© Brad Penner-USA TODAY SportsCowboys owner-GM Jerry Jones supplemented Dallas' high-powered attack with wide receiver CeeDee Lamb in the first round.
It's easy to laugh at Jerry Jones. Everything about him carries the whiff of absurdity, from his outsized personality to his colorful, sometimes controversial statements, to his obsession with making sure that his Dallas Cowboys are always grabbing headlines, sometimes to their detriment.
Jones' prominence is magnified around draft time; the Cowboys have a robust player personnel department, but the man who makes the picks is also the one who signs the checks. This occasionally leads to some dramatic moments, like what happened in 2014 ,when Jones wanted to draft Johnny Manziel, only to be outvoted by his son Stephen and every other member of the Cowboys' draft room. It didn't help Jones' reputation that the player the Cowboys actually picked, guard Zack Martin, has gone on to become a four-time first-team All-Pro.
So yes, Jones can be an easy target. He was again in the run-up to this year's draft, once the news broke that he was planning on making Dallas' picks alone at his home. The jokes flew all over Twitter almost immediately, virtually all of them a riff on the "something awful is going to happen, because Jerry is going to do something crazy, and there won't be anyone around to stop him," template.
Turns out, Cowboys fans had nothing to worry about. Their team has a much better chance to win a Super Bowl than it did this time last week, and it's because the owner made all the right moves this past weekend.
The first was to conduct the first round of the draft from a room on his superyacht. It was excessive, absurd, drew plenty of headlines and led to more head-shaking laughter. When it was Dallas' turn to pick, however, none of Jones' detractors was chuckling. Jones got the best value of the first round when he nabbed Oklahoma wide receiver CeeDee Lamb with the 17th overall selection.
Lamb certainly didn't fill a position of need. The Cowboys just inked Amari Cooper to a new contract, and Michael Gallup had 1,107 yards receiving last year. No matter. Jones made the correct decision to take the obvious best player available and stockpile more weaponry for Dak Prescott and the offense.
Prescott and new head coach Mike McCarthy now have an embarrassment of riches at their disposal. Lamb will allow Cooper, one of the slickest route-runners in the league, to work from the slot, where he should be a mismatch every time. Lamb himself is a devastating open-field runner and all-around threat, and he has true No. 1 wide receiver potential. Gallup should find space easier to come by, which could make his third year in the league his best yet.
Ezekiel Elliott will face fewer numbers in the box. He'll have bigger running lanes. More space means a better Elliott, one who has a better chance of at least somewhat validating the $50 million guaranteed that the Cowboys gave him.
All of this might seem like offensive overkill, but despite ranking sixth in the league in points per game, and first in total offense, scoring was a problem for Dallas when it mattered most last year. In losses to the Saints, Patriots, Bills and Eagles, Dallas scored a combined 43 points. Lamb's presence makes a repeat of those anemic performances highly unlikely.
On the other side of the ball, Jones found time to address some major holes on Dallas' defense. With Byron Jones gone to Miami in free agency, the Cowboys had a gap at corner, but they grabbed Alabama's Trevon Diggs in the second round and Tulsa's Reggie Robinson II in the fourth. Diggs could start right away, and Robinson has prototype size for the position and should have time to grow into a larger role.
In between, Jones found Oklahoma's Neville Gallimore in the third round, giving Dallas' defensive line a tantalizing athlete at the tackle position. Fourth-rounder Tyler Biadasz of Wisconsin figures to be the heir apparent to the retired Travis Frederick at center, and Utah's Bradlee Anae, taken at the end of the fifth round, has a chance to grow and develop as an edge rusher.
Getting a game-breaker in the first round and then laying the groundwork to patch the majority of your roster holes with your next several picks? That sounds like textbook draft strategy all the way around.
While the Cowboys did everything right, their chief competition in the NFC East, the Eagles, bewildered most analysts by trading up for Lamb's Oklahoma teammate Jalen Hurts in the second round. Advantage: Dallas.
If nothing else, the Cowboys' draft cemented their status as NFC East favorites this year. No other offense in the division is close, and the defense could be poised for a quick rebound.
Laugh at Jerry Jones all you want, but his work in this year's draft was no joke.
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