{"id":601112,"date":"2026-04-23T06:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T06:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/601112\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T06:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T06:55:08","slug":"would-the-cowboys-draft-a-wide-receiver-in-the-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/601112\/","title":{"rendered":"Would the Cowboys draft a wide receiver in the first round?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cowboys won\u2019t negotiate<\/a> with George Pickens in 2026, forcing him to play on the franchise tag. That isn\u2019t likely to make the Pro Bowl wide receiver happy. <\/p>\n

A trade, followed quickly by a long-term contract, would.<\/p>\n

The Cowboys need defensive help in the worst way to improve a unit that ranked last in the NFL in surrendering a team-record 511 points. And they have two first-round draft picks to help the defense in a big way.<\/p>\n

Surely they wouldn\u2019t consider using one on an offense that ranked second in yards and seventh in points. Right? <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s alive and well. Given the right circumstances, you have to look at offense,\u201d Jerry Jones said, via Nick Harris of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.<\/p>\n

In 2020, CeeDee Lamb slid to 17th, and the Cowboys, despite needing defensive help, selected the Oklahoma wide receiver. Lamb is a better player than any of the first-round defensive players drafted after the Cowboys\u2019 pick that year. Only Patrick Queen has made a Pro Bowl among that group of defenders. <\/p>\n

The Cowboys have the 12th and 20th selections this year. They had Arizona State wide receiver Jordyn Tyson and Ohio State wide receiver Carnell Tate among their top-30 pre-draft visitors.<\/p>\n

Executive vice president Stephen Jones was asked how the decision not to reward Pickens with a long-term deal affects the Cowboys\u2019 draft strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all part of the global picture,\u201d Stephen Jones said, via Schuyler Dixon of the Associated Press. \u201cCertainly, you\u2019re always looking at that. It\u2019s just like we did when we took CeeDee Lamb. We had some really good receivers on this team, but we took him. It would certainly be no different as we look at the board and our number gets called to pick, and we\u2019ll make that decision at that point. We\u2019re certainly not opposed to taking the best player on our board. That\u2019s usually where we\u2019ve had our most success is doing that. As Jerry said, we were all set to go defense in that particular draft and CeeDee Lamb was sitting there and that\u2019s the guy we went with. It\u2019s turned out to be a great selection for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Jones would not address whether the team would give Pickens a head\u2019s up if it decides to pick a wide receiver.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to get into the weeds like that today,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have a lot of options, and we\u2019ll obviously address those types of situations if they happen to come about. Certainly we go over all our contingencies and how we would handle something or what we would do. But to get into the detail of that, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s productive today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cowboys won\u2019t negotiate with George Pickens in 2026, forcing him to play on the franchise tag. That…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-601112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}