FRISCO, Texas – Coming off the best season of his career in 2024, Jalen Tolbert comes into his fourth NFL season looking to continue his upwards trend of year after year improvement. To keep that same trajectory, Tolbert's focused on staying consistent in his offseason preparation.

"Truly sharpening everything," Tolbert said. "You never want to be stagnant as a wide receiver so just continuing to work every aspect of the wide receiver position whether it's route running, releases, top of the route, just continuing to grow, continuing to stack days."

With injuries sprawled across the wide receiver room last season, Tolbert stepped into a larger role into the offense and led the Cowboys in receiving touchdowns with seven. This season, he'll step into a different role after the Cowboys added George Pickens via trade.

It's not the first time that Tolbert and Pickens have crossed paths, as the two faced one another in the 2016 Alabama 7A high school state championship game. Pickens' Hoover high school defeated Tolbert's McGill Toolen 17-7 to win their fourth state title in the last five years. Now, Tolbert can finally share the field with Pickens instead of watching him from across it.

"I actually was at the facility. I mean, I love it…" Tolbert said when asked how he found out about the trade. "I've known GP for a while, it adds more firepower to us, honestly that's what we need. That's going to be the fun part because you can't guard all three of us or four or five, whoever is out there."

"Having another piece to the puzzle is special, I'm ready to work, compete off of each other continue to keep growing."

With Pickens, Tolbert and CeeDee Lamb expected to lead the wide receiver room in 2025, the Cowboys will have plenty of capable receiving options on the field but only so many passes to go around. From Tolbert's perspective, they're all trying to open things up for one another.

"We all know that we have the same goal in mind, we're all just competing off of each other," Tolbert said. "Having an unselfish mindset is me running a route and opening it up for GP or CeeDee, or them doing the same for me and blocking after the catch, creating yards after catch for each other, all of that matters."

And it isn't just those three that opposing defenses will have to account for, and Tolbert's excited to see the different personnel packages the Cowboys can deploy in the passing game with Dak Prescott back at quarterback.

"Honestly, you got to hold yourself back right now because it is OTAs, but the thought of it especially, we even had a package where we have Turp in and it's four wide receivers, the ability that we have and the firepower that can go out there on that field, and play alongside with Dak at quarterback is special." Tolbert said.

Speaking of Prescott, Tolbert has put a big emphasis on growing his relationship with his quarterback so that they're always on the same page on Sundays. The work showed last year when Prescott found Tolbert in the endzone on fourth down with 20 seconds left in Week 5 to beat the Steelers, and the two are still building.

"It's definitely day and night, and it continues to grow each and every day," Tolbert said of his connection with Prescott. "Anytime he has to throw or do anything, I'm there, continuing to learn more about each other and understanding our why's and what we want out of each other."

When it comes to what Tolbert's goal is for himself in 2025, it's very simple: Keep on taking steps forward, not backwards.

"Better than I did last year, that's the goal," Tolbert said. "Keep stacking, keep growing each and every year, keep putting it on film and keeping proving people wrong."