FRISCO, Texas – With the 2025 regular season now behind the Cowboys, it's time to look ahead to 2026, where they'll try to get back into the playoffs for the first time since 2023.
As they begin to do so, our "What's Next" series will examine each position on the roster and look at the past, present and future of the room and the players within it. We'll continue the series with the wide receivers:
Past: This is a franchise that arguably contains the most historic thread of elite wide receivers in the entire NFL, including transient talents such as Terrell Owens and injury-shortened careers of electric talent like Miles Austin, and legendary players like Billy Joe Dupree, "Bullet" Bob Hayes and Tony Hill. This is a club that spawned the moniker "88 Club" to honor those who don the jersey number and help to change the game while doing it.
It's a brotherhood that was essentially started by Hall of Famer Drew Pearson in yesteryear, and includes three-time Pro Bowler and First-team All-Pro Dez Bryant, Hall of Famer Michael Irvin and, now, four-time Pro Bowler and three-time All-Pro CeeDee Lamb; and an honorable mention here goes to Antonio Bryant. But each of the 88's had their dynamic complement at one point or another, and Lamb is no different, his first go in the NFL at being part of a dynamic duo coming by way of the trade to acquire Amari Cooper and, in 2025, the addition of George Pickens.
Present: Like Cooper, Pickens' acquisition by the Cowboys was a blockbuster move, though it was one done in the spring and not just ahead of the respective trade deadline. The latter arrived with a suboptimal narrative attached to him from his time spent with the Steelers, but he quickly, and continually, put it to bed and became an absolute revelation for Dak Prescott and Brian Schottenheimer in 2025.
And as Pickens went on to have a career-best season with Prescott at the helm and Lamb operating opposite him, there was another player having a breakout season, albeit to a lesser, but still very important degree: Ryan Flournoy. The second-year wideout emerged as the definitive WR3 for an offense that desperately needed to identify one, and the Lamb-Pickens-Flournoy trio was a force to be reckoned with when firing on all cylinders.
Future: This is where things get foggy, murky even. Pickens is set to hit free agency this offseason unless the Cowboys use a franchise tag on him, and that's likely to happen if an extension can't be agreed upon prior to the start of legal tampering in early March. The tag would initially be viewed as a placeholder to buy time until mid-July to get an extension done, to avoid outside interference.
While that's being sorted atop the Cowboys' free agency to-do list, they can at least feel great about what Flournoy might become in Year 3, but there is no way to know what happens behind him — Jalen Tolbert set to hit free agency, Jalen Cropper not re-signed to a futures deal and Jalen Brooks no longer on the roster. Keeping Parris Campbell and talented, but raw, wide receiver Traeshon Holden provides potential depth alongside Jonathan Mingo, but there's a lot of work to be done in sorting out a depth chart behind Lamb-(Pickens?)-Flournoy that also couldn't figure out how it wanted to consistently use KaVontae Turpin.
