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.
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"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.