The Dallas Cowboys have made no secret about their intent to go defense early in the NFL Draft this year, and this just confirms it.
The Monday Morning Quarterback’s Albert Breer shared a list on Twitter Monday of 18 draft prospects the Cowboys have set to visit this week. Nearly all of the players are defensive, either defensive backs or defensive ends.
Via sources, list of 18 draft prospects visiting the Cowboys this week (they get 30 in-house visits total). You'll notice a theme. #defense pic.twitter.com/wEOETU32pR
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) April 3, 2017
The only non-defensive player set to visit the Cowboys this week is USC’s JuJu Smith-Schuster. It’s almost all CBs and DEs.
Last week at the NFL meetings, Cowboys VP Stephen Jones said the team was focusing on defense in the draft.
“Of course, as we’ve been saying, certainly our focus in the draft is going to be on defense,” Jones said last Sunday, via the team’s official site. “You don’t ever want to say that’s all we’re going to take. The best player still applies. At the same time, we’ve made some moves to shore up some of these, especially on offense, so we don’t necessarily have needs on the offensive side of the ball.
“Now let me be real clear, if a great offensive player shows up that’s of great value to us, that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to pick an offensive player. But our focus is on defense, and even though we lost some numbers on defense, some of them we were ready to move on from and then there are others – obviously, we replaced our corner (in free agency with Carroll). We had four really good corners, as it turned out last year.”
The Cowboys have been good recently about going for the best player available rather than targeting specific needs. That strategy tends to pay off more in the long run, because it results in getting better overall talent rather than reaches. But it’s obvious what Dallas intends to do later this month. Their desire is no surprise given that they had the No. 5 offense last season and were 14th in the league in yards allowed on defense.
