If there is one area of the Cowboys offense where we can give something of a thumbs-up, it would have to be the receiving corps. Sure, there are questions—CeeDee Lamb has not had training camp, the depth is thin—but at least Lamb has a contract and the guy they wanted to see win the No. 3 job, Jalen Tolbert, played well over the past two months.
In fact, Tolbert could be one of the players most worth monitoring in the opening weeks of this NFL season. The Cowboys are hoping he is primed, as he enters Year 3 having not produced much in his first two seasons, for a breakout year.
There are indications that could happen. Tolbert has spent the summer trying to latch on to quarterback Dak Prescott as much as possible, in hopes of developing a rapport with the quarterback. That’s never a bad strategy for a young receiver, especially as he steps into the No. 3 role that had been held by Michael Gallup, who had not meshed with Prescott lately, was released and later retired.
Much will be expected of Tolbert. And in a “bold” prediction about the upcoming season, the guys at the “Locked on Cowboys” podcast foresee not only a Tolbert breakout, but a shift in the depth chart, with Tolbert overtaking Brandin Cooks, a player who has posted six 1,000-yard seasons in his career, as the team’s No. 2 receiver.
‘Jalen Tolbert Ends Up Being WR2’
It’s not an outrageous notion. As host Marcus Mosher laid out in the podcast episode entitled, “6 BOLD Predictions For 2024 Dallas Cowboys Including Pro Bowl RB Rico Dowdle?!?” the fact that Cooks turns 31 this month, will be a free agent next year (he is in the final season of a two-year, $40 million contract he signed with the Texans before he was traded to Dallas) and averaged a career-low 41.4 yards per game in 2023 sets up his role to be ripe for the plucking.
“I think Jalen Tolbert ends up being the wide receiver 2 for this team, and it’s a couple different reasons why,” Mosher said. “No. 1, I think we’re going to see Jalen Tolbert have a breakout season. We saw it at times last year, we saw him have a really good training camp, really good preseason and the regular season stuff got better as the year went along.
The Cowboys essentially gave him the preseason off, which suggests he is ready for a big role. Going into Year 3. I just think, in a McCarthy offense where everybody needs to move around, CeeDee moves around, I think Tolbert’s flexibility and versatility makes a lot of sense. On top of that, Brandin Cooks is older, he is dealing with a knee injury, it makes sense to scale back some of Brandin Cooks’ work and not have him on the field for 60, 65, 70 snaps a game.”
Cowboys Hoping for a Step Forward
There is reason for caution, too, though. Last year, Tolbert had the opportunity to seize the No. 3 receiver’s job, but did not do so. After getting single-digit snap counts in five of the first six weeks of the season, Tolbert topped 20 snaps every week from there, but still wound up with just 22 catches, 268 yards and 35 targets on the year.
There’s still growth needed for Tolbert to make the leap in the Cowboys offense.
To Cooks’ credit, while he is certainly not about to cede his job on the field, he has been supportive of Tolbert off the field.
“The way that he’s able to talk about a route or the way he’s able to tell the quarterback the way he sees things, he’s not shy anymore,” Cooks said early in the offseason, per NFL.com. “He’s able to go up to Dak (Prescott) and say, ‘Hey, I seen it this way,’ and it’s awesome to see him grow in that aspect.
“He’s ready to go. Whatever the expectation is for him out there, I’m telling you he’s going to crush it. He’s ready.”
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