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 tight ends:
Past: The Cowboys had one of the best tight ends of all time in Jason Witten for 16 years from 2003-2017 and 2019. Witten is the franchise's all-time leading receiver, with 1,215 receptions for 12,977 yards and 72 career touchdowns.
Witten's resume puts him up for the 2026 Pro Football Hall of Fame class, where he's a finalist and has a chance to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. In 11 of his 16 seasons with the Cowboys, Witten was a Pro Bowler, and ended his career with the second-most Pro Bowl appearances by a tight end in NFL history.
Even before Witten, there was Jay Novacek, who didn't put up quite as impressive numbers, but made five Pro Bowls and won Three Super Bowls with the Cowboys in his six-year career with the team. His five Pro Bowl seasons were all consecutive, from 1991 to 1995.
Present: The focal point of Dallas' tight end room is now Jake Ferguson, the former fourth-round pick out of Washington in 2022. On Wednesday, Ferguson earned his second career Pro Bowl nod, this time as a replacement for 49ers TE George Kittle in the NFC.
His first Pro Bowl season came in 2023, where he hauled in 71 passes for 761 yards and five touchdowns on one of the best offenses in the league. In 2025, he caught a career-high 82 receptions for 600 yards and eight touchdowns, which was also a career-high.
While at training camp in Oxnard, Ferguson signed a four-year, $52 million extension that keeps him with the time through the 2029 season. So, clearly the Cowboys are confident that they have their tight end for years to come.
That hasn't stopped them from selecting the position in the draft, however. One year after Ferguson was drafted, Dallas picked Luke Schoonmaker out of Michigan in the second round. He had just 14 catches for 132 yards in 2025. They've also kept former UDFA Brevyn Spann-Ford on the roster, and he caught nine of his 13 targets in 2025 for 90 yards and his first career touchdown.
Future: There seems to be no question that Ferguson is Dallas' starter for the forseeable future given when he's been able to produce as a receiver, although injuries have hit in 2024 and 2025. Keeping him fully healthy is an important element of the room going forward.
The future will bring in to question what the pecking order is behind him. Schoonmaker and Spann-Ford haven't gotten as many receiving opportunities as Ferguson, but when Dallas has gone to two tight end sets, who they deploy typically depends on the situation.
If the Cowboys are in more of a short-yardage need, Spann-Ford has gotten the nod several times thanks to his 6'7, 270-pound frame that can move people. At 6'5, 250, Schoonmaker isn't too far behind, but holds a bit of an edge as a receiver, although Spann-Ford's hands have improved. Both are also contributors on special teams, and Spann-Ford was especially valuable this past season with several tackles on kickoff returns.
Both Schoonmaker and Spann-Ford have contributed in various ways, and the question the Cowboys will have to ask themselves is if they see both young tight ends taking the necessary steps in the right directions, which don't have to be solely based on receiving as Dallas' offense just had a thousand-yard rusher and two thousand-yard receivers. There's only so many footballs to go around. Decisions won't have to be made until after the 2026 season, when Schoonmaker becomes an unrestricted free agent and Spann-Ford is a restricted free agent.
