less a matter of skill and more a matter of the draft capital you’ve amassed, with some good or bad luck thrown into the mix. As such, this draft has the potential to be another franchise-defining draft – if the Cowboys don’t mess it up by trying to outsmart everybody and end up doing something incredibly stupid instead.