IRVING, Texas -- Several weeks ago, Dallas Cowboys scouting director Will McClay answered his office phone one afternoon and found himself talking to a stranger.

The young man implored McClay to give his brother, a receiver from tiny Southwest Minnesota State, a tryout. Like he usually does, McClay listened for a couple of minutes and told the stranger to email him some video.

The phone call translated into a tryout for Anthony Dean and, perhaps, a training camp roster spot, depending on which free agents the Cowboys sign after Thursday’s NFL draft.

"That’s my background from arena ball, where you’re trying to find players everywhere -- and you just never know where you’re going to find players," McClay said. "If you’ve been doing it long enough, you can take a quick peek and it doesn’t take you long to be able to say this guy is or isn’t."

McClay's approach to scouting has hastened his ascent within the Cowboys’ organization, and is why he's on the short list of scouting and personnel directors in line to become a general manager sooner rather than later.

The Cowboys hired him from the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2002 to coach their Arena League franchise and work in the pro personnel department during the Dallas Desperados offseason. Now, he's about to lead his third draft.

"This was right after 9/11 and my mom was sick and I wanted to get closer to home," McClay said of getting hired by the Cowboys, "but the NFL is the Holy Grail, and I had worked to get to that point. I didn’t want to just say I’m just an Arena League coach."

The Cowboys' first-round picks the past two years have been Zack Martin, a Pro Bowler each of his first two seasons, and defensive back Byron Jones, who had a solid rookie season, but it’s too early to definitively grade those drafts in their entirety.

More important than the past two drafts, McClay has stabilized the organization's scouting process after the

embarrassment of 2013. That's when the Cowboys had Florida defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd as a top-five pick in the draft at a position of need.

Yet, they passed on Floyd, trading down and eventually taking Pro Bowl center Travis Frederick in the first round. The pick turned out well, but it displayed flaws in the Cowboys’ scouting process. A disconnect no longer exists between the Cowboys’ coaching and scouting staffs. Credit McClay for that.

"Personnel is a very collaborative effort -- ownership, coaches, personnel guys -- and you have a lot of conversations about every guy you’re thinking about bringing in here," Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett said. "Will does a really good job facilitating all of that communication and making sure we’re all on the same page as far as how we see the player and what his role will be, and that’s invaluable."

He’s spent countless hours watching video and talking to coaches to find out the traits and skills they covet most in each position group. For example, defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli wants defensive tackles with a dynamic first-step that allows him to be disruptive player.

When a new coach joins the staff, McClay studies that coach’s most successful players and he'll talk to him about the players he's enjoyed coaching the most.

"I like to see where they’ve been, what kind of players they’ve had. I like to hear about their old players and talk about football: what they like and didn’t like. All of that is valuable."

It takes a strong personality to successfully work with owner Jerry Jones, because the force of his personality can dominate a conversation or debate. McClay doesn’t shrink when challenged. He’s not happy just to have the position, he wants to be a difference-maker.

It's one of the reasons Martin is a member of the Cowboys and Johnny Manziel isn't.

"Will doesn’t do a lot of yelling," director of player personnel Stephen Jones said. "He's a grinder. He'll just make you keep watching tape until you come around to his side, no matter how long it takes."

See, scouting isn’t an emotional experience; it’s pragmatic. It’s about seeing a player perform on video and projecting that performance into a particular offensive or defensive scheme.

You see the player perform -- or struggle -- and you point it out as many times as it takes in as many different games to prove a point. When you do that, the loudest voice becomes irrelevant.

"We get pissed off at each other, but if you’re in this together and you’re brothers and you’re family," said McClay, "then you argue about it, and then you come to a conclusion through those arguments. It’s just about grinding it out. You have to have the backbone to stand up, and you have to stand up for what your opinion is, and if people don’t agree that’s fine.

"I’m not always right. Scouts aren’t always right. Coaches aren’t always right, but as long as we can look at the full picture -- and we all look at the picture the same way -- let’s come to a conclusion. My job, our job in scouting, is to give the Joneses the most unbiased information we can give them and they make that decision."

Maybe, the Joneses will make a decision on whether Dean makks the team a few months from now.