Draft Redo · Dallas Cowboys · Written Friday, October 16, 2026
16 Teams Passed on CeeDee Lamb in 2020. Here’s How Every One of Those Picks Aged. [Draft Redo]
Dallas had him sixth on its board and got him at 17. We went back through all 16 picks ahead of him, ranked every first-round receiver from that class, and checked in on Lamb before Sunday night in Green Bay.
On April 23, 2020, the first round of the NFL Draft went 16 picks without anybody taking CeeDee Lamb. Two receivers went ahead of him. Dallas, sitting at 17, had Lamb rated as the sixth-best player on its entire board and turned down as many as three trade offers to move back. Jerry Jones explained it simply: “He trumped them. He earned the pick.”
Six seasons later, the result is easy to grade. Lamb has 7,923 career receiving yards, five straight 1,000-yard seasons and the two biggest single-season receiving records in Cowboys history. So we graded everyone else. Below are all 16 picks that came before him, what became of each one, and whether that team would take Lamb instead if it could do the night over.
The Board: Would They Take Lamb Now?
“Keep the pick” means the team got what it needed. “Take Lamb” means it would trade places with Dallas today. One pick gets no grade, for reasons that have nothing to do with football.
The tally is 9 for Lamb, 6 keeps and 1 no grade. The keeps are not close calls. Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert are franchise quarterbacks, Tristan Wirfs has a Super Bowl ring and two first-team All-Pro selections, and Andrew Thomas, Derrick Brown and A.J. Terrell all earned big second contracts. The other nine picks were traded, released, moved on from or, in Jerry Jeudy’s case, sent to Cleveland for a fifth and a sixth. Seven of the nine have played for at least three teams.
The Receivers Who Went Around Him
The one receiver from 2020 with more yards than Lamb went five picks after him. Justin Jefferson has 8,480 yards through six seasons and the 2022 Offensive Player of the Year award, which says as much about the 21 picks ahead of Jefferson as anything else. Philadelphia took Jalen Reagor one pick earlier.
Behind those two, the gap is enormous. Lamb finished 2025 with 2,532 more career yards than Jerry Jeudy, the third-best receiver in the class, who was taken two spots ahead of him. Brandon Aiyuk had a 1,342-yard season in 2023, then tore his ACL and MCL in October 2024 and did not play in 2025.
Six Seasons Later
| Season | Catches | Yards | TD |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 74 | 935 | 5 |
| 2021 | 79 | 1,102 | 6 |
| 2022 | 107 | 1,359 | 9 |
| 2023 | 135 | 1,749 | 12 |
| 2024 | 101 | 1,194 | 6 |
| 2025 | 75 | 1,077 | 3 |
| 2026 (5 games) | 39 | 507 | 4 |
| Career | 610 | 7,923 | 45 |
The peak was 2023: 135 catches and 1,749 yards, both NFL highs that season, both breaking Michael Irvin’s Cowboys records, and a first-team All-Pro selection. In August 2024, after a holdout, he signed a four-year, $136 million extension with $100 million guaranteed. He has made five Pro Bowls. The quietest year on the list, 2025, still produced 1,077 yards in 14 games after a high ankle sprain cost him three of them.
This Season, and Sunday Night in Green Bay
The 2026 season has been Lamb at both extremes. In Week 4 he caught 17 passes for 189 yards and the game-winning touchdown against Houston. Four days later he left the Thursday loss to Tampa Bay with a bruised quad after two catches for 9 yards. Through five games he has 39 catches, 507 yards and 4 touchdowns.
The quad looks fine. He practiced in full on Wednesday and Thursday and said the long break after a Thursday game helped: “As far as the extra days [off], I took advantage immediately.” Dallas (2-3) plays at Green Bay (3-2) on Sunday at 8:20 p.m. Eastern on NBC, against a Packers team that just beat Chicago 31-7. Lamb needs 77 yards to reach 8,000 for his career.
Sixteen teams picked before Dallas, and by our count 9 of them would take CeeDee Lamb if they could do it again. Six got exactly what they needed, Joe Burrow and Tristan Wirfs above all. One receiver from that class has more yards than Lamb, and he went five picks later. Six seasons in, the player the Cowboys never thought they would get has 7,923 receiving yards, and a good Sunday night in Green Bay puts him past 8,000.
If you were one of the people yelling at your TV when Dallas made the pick, the CeeDee Lamb shirt in Planet Euphoria’s CeeDee Lamb lineup is original hand-drawn art, not a name-and-number print. It sits next to a CeeDee Lamb Fat Head design, and every shirt is hand-printed to order in Schenectady, New York and numbered out of 500.
Both Lamb designs plus the receiver he is chasing, hand-drawn, hand-printed to order in Schenectady, New York, and numbered out of 500.
CeeDee Lamb V2
CeeDee Lamb Fat Head
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CeeDee Lamb and the 2020 Draft: Your Questions, Answered
What pick was CeeDee Lamb in the 2020 NFL Draft?
Which receivers were drafted in the first round in 2020?
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Draft order, trades and first-round receivers per the 2020 NFL Draft record. Cowboys draft-night details per NFL.com and CBS Sports reporting from April 2020. Career statistics per each player’s season-by-season record through 2025; Lamb’s six season lines add up exactly to his published career total of 571 catches, 7,416 yards and 41 touchdowns, and his 2026 line is the sum of his five verified weekly lines. Jalen Reagor’s total runs through 2024, the last season with published figures. Career notes for the other 2020 picks per their published records, checked October 16, 2026. Practice status per NBC Sports and Newsweek. The “Keep the pick” and “Take Lamb” grades are editorial judgment based on each career to date, not a statistical model.