As the Jacksonville Jaguars sealed a playoff victory over the Bills on Sunday afternoon with a Jalen Ramsey interception, my Twitter timeline overflowed with Cowboys fans asking that same old what if.
What if the Cowboys had drafted Jalen Ramsey instead of Zeke Elliott?
The common rationale behind this is that running backs are not a position you’d ideally want to draft in the first round. You see, if you had drafted Ramsey in the first round, then you could also have Derrick Henry. Seems like a strange assumption to me, but sure, yes—the Cowboys might have taken Derrick Henry instead of Jaylon Smith if they took Ramsey over Zeke.
Is a lot of this emotional? Of course it is!!! Cowboys fans are still mad at the result of this season, and at the time of Jalen Ramsey’s game-ending interception, we were less than 24 hours removed from Derrick Henry’s 156-yard performance in the Titans’ win over the Chiefs.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s go back in time. Tony Romo was the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys were picking 4th in the 2016 draft because Romo was hurt in 2015. The faith in the defense wasn’t exactly through the roof. The Cowboys organization had Zeke as the highest player on their board at the time he was selected. By all accounts, Defensive Coordinator Rod Marinelli made the case that drafting Zeke would help the defense. He would also help Tony. The less Tony Romo has to drop back to pass, the less likely he gets hit, the less likely he gets injured, and the less likely the season goes in the tank.
Wow, it seemed so simple back then.
Then for some reason, the Cowboys decided to let Tony Romo play a preseason game in Seattle without Tyron Smith, and for some reason, Tony Romo decided to scramble, and just like that: Dak Prescott is your starting quarterback and Tony Romo is golfing and hanging out with Jim Nantz.
13-3 doesn’t happen without Zeke. 13-3 doesn’t happen with Jalen Ramsey. In retrospect, could you make the argument that Jalen Ramsey is who the Cowboys should have selected? Absolutely. But at the time of the draft, while the Cowboys liked Jalen Ramsey, they didn’t love him. They loved Zeke. Whether you think that’s a mistake or not is up to you. I think Jalen Ramsey is excellent, but maybe playing across from A.J. Bouye helps.
I just want people to remember that the Cowboys selected Zeke because they liked him more as a player, and because the pick was to help Tony Romo in his final years. The pick was for Tony. It ended up being for Dak, but the origin of the pick goes back to #9.
Are people really angry over Zeke vs. Ramsey? Probably not. I think it goes back to what happened at pick #34. Jaylon Smith has been weirdly paired with Zeke in this unrealistic pigskin hypothetical. Jalen Ramsey has the benefit of being paired with Derrick Henry, someone who actually has all of the functioning nerves in his legs.
The discussion is warranted though, because it creates the idea of the draft road map. As we get closer to the draft, we will discuss this more here in the coming weeks. For instance: in my estimation, the Cowboys had a clear road map in the 2017 draft. It was clear to me that they wanted to take a defensive lineman in the first round and aim for defensive backs in rounds two and three. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened. The Taco Charlton vs. T.J. Watt conversation is for another day, but that’s why they took Taco there (I’m not sure if he was the highest player on the board at the time, but I have a gut feeling that he wasn’t).
Then they ended up with Awuzie and Lewis. They road mapped it out, based on depth of the draft. That’s something we’ll be paying attention to here at The Upset. Maybe I’ll think of a clever name for it. The roadmap to the roadmap. Nah, that sucks. Damn.
Would you have rather had Zeke or Ramsey? What are your other favorite What If scenarios? What if the world is just God’s dream? What if health insurance was easy to understand? What if we didn’t have to pay taxes, but still enjoyed the benefits of taxes?
What if I left you with a Coldplay song? I know what you’re thinking. Coldplay’s first three albums are good, damn it!
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