FRISCO, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys started their full draft meetings this week at The Star.
For many hours, the entire group — from owner and general manager Jerry Jones, co-owner Stephen Jones, vice president of player personnel Will McClay, head coach Brian Schottenheimer, all the way through the coaching and scouting staffs — met to go over the prospects who will make up their draft board.
For Schottenheimer, 52, the draft process has been different as he approaches his second year on the job.
Last year, a lot of what he was doing was on the fly as a first-time head coach. He still went to pro days at Ohio State, Ole Miss and Texas A&M, but he did not feel as prepared then as he does now.
He was busy building a coaching staff, bringing together a group of mostly strangers and explaining what he wanted from them. He was talking to some players he knew well from his time as the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator and some he did not know as well, mostly on defense.
“Way better,” Schottenheimer said of 2026 draft prep. “I know most of the names. Probably if you said to me the top 150 names or so on our board, I know the names, but I’ve probably seen at least a game or two on most of them, certainly probably the top 75.”
This year, Schottenheimer went to the pro days at Miami, Texas and Texas A&M, going to group dinners in the cities with the prospects. He has hosted visitors — national and local during the Cowboys’ Dallas Day workouts — in his office at The Star
For the pro days, he had a rule that he had to see at least one full game of each player on tape. When he was in Lubbock, Texas, for the Red Raiders’ workout, he knew everything about the five to seven prospects Dallas sees as high-value players.
“A big part of it is that I missed some time last year and I’m not going to do that [this year], especially with the firepower that we have [with two picks] in the first round,” Schottenheimer said.
The Cowboys rely heavily on the coaches’ input for the draft, especially the head coach, even if the scouts do the bulk of the work throughout the college season and into the all-star games and NFL scouting combine in February.
The pro days, which Schottenheimer attended with McClay and new defensive coordinator Christian Parker, gave them a chance to meet the players on their turf. But it wasn’t just about the workouts.
“The dinners are the best, man,” Schottenheimer said. “You sit down there and you literally just get to dive into all things not football, and that’s what I’m about. What interests these guys? Are they games? Do they like to travel? Do they play golf? I think you’ve got to find out what makes these guys tick. Who influences them? Who are the people in their life that’s going to influence them? Because if we bring him into our family, our locker room, I got to get to know those people because that’s the biggest influence.”
Schottenheimer had some fun when picking up the tabs. He paid for the first two dinners in Miami and Austin, Texas. In College Station, Texas, Schottenheimer said there were about 15 people at dinner at Casa Mangiare.
“I made Will McClay get that bill,” Schottenheimer said jokingly. “Strategically, I bought the first two and the last one. I wanted Will to have to get that bill.”
The Cowboys did not draft a player from the schools Schottenheimer visited last year and might not draft one from where he went this year. One school he could have visited but didn’t was Ohio State because the Cowboys had their top prospects, linebacker Arvell Reese and safeties Sonny Styles and Caleb Downs, at The Star among their 30 national visits.
“I don’t think that pro days, seeing these guys do football drills in shorts, really pushes the needle,” Schottenheimer said. “I would rather spend the time talking to them, watching the film in my office, in Dallas, getting to know them on a deeper level than watching them win the underwear Olympics. Sometimes, you get fooled by that. I know I have.”
With two first-round picks for the first time since 2008 and two top-20 picks for the first time since 2005, the Cowboys have a lot of pressure to get it right, especially on defense after they allowed a franchise-record 511 points in 2025.
Schottenheimer is doing what he can to make sure that type of defensive season does not happen in 2026.
“He’s like a budding spring flower,” Jerry Jones said. “He’s just … you can just feel him. You can feel him growing and you can feel him growing with his relationship with everybody, staff, and so you would expect that. At his age and with his depth of background, experience of where he came from, you would expect him to be like a young child.
“Every time you line them up and put them against the wall, you put a quarter inch on them as you measure them going up. That’s the way I look at how he’s doing.”
