In 2016, Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones spent 67 minutes on the phone calling nine teams trying to trade up for a quarterback. All nine said no, and Jerry just looked heartbroken, staring at this draft board. He stayed at pick no. 4, took running back Ezekiel Elliott, and spent a decade wondering what his roster could have looked like. The lesson that stayed with him that day was to call the right team.

On April 23rd, the first day of the 2026 NFL Draft, that team could be the Kansas City Chiefs, the team that didn’t have a first-rounder to trade back then.

NFL sportscaster Peter Schrager’s final mock draft just dropped, and has Dallas moving up to nine by swapping their picks 12 and 20 with the Chiefs. The Cowboys land Mansoor Delane, the LSU cornerback. The Chiefs get two first-rounders and use them on Miami’s defensive end Reuben Bain Jr. at 12, and Omar Cooper Jr. at 20. Both teams walk away with exactly what they needed. When I first read this scenario, the first thought that popped up in my head was: why hasn’t this been the lead story all week?

The draft blueprint for Dallas and Kansas City

Dallas doesn’t really have much of a choice here. With opponents bleeding the Cowboys for 377 yards per game and converting on a league-worst 47.3% of third downs last season, it’s no surprise that Jerry Jones has already declared his intention to trade up in the draft for defensive help. Schrager calls getting one of the top defensive prospects a “necessity,” and he is right.

“But there’s no guarantee any of them – Downs, Delane, Miami edge rusher Reuben Bain Jr., et al – will still be there at no. 12. This is a chance to guarantee getting one of them and still have another first-round pick. Delane’s coverage ability should help stop some of the big plays that doomed the Cowboys in 2025,” added Schrager.

But Dallas isn’t sacrificing the rest of its night to land just one player. Before the Cowboys-Chiefs conversation even begins, Kansas City had already made a separate deal in March with the Los Angeles Rams: trading cornerback Trent McDuffie to L.A. in exchange for a package that included pick no. 29. So when Dallas and Kansas City sit down to negotiate, KC has the flexibility to include pick 29 as part of the outgoing package back to Dallas.

The Cowboys don’t just move up three spots and absorb the cost. They move up three spots, trade two firsts, and get two firsts back the same night. Schrager’s mock has Dallas using pick 29 on Malachi Lawrence, the UCF edge rusher with seven sacks in 2025. Defense at 9, defense at 29, and Jerry Jones gets two starters in one night. The other half of Schrager’s argument is the cliff, and that’s the part I keep coming back to, especially because I’ve heard it before.

“Cowboys want one of the blue-chip defenders. They get one at 9; could miss out at 12,” Schrager wrote on X. “Chiefs want 2 starters. 12/20 gets them that. Draft ‘falls off a cliff’ a bit after top 20 when it comes to 1st round talent.”

EssentiallySports’ Tony Pauline also made the same argument weeks earlier on the DraftCast’s episode 14. He counts only 12 players in the entire class with genuine first-round grades. Normal drafts give you 18 to 24 of these grades. When the gap between talents in the first round is that steep, moving up three spots is just basic insurance. And Schrager isn’t the only one landing here either.

Draft analyst Mel Kiper’s latest mock also has Dallas moving to pick no. 6, trading with the Cleveland Browns to take Sonny Styles, the Ohio State linebacker. Different team, different player, but the conclusion remains the same. 

While the numbers make a strong case, the argument for trading with Kansas City specifically goes beyond the draft board, rooted in a 60-year relationship most people are glossing over.

Not just business, but a 60-year relationship

The Hunt-Jones relationship doesn’t start with Clark Hunt and Jerry Jones. It actually starts with a war.

When Lamar Hunt tried to get an NFL franchise in 1960, the league turned him down. But that wasn’t going to stop him. He then co-founded the American Football League in 1959 and called his team the Dallas Texans, but the league didn’t like it. The league responded by awarding an expansion team to businessman Clint Murchison Jr., and the Dallas Cowboys were born to cut off Hunt’s influence.

The Texans wore red and gold, so naturally the Cowboys chose blue and white to contrast. Cowboys’ tickets were $3.90, so the Texans responded with a $4 ticket. You get the idea. Hunt described what followed as a “holy war.” The Texans eventually won the AFL Championship in 1962, and Hunt decided to move the franchise to Kansas City and rebrand it as the Chiefs. The two franchises were built in direct opposition to each other. That’s the first part of the backstory. What happened next is the part that actually matters for the 2026 Draft.

After Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989, he and Lamar Hunt found enough common ground to build something that lasted decades, despite arguments on licensing deals and marketing rights. Jones described it himself in a 2025 NFL Films video.

“One of the neatest things that I was involved in for years was with Lamar Hunt,” Jones has said in the video. “Lamar said, ‘How would you like to do a circuit with me talking about an [original] owner and a founder, and you talking about a new owner coming in?’ So we would get up, and we would look like a vaudeville team up there, but we would be talking about the league and the positive effect of the merger.”

Not just business, this was two men who respected each other enough (and happened to be neighbors living on Preston Road) to travel the country telling their story together.

Clark Hunt carried that forward after Lamar passed away in 2006. The Preston Road Trophy – a physical award passed between the two franchises based on their head-to-head record – is still presented in person between the ownership families every year. This April, at the Sweetheart Ball, Clark Hunt personally handed Jerry Jones the trophy.

The reason I took a detour here is that it’s really important to know the history between these two franchises ahead of the draft. These are not two strangers negotiating a cold business deal; their relationship is sixty years old, crosses two generations, and has survived everything the NFL has thrown at both franchises. This is why the draft trade just fits between these two, and they even have precedents to make their case.

In 2023, the Chiefs sent Dallas pick No. 178 in a straight swap for a 2024 selection. Small detail, but both front offices have already sat at the same table without any drama. As for the Chiefs specifically, they’ve made first-round trades in each of the last two drafts (seven in the last ten drafts). Moving back three sports to collect an impact player is simply standard procedure for them at this point. Together, it’s a win-win.

Why both teams walk away clean

Kansas City’s position is simple: with franchise quarterback Patrick Mahomes coming off a torn ACL and a lost season, the team must address real gaps in the receiver room and find a new cornerstone for the defense. A trade that lands them both Bain Jr. at 12 and Cooper Jr. at 20 would solve both problems in one fell swoop.

Bain Jr. had 9.5 sacks last season at Miami and could easily slot in opposite George Karlaftis on the defensive line, searching for a credible second edge threat. Bain is a day-one starter who gives Mahomes–whenever he comes back–a defense capable of protecting a lead.

Omar Cooper Jr., at 20, addresses the other side of it. He caught 13 touchdowns for 937 yards while helping No. 1 draft prospect, quarterback Fernando Mendoza, to a 16-0 record and the CFP National Championship.

Schrager notes comparisons with Deebo Samuel for his “toughness and versatility.” Omar ran a 4.42 40-yard dash at the Combine and is known for “good contact-balance to absorb hits and keep working upfield,” per Bleacher Report’s scouting report. Mahomes has always been at his best with a hybrid weapon in that mold, someone who keeps defenses from loading the box and gives opposing defenses a new problem to solve on every snap.

As for Dallas, I’m confused as to why people keep framing it as the Cowboys giving up too much. They’re not!

Dallas moves up three spots on the defensive player whose entire scheme rebuild depends on, and they still come away with a starting-caliber edge rusher at 29. This is exactly how smart teams use a thin draft class: bet big at the top, take what the board gives you late, and stop pretending 12 and 20 carry equal value in a year where talent dries up after pick 20 anyway.

Mansoor Delane at pick 9 is the kind of cornerback Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker’s 3-4 reset needs. His scheme asks boundary corners to handle one-on-one coverage so the safeties can rotate freely. Inside The Star’s breakdown of his coaching history found he consistently gravitates towards corners who are 6-foot-plus, built to press, and capable of playing multiple coverages.

Delane is the kind of corner who makes life miserable before the ball is even in the air. He gets his hands on receivers at the line, cuts off their release, and is already flowing with the route before the break happens. When the quarterback throws, he smothers the catch-point, and when he does let a receiver make the catch, he wraps up and ends the play instantly. At 6-foot-1, he fits Parker’s bill perfectly.

Malachi Lawrence at pick 29 rounds out the night for Dallas. He had seven sacks at UCF and has seen his draft stock rise steadily over the past months. He’s not Bain Jr., but he is a starting-caliber edge rusher in the back half of round one. In a 3-4 base that needs multiple pass-rush threats to function, he is the depth that makes the whole defensive package work.

Jerry Jones spent 67 minutes calling nine teams in 2016 and got nothing. This time, the ideal trade partner already has his number, has traded with him before, shares a relationship built across six decades, and needs exactly what Dallas is offering. Now, he just needs to make that phone call.