After I released my last article, “2 Early Cowboys Mock Drafts: You Vote“, one thing immediately jumped out to me, not from the mock drafts themselves, but from the comments.
A few fans kept repeating the same idea:
Trade the second first-round pick, move out of 25 and pick up a 2nd and 3rd.
It didn’t matter whether they liked the players I mocked at 14 or 25. It didn’t matter how the board fell. The loudest reaction was that Dallas should automatically turn pick 25 into more draft capital.
When I pulled up the draft value chart, the numbers told a very different story. And honestly, I don’t know if fans, because I didn’t either, realize how far off the math really is.
The Draft Value Chart Changes the Conversation
Here are the Cowboys’ actual values from the draft value chart:
- Pick 14 – 1100 points
- Pick 25 – 720 points
- Pick 114 – 66 points
- Pick 154 – 29.8 points
- Pick 178 – 19.8 points
- Pick 179 – 19.4 points
- Pick 221 – 2.3 points
- Pick 233 – 1.0 points
Total draft capital: 1958.3 points
Most of the fan debate centered specifically on pick 25, the 720-point draft asset that everyone seems to want to move. Once you compare that value to what fans think Dallas can get in return, the argument falls apart quickly.
Fans Asked For a Trade, and It Doesn’t Add Up
On the value chart, the first picks of the 2nd and 3rd rounds look like this:
- First pick of Round 2–580 points
- First pick of Round 3–265 points
Add them up and we get 845 points. On paper, that would be a massive win for the Cowboys if they could trick the Tennessee Titans into taking this trade.
Here’s the part that is overlooked: no NFL team is giving up the top of the 2nd and the top of the 3rd for the 25th overall pick. Ever.
Those types of trades only happen when someone is moving into the top half of the draft, usually to grab a quarterback. Pick 25 doesn’t command that type of premium.
What Dallas Could Realistically Get for Pick 25
Here is where I noticed the value chart gets brutally honest. Historically, when teams trade out of the 20s, this is the return:
- A mid-2nd, worth around 300–360 points
- A mid-3rd, worth around 150–200 points
We will be generous here and use the high end: 360 + 200 = 560 points.
And now put that next to the Cowboys’ pick: Pick 25 = 720 points.
Dallas would be taking a 160-point loss. That would be the equivalent of giving up a late 3rd round pick for free.
It sounds like a no-brainer to just trade down, but the value chart says something else, something completely different.
Why Keeping Pick 25 Makes More Sense
Trading pick 25 for a 2nd and 3rd sounds good in theory, but it would be a loss of value, not a gain for the Cowboys.
Dallas finally has two first-rounders. That gives the team a shot at adding two high-value, high-impact players, something fans have been begging for.
Moving out of pick 25 only makes sense to me if a team called with a package that breaks the value chart.
We can be honest with ourselves, those offers are rare.
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