The Dallas Cowboys are scheduled to play the NFL’s 12th-toughest slate of opponents in 2024. And it looks as if some of the newest players in the league will provide some of their biggest challenges. The Cowboys’ 14 regular-season opponents combined to take 12 first-round picks in this year’s draft, including three of the top eight players selected.
Several of those rookies will be quite familiar to Dallas, as they’re guys the Cowboys themselves were seriously considering for their own first-round pick. But scouting them as college prospects and facing them as professional offensive linemen, cornerbacks, wide receivers, and quarterbacks are two very different things.
Here’s a rundown of which 2024 first-rounders the Cowboys will line up against during 15 games of their upcoming season, with only their slated matchups against Houston and Cleveland providing breaks, as neither of those teams made a selection until the second round.
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The Cowboys will face the first cornerback taken twice in 2024. The speedy Mitchell didn’t allow a touchdown in 402 coverage snaps last year and shouldn’t have been available this late in the first round. Also of note, Iowa corner and return ace Cooper DeJean was selected by the Eagles 40th overall but was widely seen as a first-round talent, too.
Quarterback Jayden Daniels 5 as the LSU Tigers take on Texas A&M in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, November 25, 2023.
He’s the only player in FBS history to throw for 12,000 yards and rush for 3,000 more. And Dallas gets to face him twice a year. Dan Quinn has a massive turnaround ahead of him in the nation’s capital, but Daniels looks to be a legitimate building block with a lot of strong supporting pieces already placed around him.
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Nabers led the country in receiving yards per game last season, and now he’ll bookend Jalin Hyatt. With the dangerous Wan’Dale Robinson also in the receiving corps, quarterback Daniel Jones has no more excuses. The Cowboys’ annual two-game series with Big Blue just got significantly more challenging for the Dallas secondary.
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The Cowboys no doubt did their homework on Fuaga, even though they had to have assumed he’d be gone by the time they were ready to draft their own offensive lineman. The…
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