Dallas Cowboys: How Darren McFadden Cost Dallas a Draft Pick

From free agency to the draft, the Dallas Cowboys were brilliant with their roster management season last year but one short-sighted move essentially cost them a draft pick.

The Dallas Cowboys began the 2016 loaded at the running back position. Ezekiel Elliott, Alfred Morris, Darren McFadden, Lance Dunbar, and Darius Jackson made up arguably the deepest running back unit in the NFL.

The main headline grabbers of the bunch really don’t need much of an introduction. Ezekiel Elliott, the fourth overall draft pick of the Dallas Cowboys was obviously seen as the top-dog of the bunch. But Alfred Morris and Darren McFadden had every bit of name recognition as the highly acclaimed rookie.

Both veteran runners had multiple 1000+ yard seasons on their resume (McFadden-2 and Morris-3 ) and both have been lead backs in the very recent past. In fact, McFadden was the Dallas Cowboys own leading rusher in 2015, running for 1,089 yards — good enough for 4^th in the NFL last year.

So how exactly did Darren McFadden cost the Dallas Cowboys a draft pick?

The Dallas Cowboys essentially traded away a talented rookie, under contract for the next three years, for a three games of Darren McFadden that only yielded 87 yards.

McFadden began the season on the non-football injury list as he recovered from offseason elbow surgery. The Dallas Cowboys stashed him there knowing they would eventually need to make a decision regarding his future with the team.

Come December they would either have to activate him or move him to the season-ending IR.

The path the Dallas Cowboys chose on December 13^th may just come back to bite them.

As we all know, the Cowboys opted to add McFadden back to the 53-man roster that Tuesday afternoon. The cost of doing so was rookie running back Darius Jackson. Jackson, an admitted “pet cat” of mine from the moment he was drafted, was snatched up by the Cleveland Browns and the rest is history.

The move caught many in Cowboys Nation off-guard since Jackson was seen as an exciting rookie to develop behind Zeke. Jackson, 6’1” 220lbs, is nothing short of an athletic freak. He’s big, powerful, agile and fast. He’s raw but he’s the total package.

The product of Eastern Michigan has experience running in both zone blocking schemes and man blocking schemes. He can hit a hole hard in short yardage situations and he can hit a homerun courtesy of his 4.35 second 40-time.

Darius Jackson initially made an impression with his advanced analytics scores. A pSPARQ score measures speed, power, agility, reaction, and quickness relative to other players at the same position. Jackson earned a score of 149.4 making him the #3 RB in the entire 2016 class.

Darius Jackson was an immensely talented draft pick that the Cowboys flushed down the toilet for some wildly mediocre instant gratification.

How good is Darren McFadden?

Not very. I broke down McFadden’s 2015 performance last offseason and attributed most of his sudden success to the strong play of the Dallas Cowboys offensive line. Simply put, anyone could have amassed 1000 yards that 2015 season. McFadden didn’t suddenly get good. His yards after contact were the same as always, it was the yards BEFORE contact that improved. Credit the O-line.

The truth is McFadden was never a good fit for the Cowboys and that’s why the team went out and snatched up Alfred Morris in the offseason. Alf is a natural zone runner, who, while slow, knows how to patiently move the ball.

The Shortsightedness of the move

Forget for a moment that Darren McFadden isn’t very good. Just key in on time under contract. Darren McFadden was in the final year of his two-year deal. He would finish out the 2016 season and then hit free agency.

Darius Jackson, on the other hand, was a rookie under team control for four years. The sixth round pick was dirt cheap AND under team control. But the Dallas Cowboys gave all of that up for three games of service, 24 carries, and 87 yards which was good for only a 3.6 yards per carry average.