By his own admission, Cowboys’ owner and general manager Jerry Jones has developed quite the reputation as a risk taker with respect to personnel moves, for good or ill. But Jones doesn’t imagine that he’ll be tempted enough in this week’s draft to make a play up the draft board from no. 9 for, say, LSU CB Patrick Peterson.
“I don’t know that that is appropriate at the top of the first round as it is when you get into the latter part of the first round or other rounds,” Jones said, per ESPN Dallas, of trading up from ninth overall on Tuesday.
Jones cited the team’s history with top ten picks in his argument on Tuesday afternoon, particularly their selections of Greg Ellis (8th overall, 1998), Roy Williams (8th overall, 2002), and Terence Newman (5th overall, 2003), all of whom were considered a steal at the time.
“You’d like to think there’s going to be a Newman there,” Jones said. “You’d like to think there’s going to be a Greg Ellis there. You’d like to think there's going to be some of the players that we’ve used that pick on in the past...Roy Williams. And I know that you might have issue with me saying those picks were safe picks, but if you really look at them we thought they were pretty safe picks when we made them.
“I know Newman was on 21 draft boards as the No. 1 pick of the draft. We picked him in the [five] spot. When we’ve been there, which is not very often, we’ve been pretty sound, I think, on the downside of the player, in thinking what the downside is.”
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