Dallas Cowboys: The Curious Case of Nahshon Wright (a film breakdown)

When the Dallas Cowboys drafted Nahshon Wright with their final pick of the third round in the 2021 NFL draft, they confused an incredible amount of people. First, the name didn’t ring a bell; secondly, there were two other highly touted cornerbacks on the board who were available for the team’s choosing; and lastly, the initial reports on Wright were that he was outside of analysts’ consensus top 200 board leaving many to think that Dallas while trying to reach for the sky, somehow made it to the moon instead.

As with every draft pick, judging the value of a pick the day the selection is made only holds value for those trying to draw in ratings, so everything should be taken with a grain of salt. But even several weeks after the selection was made, many of the same analysts who were harping on the team for selecting Wright hadn’t changed their opinions.

In a perfect world, analysts aren’t constantly talking themselves into bad selections teams make, but the Wright selection made sense given Dallas’ situation. The team hired DC Dan Quinn a few months prior and Quinn’s “bread and butter” is the 4-3 Under Seattle Cover 3 defense often prioritizing longer, smarter cornerbacks to help with transition quickness in the deep areas of the field.

Nahshon Wright is… well… hopefully both of those things.

One rookie mini-camp and OTA (organized team activity) later and Wright has been one of the few rookies to show out. Can you believe it? A highly-touted selection ends up performing well early on in their development? Shocking!

The team has yet to report to training camp so Wright still has a lot to prove, but if early reports out of minicamp were that Wright was playing well and a few analysts of the team were praising his work so far, how was he seen as such a low-quality prospect by the majority?

Hopefully, today we can figure out why and where Wright was successful and unsuccessful in college and see if these things work in parallel with what the Cowboys are trying to do on defense. In addition, we might try to compare how his skill set compares to those drafted shortly after him and in the same round to see if the Cowboys stuck too much to need or if they correctly judged everyone’s valuation.

Was Nahshon Wright just an overlooked prospect or a massive Dallas Cowboys reach?

So…