Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE

I’ve never met Cole Beasley.  I had never heard of him until the Dallas Cowboys signed him as an undrafted rookie receiver out of SMU earlier this summer.  But, now more than ever he alone may best define the state of the Dallas Cowboys.  Let me explain.

Beasley began turning heads in OTAs.  He is small at 5’9″ but his quickness, his knack for finding the open spot, and his sure hands had many leaping to make Wes Welker comparisons.  To his credit, even he balked at that.  But, he continued to impress in the early part of training camp and most coaches and writers began to talk about him in terms of being “hard to cut” from the final 53.  I saw some recent tape of Cowboys practices and #14 easily stood out.  “Who is that?”, I kept asking myself realizing it was Beasley only after I went and looked his number up.

The Cowboys had a chance in 2008 to sign a similar type receiver in Danny Amendola but cut him and signed him to the practice squad instead.  After a stint on the Eagles practice squad, he finally caught on with the St. Louis Rams in 2009.  He played in 14 games in 2009 and all 16 games in 2010 recording 85 receptions and 3 touchdowns in addition to returning punts and kickoffs.  (By comparison, last year’s surprise Laurent Robinson only caught 54 balls).  Amendola was hurt and placed on IR early in the 2011 season.   He may not be a Wes Welker (who is?), but there is clearly a place in the NFL for a quick, smaller, shifty, sure handed slot receiver that can get lost in the defensive secondary.  They are possession receivers that won’t outrun too many players to score on a 75-yard bomb, but they will get you a lot of critical first downs.

Beasley might just be that guy – or at least many were beginning to believe he could be.  Then, suddenly and inexplicably he decided to quit football and the Dallas Cowboys sometime early on Friday August 3rd for “personal reasons”.  Let that sink in a moment.  He – quit - the – Dallas - Cowboys…  How many of us Cowboy fans would literally give significant parts of our own bodies to strap on a real Cowboys helmet and jersey just once and run around on the field?  They would have to drag me away kicking and screaming!  If you assume that each NFL team on average has 10 receivers in camp among the 90 players on the roster, then his spot on the Cowboys was one of 320 spots in the whole wide world.  That shrinks to one in about 128 spots once the final rosters are decided.  Quit?  Personal reasons?  What could that possibly be?  If you played college football, then playing in the NFL is the dream of most talented players.  It was within Beasley’s grasp. (more…)

Maybe.  The Cowboys obviously valued Smith above that of the other first round tackles, Anthony Costanzo, Gabe Carimi, James Carpenter, Derrek Sherrod, and Nate Solder.  Smith will not simply be compared to his fellow tackles, but also to the potential player the Cowboys could have received if they had traded down to the 16th spot in the draft (with a 2nd round pick as compensation).  Afterall, the only offensive lineman taken between spots 9 and 16 was Mike Pouncey, a center/guard.  It is possible Smith would have still been available.  However, the Patriots were sitting at 17 and did pick a tackle.  If they had a preference for Smith, it would not have been outside the realm of reason to believe they would have traded up into the 15th spot.  Consequently, the Cowboys may have been wise to take Smith at 9 rather than gamble against Belichick and the Patriots.

The NFL can often be like grade school.  If you are going to cheat off someone’s test, you look at the smart kid’s paper – not your buddy who played X-box with you in lieu of studying.  In this regard, the Patriots and Colts have had the most prolonged success in recent memory and both selected a tackle to protect their franchise quarterbacks.  While we cannot be certain whether either team had Smith ahead of their respective picks, we can presume that there wasn’t that substantial of a drop off in talent level.

We all know that football players are not all created equal.  Unfortunately we will not know whether Smith’s actual value was substantially higher than Solder or Costanzo until 2014.