Frank SchwabSenior writerSat, April 25, 2026 at 11:06 PM UTC·23 min readDay 1 winners | Day 1 losers | Day 2 winners | Day 2 losers | Day 3 winners | Day 3 losers
The Las Vegas Raiders started the NFL Draft with a free square on the bingo card. Selecting Fernando Mendoza with the No. 1 pick was obvious, and the right move.
The challenge is what the Raiders did after that. Teams that draft first typically have several needs, and the Raiders had plenty.
Las Vegas, which had a strong free agency period, followed it up with a draft that will get some good grades.
Safety Treydan Stukes was a hot name in the lead-up to the draft, and the Raiders got him in the second round. They helped both lines with edge defender Keyron Crawford and guard Trey Zuhn III in the third round. Then Day 3 brought some more interesting picks.
Cornerback Jermod McCoy was a worthwhile gamble to start the fourth round. If his knee is healthy, he has first-round talent. There are plenty of questions about McCoy’s knee but the Raiders taking a high-ceiling player is reasonable. Then the Raiders took athletic running back Mike Washington Jr., giving Ashton Jeanty an exciting backup. In the fifth round they worked on the secondary, picking Arizona safety Dalton Johnson and Cal cornerback Hezekiah Masses.
The Raiders’ future won’t be dictated by mid-round picks or even any of the many players they acquired in free agency. It will be about Mendoza and his development. He gives the Raiders hope for the future. And if he develops, he might have plenty of help after the Raiders took a step in their rebuild this offseason.
Here are the other winners and losers from the 2026 NFL Draft, broken down by day.
Dallas Cowboys: Just about everyone knows how long it has been since the Dallas Cowboys have been to the NFC championship game. It’s brought up all the time.
What doesn’t get mentioned enough, as people fire off jokes about team owner Jerry Jones, is that the Cowboys have hit some absolute home runs in the NFL Draft. And they did it again Thursday night.
Dallas played the first night of the draft better than anyone. It helped to have two first-round picks, as a result of the debatable decision to trade Micah Parsons, but the Cowboys maximized those selections. It included taking a prospect who might end up being the best player in the draft.
The Cowboys saw Ohio State safety Caleb Downs slipping, so they made a low-cost trade to move up one spot to No. 11 and take him. They traded picks 177 and 180 overall to the Miami Dolphins. They’d make that up later.
With Downs, the Cowboys got a player some analysts (including Yahoo Sports’ Charles McDonald) thought was the best prospect in the draft. He is a versatile safety who can impact the game from all over the field. It’s hard to see him being a bust. Here’s what McDonald said before the draft about Downs, who could turn into the next Kyle Hamilton, a great safety who slipped because safeties are still undervalued in the NFL:
Downs has been arguably the best defensive back in college football since his freshman year at Alabama. He won’t be the first pick in the draft because safeties tend to slide on draft day, but he has all the skills and smarts to immediately be one of the better safeties in the league from Day 1 with upside to be an elite, premier player in the league.
To get Downs without having to give up any valuable draft capital was an absolute steal. We could look back on that as the best pick of this draft, especially in terms of value.
And if that’s all the Cowboys did, it would have been a good night. Dallas wasn’t done. The Cowboys traded down three spots with the Eagles from No. 20 to No. 23, collecting picks 114 and 137 while shipping off a seventh-rounder (218th overall). The Cowboys moved up to No. 11 in the first round and somehow, by the end of the round, ended up with better draft capital than they started with. That’s how you work a draft.
With the 23rd pick, the Cowboys drafted UCF defensive end Malachi Lawrence, a big and explosive edge rusher who can help right away.
The Cowboys have done well to fix their defense this offseason, starting with firing coordinator Matt Eberflus and hiring Eagles passing game coordinator and defensive backs coach Christian Parker to replace him. They have added defensive ends Rashan Gary and Lawrence, safeties Jalen Thompson and Downs, and get a full season from defensive tackle Quinnen Williams. The Cowboys’ offense will be very good as long as George Pickens is engaged on the franchise tag, and certainly that’s a concern. But if that works itself out and the defensive additions click, the Cowboys will be dangerous.
Dallas hasn’t had ultimate success in a long, long time. Cowboys haters will remind you often that the 1995 season was the last time they reached the conference championship round. But they usually do pretty well in the draft, and they nailed it Thursday night.
Ty Simpson: The Los Angeles Rams’ side of the Simpson pick will be debated. They could have taken someone who would help them now as they chase a Super Bowl. Simpson had just one season of being a starter in college and there were plenty of questions about his ceiling as a prospect.