Dallas Cowboys mining WR prospects at Pro Days

After spending Wednesday watching Alabama wide receiver Calvin Ridley, several members of the Dallas Cowboys staff were among those who attended the SMU Pro Day to take a look at wide receiver Courtland Sutton.

The Cowboys signed wide receivers Allen Hurns and Deonte Thompson in free agency recently, but owner Jerry Jones said the team still might take a wide receiver in the draft.

The Cowboys own the 19th overall selection.

It is unclear whether Ridley will be available when the Cowboys pick. He is ranked as the top wide receiver prospect in the draft and the No. 16 prospect overall by NFLDraftScout.com.

Rob Rang projects that Ridley will be taken by the Baltimore Ravens with the 16th overall pick in his NFLDraftScout.com mock draft, but his counterpart at NFLDraftScout.com, Dane Brugler, projects that he will go to the Cowboys with that No. 19 pick.

If Ridley is off the board, Sutton will almost certainly be available to the Cowboys. NFLDraftScout.com ranks him at the fifth-best wide receiver prospect and the 53rd-best prospect overall while projecting him as a second-round selection.

The key members of the Cowboys contingent on hand at SMU were head coach Jason Garrett and wide receivers coach Sanjay Lal.

"He can catch the ball like no other," Lal said of Sutton, according to Pro Football Talk. "He's got a huge catch radius. Strong hands. So that's a start. If a receiver can catch, obviously that's key. Then, he's coachable. We were giving him, on the fly, some coaching points and kind of coaching him a little hard, seeing how he would respond, and he responded. He's not polished like most of these guys coming out, but a great athlete, and he's a moldable piece of clay."

Sutton did not run a 40-yard dash Thursday, after timing 4.54 at the Combine. But he performed position drills with Garrett and Lal leading the workout and coaching him along the way.

"That was a blessing to have coach Garrett there, an NFL coach to coach you up," Sutton told Pro Football Talk. "He kind of asked before the workout, he said, 'You want me just to sit back and watch you and let you do what you want to, or do you want me to coach?' I said, 'Coach, I'd love for you to coach me.' That's something a lot of people don't get a chance to do, and to have someone of his caliber out here willing to coach me and go with the drills was a blessing."

"He was tearing us up," SMU receiver Trey Quinn told the Dallas Morning News regarding Garrett's coaching.

Quinn is ranked the 19th-best wide receiver prospect by NFLDraftScout.com.

"I really just want to know where I'm going to be at," Sutton said, per the Morning News. "Right now it's like a limbo. I need one team to love me."

It remains to be seen whether the Cowboys are that team.