List of Dallas Cowboys first-round draft picks

The Dallas Cowboys are professional American football team based in Dallas, Texas. The Cowboys team is a franchise of the National Football League (NFL) and plays in the East Division of the National Football Conference. The first draft in which the Cowboys participated was the 1961 NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting, more commonly known as the NFL Draft. In the NFL Draft, each NFL franchise annually adds new players to its roster. Teams are ranked in reverse order based on their records during the previous season, therefore the team with the worst record selects first. There are two exceptions to this order: the Super Bowl champion from the previous season selects last, and the Super Bowl runner-up selects second to last. Teams have the option of trading away their selections to other teams for different selections, players, cash, or any combination thereof. It is common, therefore, for the actual draft selection of a team to differ from their initial assigned draft selection or for a team to have either extra selections or no selections in any round because of such trades.