Not everyone agreed on the Cowboys using the No. 23 overall pick on Central Florida’s Malachi Lawrence.
Not even within the Cowboys’ own draft room.
Team owner Jerry Jones admitted there was “a heated discussion” prior to Thursday night’s proceedings that pitted Lawrence against another player who went unnamed. When that player was selected “way earlier,” Jones said, there was consideration given to letting “the decision on Lawrence go for about eight or 10 more [picks]” as Dallas looked to trade back even further than the three spots they had already ceded in a deal with the Eagles for No. 20.
But the compensation “wasn’t there,” Jones revealed, so they turned in Lawrence’s card, confident they had gotten one of their top targets.
The 22-year-old spent five seasons at UCF, and even turned down more money from other programs to stay with the Knights, something Cowboys vice president of player personnel admits factored into their character evaluation.
Now he’ll suit up alongside Pro Bowler Rashan Gary, rising star Donovan Ezeiruaku, and pleasant surprise James Houston in a new-look DE group for first-year coordinator Christian Parker.
“We feel great about what we have with RG and Ezeiruaku and James Houston,” said Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer during the team’s press conference to wrap up Day 1 of the draft. “But this guy’s got tremendous upside. His first-step quickness is elite, the ability to turn his toe and run the edge, as we like to call is, is, we think, elite. And then, of course, one thing I love about the guy is he has an innate ability to attack the football while he’s attacking the quarterback. And we feel like you need athletic edge pieces in this defense, in this division, because of the quarterbacks you’re going to see: Jaxson Dart, Jayden Daniels, Jalen Hurts.”
Athleticism won’t be a problem, based on the absurd numbers turned in at the scouting combine. Lawrence’s 9.94 overall Relative Athletic Score ranks 14th out of 2,257 defensive ends since 1987, and he finished above the 97th percentile in explosiveness grades and in the 99th percentile in edge rusher speed.
Dallas will expect Lawrence to contribute immediately. Having former UCF defensive assistant Demeitre Brim now on staff as assistant defensive line coach should help flatten the learning curve for Lawrence… and may have helped tip the scales his way during those heated moments in the draft room.
“It’s nice to have a guy in-house like Coach Brim that’s been around him,” Schottenheimer acknowledged. “This is a guy we’ve been talking about a lot over the last week to 10 days.”
Maybe some of that talk has been because Lawrence reminds the team, in some ways, of two franchise legends.
McClay admitted there are similarities between the newest Cowboy and the last guy in Dallas with a Lawrence nameplate.
“He’s probably got more juice than DeMarcus from a pure speed standpoint, but the relentless method that he goes after the quarterback reminds you a little bit of DeMarcus there,” said McClay. “And I think the first-step quickness- not to say that he’s him- but one of the things that made DeMarcus Ware a great rusher is the ability to get off the ball and turn the corner. This kid has some of those traits.”
High praise indeed.
Not everyone was a fan of the pick, though. Former Alabama coach Nick Saban was even caught on an ESPN hot mic saying of the Lawrence selection at No. 23, “Wow, this is a reach.”
But other draft analysts, including Jon Ledyard, had him ranked as the best edge rusher in the draft class.
Sounds like the Cowboys may have, too.
It’s not a reach if you grab the guy you really want.
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This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: DeMarcus Ware comparisons? Cowboys’ 1st-round pick ‘Has some of those traits’
Reporting by Todd Brock, Cowboys Wire / Cowboys Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
