Somehow, the Dallas Cowboys manage to put their draft board on Twitter every year, mostly accidentally. It took Blogging the Boys a few months to find the relevant Tweet this time, but they did it — and got a pretty complete view of the Cowboys’ 2016 NFL draft board. So let’s talk about what that draft board says about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Apparently, the Cowboys draft board at least features four of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ draft picks, and possibly a few more, as not every player was listed, visible, or legible. There’s one lesson to be learned there: the Bucs basically picked every player where the Cowboys had them ranked. They picked Vernon Hargreaves 12th overall, and the Cowboys had him ranked 11th — ahead of cornerback Eli Apple, who the New York Giants picked 11th.
Neither Noah Spence nor Roberto Aguayo, both second-round picks for the Bucs, were visible on the leaked board, and neither was fourth-round pick Ryan Smith. But fifth-rounder Caleb Benenoch was, and he was seen as a fifth-rounder by the Cowboys, as was sixth-round linebacker Devante Bond, so the Bucs seem to have done well picking him. Seventh-round pick Dan Vitale was absent, though.
Basically, this means the Bucs mostly picked where the Cowboys would have picked players — except possibly the players we’re not seeing on those boards. Like, say, Roberto Aguayo. Whether any of that is a good or a bad thing is impossible to say right now: there’s a lot of team-to-team variation in draft boards for many different reasons, including scheme changes, philosophical approaches to the draft, scouts’ preferences, people seeing different things, different evaluations of off-field issues, and a whole bunch more.
So yeah, it doesn’t mean all that much. But it’s still cool.