The Dallas Cowboys\u2019 season is over, and they have earned the 12th overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. The Green Bay Packers\u2019 season is also over. They have earned the 20th overall pick in the draft, but that pick goes to the Cowboys thanks to the Micah Parsons trade. That gives Dallas the 12th and 20th picks in the draft. That\u2019s a lot of first-round firepower.<\/p>\n
The last time the Cowboys had two picks in the top 20 was in 2005. Some might remember that as the \u201cdefensive draft\u201d as Bill Parcells and company loaded up on defenders. Six of the eight players they drafted that year played defense, with the two offensive guys being RB Marion Barber III (fourth round) and OT Rob Petitti (sixth round). The defensive players the Cowboys selected that year were:<\/p>\n
DE DeMarcus Ware (Round 1)<\/p>\n
DE Marcus Spears (Round 1)<\/p>\n
LB Kevin Burnett (Round 2)<\/p>\n
DE Chris Canty (Round 4)<\/p>\n
DB Justin Beriault (Round 6)<\/p>\n
DT Jay Ratliff (Round 7)<\/p>\n
Some of those names should look familiar to you, as most of them hung around the league for a while. Five of those six players played at least nine seasons in the NFL. Three of them played at least eight seasons with the Cowboys. Two of them were All-Pro players with at least four Pro Bowls on their resume. And finally, one of them was a Hall of Fame edge rusher.<\/p>\n
The Cowboys would love to come away with a similar haul. Oddly enough, the team\u2019s draft picks line up similarly to where they were picking back in 2005. They have a top 12 pick, the 20th pick, no second rounder this year because of the Quinnen Williams trade, but then five picks on Day 3 outside the top 100.<\/p>\n
What is also similar about this is that the three top edge rushers in the draft are currently projected to go in the top 12 picks: Miami\u2019s Rueben Bain, Texas Tech\u2019s David Bailey, and Auburn\u2019s Keldric Faulk. The Cowboys are in a great position to snag one of the best pass rushers coming out of the draft with their 12th overall pick. Expecting him to be a Hall of Famer is quite optimistic, but the chances of landing a top-talent edge rusher the year after losing Parsons are pretty decent. How nice would it be to have a top college edge opposite second-year edge Donovan Ezeiruaku while having guys like Williams, Kenny Clark, and Osa Odighizuwa filling the interior?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Cowboys\u2019 season is over, and they have earned the 12th overall pick in the 2026 NFL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,932,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-122786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-cowboys-news","10":"tag-dallas-headlines","11":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}