Cowboys news: Jake Ferguson looking to turn the corner in 2025

After down year, Cowboys tight end Jake Ferguson’s confidence remains high – Nick Harris, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
This offense can be special if the Dallas Cowboys can get Jake Ferguson going this year.

By all measures, the 2024 season from Dallas Cowboys tight end Jake Ferguson was a letdown.

Although there was little to no consistency around him on a team that sputtered across the finish line with a 7-10 record, the expectations for Ferguson were much higher going into his third season after a Pro Bowl performance in 2023 that saw him shine as a reliable offensive weapon for quarterback Dak Prescott.

“I definitely wasn’t satisfied with how I played all last year,” Ferguson said during the team’s offseason program.

Ferguson suffered a knee sprain in the team’s week one win over the Cleveland Browns that forced him to miss the following week’s game against the New Orleans Saints. Two months later, he suffered a concussion that forced him to miss two more contests. With a quarterback change in the middle of that stretch after Prescott’s season-ending injury, consistency was never built for the Wisconsin product. He finished the year with 59 receptions for 494 yards and zero touchdowns, all down from his breakout 2023 campaign.

“My knee hurt, for sure,” Ferguson said. “The concussion was weird. But I’ve said this before, if I’m on the field, I should be able to give it my all. I don’t think I’ve ever played a full season and not scored a touchdown. That was something that I came into this offseason really working on. Just trying to really dial in on those things.”

Going into the 2025 season healthy and with his starting quarterback back in the fold, Ferguson said that he’s learned from what went wrong last season.

“That’s the game of football, not everything is going to go perfect,” he said. “Personally, I’m putting that in the past and I know now what I have to work on.”

His approach to the offseason after a down year has caught the attention of the coaching staff around him going into training camp in Oxnard, Calif., next month.

“I think last year was a fluke [for Ferguson],” head coach Brian Schottenheimer said. “He definitely dealt with some stuff that was hard for him. Jake’s always motivated. Jake is one of those tone setters who just plays the right way. But the look in his eyes and the way his body looks, in terms of physique, and the way he’s moving has been noticeably different in a good way.”

A round of golf with the Cowboys’ specialists: How their bond goes beyond football – Tommy Yarrish, DallasCowboys.com
Is this the coolest special teams unit in Cowboys history? Could be.

“Love keeping the crew together on the field is the first, most important thing,” Aubrey said. “We’ve got a good thing going, would be sad to start from scratch. So to have the operation intact is fantastic, and then obviously love hanging out with these guys, so anytime we get a chance to hang out off the field, it’s a lot of fun.”

In their eyes, a lot of what they do as specialists is built on trust. From Sieg getting the snap correct, to Anger getting the punt away and the hold down on field goals, and Aubrey splitting it through the uprights, the time they’ve spent together in the last three seasons has helped build a dynamic that’s tough to interfere with.

“Just knowing that we can trust each other both on and off the field, it means a lot,” Sieg said. “I know Bryan’s got my back, I know Brandon’s got my back, and they know I have theirs. I think that does definitely carry over onto the field, just knowing no matter what happens, we’ll get through it.”

For the first time since they’ve been together, they’ll bring that trust to a new special teams coordinator as Nick Sorensen joined Brian Schottenheimer’s staff in the role this offseason, replacing John “Bones” Fassel.

With the amount of success the three have had together, there isn’t a lot that Sorensen needs to change, but it is nice to get a different perspective on their operation and how it can be better.

“It’s always good to have a new, fresh set of eyes just to see things and help out from a different perspective,” Anger said. “It’s always good to have a change up and have his point of view.”

Dallas Cowboys’ first-rounder leans on fellow Alabama alumni in preparing for the NFL – Mark Inabinett, AL.com
Alabama’s pipeline of players to the NFL speaks for itself.

Dallas selected Booker from Alabama at No. 12 in the NFL Draft on April 24.

“The one thing that has surprised me?” Booker said on Wednesday, repeating a reporter’s question about his first seven weeks in the NFL. “Nothing really. I feel like I’ve really been prepared for this stage when I got in Alabama. And I’m not saying that like I know everything and I’m arrogant. Like, OK, I know everything to expect. But, to this point, really haven’t been surprised because I’ve had a lot of great leadership from my coaches and even some of my former teammates of what it’s like to be on this level.”

One of those former teammates has been Tennessee Titans offensive tackle JC Latham. Latham preceded Booker in making the transition from the Crimson Tide to the NFL by a year. The Titans picked Latham at No. 7 in the 2024 NFL Draft, and he played every Tennessee offensive snap as a rookie.

“That’s one of my best friends in the world,” Booker said. “We’ve gone to high school and college together. So just asking him, ‘OK, how was your first OTA? How was your first rookie minicamp? How was your first minicamp?’ So just asking him a bunch of questions. And that’s somebody that I essentially grew up with, and I trust him a lot, so to have somebody who I’m so close with go through this experience before, it’s really helpful.”

Booker said the lessons learned from his coaches on the way to the NFL also had helped keep him from being overwhelmed by the pro game.

“The more you know football, the slower the game becomes, and, especially at this level, the game moves so fast,” Booker said, “So you have to make sure that, obviously, you know what’s going on as far as, like, what the offense is doing, but you also have to have a good idea of what the defense is going to do. And that’s something I’m still trying to learn and pick up on.

Cowboys do not have a second-round pick they can depend on right now – RJ Ochoa, Blogging the Boys
Second-round picks have been the one dark spot around Will McClay’s drafts.

Consider the last 10 players who the Cowboys picked in the second round, not including this year’s selection in Donovan Ezeiruaku as he has yet to play for the team:

2015: Randy Gregory

2016: Jaylon Smith

2017: Chidobe Awuzie

2018: Connor Williams

2019: Trysten Hill

2020: Trevon Diggs

2021: Kelvin Joseph

2022: Sam Williams

2023: Luke Schoonmaker

2024: Marshawn Kneeland

As noted there are players here who helped the team in some regard. Randy Gregory had his moments and Jaylon Smith was great across the 2018 season specifically. Chidobe Awuzie was a serviceable player and Connor Williams was a very solid return on investment.

Those are some of the older picks on this list, though. Consider that Trevon Diggs, by far the most successful of any player here, received a second contract from the team, but he was the first second-round pick to do so since Jaylon Smith almost a decade ago. What’s more is that there are a lot of Cowboys fans who want to see the team move on from that contract.

We have noted many times over the years that the foundation of an NFL roster is built across the draft as a whole and that hitting on these picks is absolutely critical. Training camp is a little over a month away and when it begins there is not a player who the Cowboys drafted in the second round themselves, again acknowledging that Ezeiruaku is in his own box in this sense, that they can reliably depend on.

Is there potential among the team’s second-rounders this year? Absolutely. Marshawn Kneeland may turn into the edge rusher opposite of Micah Parsons for all we know. Once upon a time we may have thought this about Sam Williams, but returning from a torn ACL means we have to temper expectations there.

Consider that last week there was a little bit of buzz around one of last year’s UDFAs in tight end Brevyn Spann-Ford. There was a report from the team’s minicamp that BSF was commanding some snaps with the ones. This immediately led to people panicking over the state of Jake Ferguson and worrying that he may not be properly in line as the team’s starting tight end, but at the risk of being overly-dramatic, what does that say about Luke Schoonmaker if Spann-Ford is worth getting that look? Again, nobody is trying to make anything mountain-like out of the mole hill that is a report from a mandatory minicamp in June, but you get the overall point.