With the 40th pick of Pride of Detroit's 2011 NFL Mock Draft, the Dallas Cowboys select UCLA safety Rahim Moore. Jerry Mallory is serving as the Cowboys' general manager, and his reasoning for the pick is below.
This was a tough decision, but we've decided to draft safety Rahim Moore out of UCLA. We've already bolstered our secondary by drafting Prince Amukamara and could use help at defensive end and on the offensive line. However, Moore's talent is too much to pass on at this point. He's the highest rated safety and in our opinion grades out to first-round talent. Gerald Sensabaugh may not be coming back and Alan Ball has not shown us to have NFL starter abilities. Getting beat deep as much as we did last year is in part due to poor safety play.
We looked long at Allen Bailey, who is a 3-4 DE and plays a position of need, but he is a tweener and not overly dominant from a physical run support standpoint or as a pass rusher (can you say Robert Ayers?). We also considered the beast Marcus Cannon, who can play OT or OG and has tons of size at 360 pounds, but we ranked seventh overall in offense last year (seventh in passing and 16th in rushing). Although we do want to upgrade the line, it's still not as dire a need as our putrid secondary, even after acquiring Prince. We have not given our DBs a complete makeover and feel we've made our biggest weakness a potentially dominant strength for years to come.
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Check out the 2011 Pride of Detroit Community Mock Draft tracker for a look at all of the picks.