- 2 days ago
Charles Davis joined Shan, RJ, and Bobby to recap the Cowboys’ 2026 draft class. Davis shared his praise for the selections of Caleb Downs and Malachi Lawrence, broke down the versatility of mid-round additions like Jaishawn Barham and Devin Moore, analyzed how the new defensive pieces fit under coordinator Christian Parker, and more.
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00:00Let's see if he has enough time to recap what the Dallas Cowboys and everybody else did.
00:04So, the great Charles Davis NFL Network coverage joining us here on Sean and RJ.
00:09Good morning, Charles. Thanks for the time.
00:11Good morning, guys. How's everything going?
00:13We're doing well. You still got the voice. That's a good sign.
00:16How do you feel about what the Dallas Cowboys did?
00:21They seem to be getting a lot of national acclaim and applause. Do you agree?
00:27I agree. I like what they did. I like when a team understands what it needs, has a way of
00:35targeting it, and just goes ahead and does it.
00:38Sometimes I think this is natural of all of us in life, right?
00:42We all want to be just a little bit smarter than our compatriots, right?
00:46We all want to be a little bit quicker than them.
00:49We all want to know something or be ahead or zag when everyone else is zigging and have our zag
00:56be the move that, ah, wow, you saw that.
00:59That was amazing.
01:00And sometimes it's just best to just know what you got to do and do it.
01:03That's what I felt like Dallas did in this draft.
01:06Your thoughts on Caleb Downs on your board and how things played out to get him to 11?
01:12Yeah, he was a top five talent on, I think, everyone's board.
01:17This is one where it would have been an extreme zag to say, well, you know, I think Caleb Downs
01:22is the second round.
01:23You know what I mean?
01:24No, it was evident.
01:27It was apparent.
01:28The interesting thing is right now the position he's playing is not supposed to be a premium position,
01:35but it's actually a very hot position because of the type of play we're getting out of guys like Kyle
01:39Hamilton in Baltimore,
01:41Derwin James in Los Angeles with the Chargers,
01:43and what Nicky Manwari did on the run to the Super Bowl with Seattle.
01:47Now we're looking at these safeties.
01:49How many different ways can we deploy them?
01:52How many different ways can they affect the game?
01:54How can they make us better?
01:56And that's why Caleb Downs, I think, is getting that type of acclaim.
01:59The interesting part is he's a well-put-together young man.
02:03The intelligence is off the charts.
02:05He's going to quarterback your secondary, and he could quarterback your entire defense.
02:09But his body frame and style of play is not quite like the three guys I just mentioned.
02:17So he's going to get the job done.
02:18I think he'll get the job done well.
02:20And the Cowboys will probably use him in multiple spots.
02:24But, you know, he said it himself.
02:25He told me this at the combine just directly because I mentioned those guys.
02:29And he said, look, I'm not built like they are.
02:32I'm not constructed like they are.
02:35But I'm still going to get the job done.
02:37I'm going to get the job done well.
02:38And I firmly believe that with him.
02:40I thought that was a great pick for them.
02:42And it broke the Cowboys not taking the safety since.
02:45Roy Williams, you know what I mean?
02:47It's kind of like last year we were in Green Bay when they announced they took the receiver.
02:51Was it Matthew Golden?
02:52And that was their first receiver picked in the first round since 2002.
02:56And the place just lost its mind.
02:57Obviously, we were in Green Bay.
02:59The Packer fans went berserk.
03:01I don't know that Cowboy fans will go berserk because you took a safety.
03:04They have.
03:05You know, and you hadn't taken him in a while.
03:06But I think they took a great player.
03:08Charles, a lot of early talk about him playing nickel.
03:11Does that make the most sense or a lot of sense based upon what you saw with him in coverage?
03:17See, that's where it plays right into the is he, Imanwari, Hamilton, Derwin James.
03:25Because that's what those guys are doing right now.
03:27That's become the vogue thing that you play the nickel as a safety.
03:32Because you guys know, look, what are we used to as nickel cover guys?
03:36That shifty guy, right?
03:38The guy goes inside.
03:40Remember when the Eagles went with the dream team of the three defensive backs?
03:43Yeah.
03:44And none of them could play nickel?
03:46And that became a bit of a problem.
03:48So that's where we're kind of used to it.
03:51Like Marcus Jones from New England is like 5'9", you know, 185 pounds.
03:57Feisty is all get out.
03:58Great kick return guy.
04:00You could see him matching up against, you know, Edelman in his prime.
04:06That sort of a deal.
04:07But teams have gotten bigger with who they're putting inside in the slot with the receivers.
04:12So the nickels have gotten bigger as well.
04:15To answer your question, yes, I can see Downs playing there.
04:19I also could see him playing a great center field safety as well.
04:23It's going to be fun for me to watch and see how Christian Parker tries to deploy him
04:27and wants to utilize him.
04:28And it'll also be interesting to watch and see where he's most comfortable.
04:32Because sometimes you can get a guy and you're going to use him here,
04:37and I'm going to use him there, and I can put him over here.
04:39And he's not as comfortable as you think.
04:42Get him comfortable first and then introduce everything else.
04:45Kyle Hamilton was very confused as a rookie.
04:47And, by the way, he tested Mensa IQ in middle school.
04:53In his rookie year, you go back and pull up tape, you'll find bust after bust.
04:58Now, I don't want to make it sound like he busted three out of four plays.
05:01But what I'm saying is there were some big plays that happened
05:04because they deployed him numerous spots.
05:07And he's thinking, oh, yeah, I got to do it.
05:09Oh, shoot, I'm in the other spot.
05:11Now, it's second nature to him.
05:13Now he can do everything.
05:14I'm just saying be slow with everyone.
05:16Give them a chance to get their feet wet.
05:18Charles Davis joining us here on 105 Through the Fan.
05:21Charles, for all the universal acclaim of the Downs pick,
05:24the Lawrence pick was met with a little bit more split opinion.
05:28There were people who really liked it,
05:29other people who thought maybe that's a little bit of a reach.
05:31How do you view Lawrence as a prospect,
05:33and more specifically within what Dallas wants to do?
05:37Lawrence is a great example of us on the other side rising,
05:43us learning about him in the rise.
05:45Does that make any sense at all?
05:46Because the teams all know, right?
05:49I'll just put it to you this way, guys.
05:51Every time I go to do a game, I write a reminder on my paper
05:54before I sit down to talk with anyone.
05:57You know what my reminder is?
05:58They know more than you do.
06:00And what I mean by that is I'm not talking about my intelligence
06:04or anything like that.
06:05It's just I have my opinions about what's going on there,
06:09but they know more about what they're doing.
06:11They just may not share it with you, right?
06:14So you always say, you know, to me outside, I'm going,
06:16ah, it's this, it's this, it's this.
06:17Well, I could be very wrong because they've got a whole different idea.
06:20Here's the thing.
06:22We all thought Lawrence was probably a third-round guy, right,
06:25as we started the whole process.
06:27A very good friend of mine, when I talked to him about Lawrence,
06:31and by the way, he scouts for another team.
06:33He's one of the top scouts for another team in the NFL.
06:36He goes, dude, you're off on Lawrence.
06:38I said, really?
06:39He goes, yeah.
06:39He said he's at least a second-round guy.
06:42And he said, I'm going to tell you now that during the process,
06:46you're going to hear his name more and more and more,
06:48and he's going to rise for you knuckleheads.
06:50He's always teasing me about being on the media side.
06:52He said, you knuckleheads on the media side,
06:54he's going to rise for you guys.
06:56We know about him.
06:57Okay, cool.
06:58Well, sure enough, I get to the combine.
07:00You guys remember the combine.
07:01He blew it away, right?
07:02He did a great job at the combine.
07:03And we're talking about Kyle Lawrence.
07:05Kyle Lawrence, he called me the next day.
07:08He goes, see?
07:09I told you.
07:10And so for everyone out there that didn't know much about him,
07:14the community of the NFL did.
07:17He fits a lot of what you expect Dallas is going to want from him, right?
07:20And during the process, I kept mentioning, you know,
07:23a couple of times I said, you know, body type, he looks a lot like Tank.
07:28You know, body type and build, he looks like Tank Lawrence.
07:31And when I talk with the UCF people, they love his passion for the game.
07:35He's a film monster kid.
07:37He's passionate about what he's doing.
07:39They had a coaching change there.
07:41He could have left and gone somewhere else.
07:42He embraced the coaching change, took the coaching,
07:45kept getting better at what he was doing.
07:47I think if you take the ball to the front side where he is and he's pursuing,
07:53he's really good at taking you down in that area.
07:56Backside pursuit, I think more of that's going to come.
07:58But I like where he is.
08:01I like the build that's there.
08:02I understood totally why Dallas would take him.
08:05I thought he might go a little bit later in the first round.
08:08But we've got to get past what the true value is, right?
08:12Oh, he's better if you take him later.
08:14If the team has conviction and likes him, just take him.
08:18Were you surprised they didn't go corner there?
08:22I thought it was a possibility, but as we discovered, right,
08:26Jermon McCoy was off the boards for people that early because of the knee, right?
08:32If McCoy's knee is right and they don't think there's degenerative and all that,
08:38if McCoy plays 2025 season, he's the number one corner.
08:41He's ahead to the late.
08:43All right, that's just one person's opinion.
08:45But at the worst, he's going to be two, right?
08:47So now there's no McCoy.
08:49So who do you like next as your corner?
08:52Do you like Chris Johnson as your third corner?
08:54Do you like Colton Hood as the next corner?
08:56Do you like Brandon Cese as the next corner?
08:59What Dallas told us by taking Lawrence is that they like Lawrence better
09:03for what they were planning on doing than the corners that were on the board.
09:08Charles, you know, the third-round pick was Jayshon Barham from Michigan
09:13who had played some edge, played some inside linebackers.
09:16It sounds like the Cowboys are going to start him at inside linebacker.
09:18But, I mean, Will McCoy had comped him to, hey, he's got a little bit of a similar
09:22type of trajectory as what we've seen from Marvell Reese, obviously not at the top there,
09:27but like similar type of player-style player.
09:29What did you think of Barham, and where would you play him right off the bat?
09:34Yeah, when I watched his tape, you know, and I've watched him as the off-ball guy,
09:39I've watched him as the edge.
09:40I thought he played better as an edge.
09:42I thought he was more comfortable out there.
09:44I thought that his instincts showed up a little bit better.
09:47Obviously, he plays at super speed, kind of like, you know,
09:52always kind of likening it to when we see those old baseball tapes
09:56and Babe Ruth hits the home run and gets around the bases in about 2.8 seconds,
10:00you know, and he had that great music behind it.
10:04I feel like Barham plays a little more sped up there.
10:07I'm eager to watch how that plays out.
10:10I really am, because I'll just go old-school Dallas tradition.
10:15The Manster, Randy White, coming out of Maryland.
10:19Obviously, he was incredible at Maryland playing defensive line, right?
10:25But the Cowboys saw him as an undersized defensive lineman.
10:27This was under Coach Landry.
10:29And his first two seasons, he played a lot of stand-up inside linebacker.
10:34And it just wasn't going great.
10:36Like, he's too good of a football player to say that he wasn't doing things.
10:39But you know what I'm saying.
10:40That just wasn't.
10:41And then they kind of put him back down there.
10:43Next thing you know, he's sitting on quarterbacks with running backs all the time.
10:46And next thing you know, we've got a Hall of Fame career.
10:49Sometimes guys just fit better at certain places,
10:51doesn't matter what the dimensions are.
10:53So it'll be interesting to see what Barham does.
10:56I love his speed.
10:57I love the way he plays the game.
10:58I liked him better as an edge.
11:01Charles, you know, the Cowboys on day three, they got a round four haul.
11:05Drew Shelton from Penn State.
11:06Devin Moore from Florida.
11:07LT Overton from Alabama.
11:09Guys that they had said afterwards,
11:11they think all three of those guys have starter upside.
11:14What did you think of the collection there in the fourth round?
11:16And did anybody of those three, like, really stand out to you?
11:19Yeah, I liked the collection.
11:21I'll take them in the order that I liked them out of the three.
11:24I liked Devin Moore the best out of them.
11:27I think he, just his build, I've had to coin it as a new phrase,
11:34because Pete Carroll was in Seattle for so long.
11:36I used to say, that guy looks like a Seattle corner.
11:39You know what I'm talking about, that tall, lanky, long arm type of a guy.
11:42Now since Pete's finally, you know, he's been at Seattle a while,
11:45now I should be able to adjust.
11:47I just call him a Pete Carroll corner.
11:49You know, that's what he looks like to me in so many different ways,
11:53but I think he's a little more versatile than just being a press corner,
11:56cover one, cover three guy.
11:58I think he goes inside and does that cat blitz, right?
12:02You go inside and you put him on the nickel,
12:04and he comes off the edge and goes and gets you.
12:06I think with his build, he can swing back and play some safety for you.
12:09So I liked him as the most versatile piece out of the three.
12:13Who is, it was Shelton, and who was the third guy?
12:15Overton, L.T. Overton.
12:17Overton, yeah, Shelton, offensive lineman.
12:19I think there's some development to be had there.
12:22I think he's very strong as a down blocker type of a guy,
12:25you know, kind of one-on-one, kind of a guy come at you,
12:29take you on right now.
12:31Agility-wise, a little bit there that, you know,
12:34I'd like to see a little bit more.
12:37Charles, I love – can I say something, Charles?
12:39I've got to stop you.
12:40The reason I wanted to have you on in part is I'm watching the coverage.
12:43You do such a good job of giving the other side nicely.
12:47I know everyone can't be a home run.
12:50It's a perfect fit.
12:51Then we move on to the next.
12:52I, for one, at least in the media, appreciate the other side of it.
12:55So this delivery, apparently, I guess, except for Daniel Jeremiah,
12:59which I haven't heard the audio.
13:00I just read it.
13:01I read the headline of the great debate.
13:03But, man, you're doing a good job of giving both sides, man.
13:06Keep it up with the not-so-glare, you know, glowing positives with every player.
13:12No, I didn't listen.
13:13I appreciate that.
13:14I mean, here's the bottom line.
13:17They're all really good football players, but they all can't be first-rounders.
13:23Right?
13:24It's that simple, okay?
13:25And as a former college player, I feel like I have an understanding that we all aren't great.
13:32Remember, I played and didn't get drafted.
13:34So who am I to just come and everybody just crush them?
13:37Anyway, back to Drew Shelton.
13:38I just think agility-wise, there's something there.
13:41One more time, the third guy.
13:43L.T. Overton from Alabama.
13:44Oh, L.T. Overton.
13:46Tough, nose-hard player.
13:49Doesn't shock you at all that he's going to be a good effort guy coming from Bama down in, down
13:54out, the whole thing.
13:56Tweener.
13:57Sometimes we overuse these appellations we give them, right?
14:00Is he an edge?
14:01Is he a defensive tackle?
14:03I do think he's a true tweener because I don't think he's an edge like we like to think of
14:07edges now.
14:08He's not an edge that's going to go out and just destroy your quarterback and get you double-digit sacks.
14:13He's much more of a base end to me, kind of like the old 3-4 base end type of
14:17a deal.
14:18I think inside, in pass rush situations, he'll be a better pass rusher if you're able to move him inside.
14:24But which place is he going to live?
14:27I think he's got to live between the two of them based on down and distance and situation.
14:32I think he's a good player.
14:33I don't know if he's going to pick one side or the other, if that makes any sense.
14:38When he comes to camp, if he's bigger than what we see right now, then that tells me that they've
14:43told him,
14:44hey, we're going to use you more inside.
14:45If he comes to camp and he's lighter, that means he's going to try and get quicker and play defensive
14:50end and come off the edge.
14:52I think his chances are better, bigger, but that's just one person's opinion.
14:59Awesome work.
15:00Thank you so much for the time.
15:01We appreciate you.
15:02Catch up on your sleet.
15:04I will try my best.
15:06And I appreciate the time with you guys.
15:08You take care of yourselves.
15:09Continue success to all.
15:10The great Charles Davis NFL Network, NFL and CBS all over the place here on your Home of the Cowboys.
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