and New Orleans Saints squared off. That’s forever.The last meeting between the two teams came early on in the 2015 season. Tony Romo was injured so Brandon Weeden started at quarterback https://www.dallascowboysfanshop.com/Demarcus-Lawrence-Jersey , and he actually hit Terrance Williams for a game-tying touchdown that sent the game to overtime. Dallas lost on the second play thanks to C.J. Spiller. That was the last time that the Cowboys played the NFC South, and fate didn’t draw them together since then. As the Cowboys are playing that division again this season it means a matchup against the Saints is happening, the first in the Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott era.Dak Prescott has called Drew Brees his idol beforeConsidering he grew up and went to high school in Louisiana it’s not hard to believe that Dak is a huge fan of Saints quarterback Drew Brees. Prescott was in high school in 2009 when New Orleans won Super Bowl XLIV and Brees was named MVP of the game. Since he’s gotten into the NFL we’ve seen Dak speak highly of Brees.As Thursday marks their first meeting against one another it’s not like Prescott has had an enormous amount of time to hang out with or around Brees. They did both make the Pro Bowl following the 2016 season and back then Dak was quoted as trying to shadow Brees to learn as much as possible from him.A few months later when the not-at-all-questionable and super accurate NFL Top 100 list came out, Prescott was included in the package centered around Brees. It was then that he referred to him as one of his idols.Due to NFL scheduling and the way things have worked out, Dak Prescott has played 14 of the non-Cowboys NFC teams so far throughout his career. Obviously he’s faced off against division rivals numerous times, in 2016 he faced the NFC North, and last season he faced the NFC West. The Cowboys are halfway through the NFC South this season but Dak has played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before (the Zeke kettle game).It’s funny that New Orleans might have been the game that Prescott is looking forward to most as a professional as it would feature his idol Brees and that they are literally the last NFC team for him to face.Stephen Jones: We’ve had an extended amount of success with our number one draft picks There are definitely things to be proud of during the Jason Garrett era of the Dallas Cowboys, and how they’ve drafted in the first round is high atop that list. Dallas has landed Tyron Smith, Morris Claiborne (it got nice at the end) Ibraheim Campbell Jersey , Travis Frederick, Zack Martin, Byron Jones, Ezekiel Elliott, Taco Charlton, and now Leighton Vander Esch in the first round over the last eight years. The four that can were all given second contracts with the team, although obviously Mo Claiborne’s was of the one-year variety. What’s more is the Cowboys already picked up Byron Jones’ fifth-year option and will very likely do with Zeke come the offseason (unbelievable how time flies). You can practically bet your bottom dollar on the Cowboys finding elite talent in the first round, utilizing it well, and then paying them another handful of bottom dollars after their rookie contracts are up.This is an idea that Stephen Jones touched on during his appearance on the Rapsheet and Friends podcast with NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. Jump to the 10:50 mark to get straight to Stephen. “You want to pay your own guys”Rapoport asked Jones whether or not over his long tenure with the Cowboys if he had a favorite draft pick. Stephen’s answer helped reaffirm the Cowboys’ love for their first-rounders and how they want to pay their own.Stephen Jones prefers paying his own players over outside free agents and to be honest there’s logic to his thought process. You obviously know your own player coming off his rookie deal better than you’d know any other Allen Hurns Color Rush Jersey , but the point remains that sometimes you have to be willing to add outside talent.In a perfect world the Cowboys would continue to draft blue-chip prospects in every single round and would never need to acquire free agents from anywhere else so that they could completely maximize and exploit the rookie pay scale in the NFL. The reality is that this simply can’t be done, and while the Cowboys are definitely one of the teams who’s had success in the first-round year in and year out, there are other rounds to the draft. It’s about more than the very first card you turn in, not saying Stephen said otherwise, but that’s certainly a good building block.The Cowboys have every right to feel proud of what they’ve accomplished in the first round of the draft over almost the last decade. It’s about more than that, though. Hopefully we start to see that more soon.