This 22-year-old is Jerry Jones’ best shot to fix his wasted second-round history
· Yahoo Sports
This 22-year-old is Jerry Jones’ best shot to fix his wasted second-round history originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Jerry Jones has built Super Bowl rosters, drafted Hall of Famers, and run one of the most valuable franchises in professional sports. But for two-plus decades, one part of his draft philosophy has quietly undercut everything else: the second round.
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Since 2000, Dallas has made 26 second-round draft picks. Only five made a Pro Bowl with the Cowboys. Most of the others, including Trysten Hill, Kelvin Joseph, Sam Williams, and Luke Schoonmaker, struggled to overcome the flaws that caused them to slide on draft day.
However, they do not have a second-round pick in 2026. Instead, the focus is on Donovan Ezeiruaku, a 22-year-old edge rusher entering his second season.
Dallas selected Donovan Ezeiruaku at No. 44 overall in 2025. He led college football with 16.5 sacks in 2024 and won the Ted Hendricks Award as the nation's top defensive end. Though projected as a late first-round talent, he fell to the second round because he is slightly shorter and lighter than a typical NFL edge rusher.
As a rookie, Ezeiruaku played 603 defensive snaps—over half of Dallas' total plays on the defensive front. Playing in a struggling defense, he finished with 40 tackles, nine tackles for loss, and two sacks. While his sack total was low, his underlying metrics were strong. Because of this efficiency, Bleacher Report’s Brad Gagnon named him the team's most important second-year player heading into 2026.
His role should be clearer in his second year as the franchise has a new defensive coordinator in Christian Parker, veteran edge rusher Rashan Gary has joined the team, and Micah Parsons is gone.
Bradley Locker of PFF put Ezeiruaku on his 2026 All-Breakout Team, while Greg Auman of Fox Sports noted that Ezeiruaku previously tripled his sack production between his freshman and sophomore years at Boston College.
So, it appears the second-round draft curse that has followed the 83-year-old owner might finally end because this breakout second-round pick is showing the kind of production that originally made him look like a first-round selection.
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