Cowboys get ‘whatever, whenever’ player in latest mock draft
While most mock drafts still have Dallas taking Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty with the 12th pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, one draft expert has it taking a record-breaking tight end instead.
In his latest mock draft for Pro Football Focus, John Kosko predicts the Cowboys will select Penn State tight end Tyler Warren in the first round. Jeanty will be available, but according to Kosko, “The Cowboys have a lot of needs, but they’ve lacked a reliable weapon outside of CeeDee Lamb in recent seasons.”
Warren is certainly a weapon. Widely considered the best tight end in this year’s draft, the former Nittany Lion made a school-record 104 catches for a team-high 1,233 yards and eight touchdowns while averaging 8.4 yards per carry for 218 yards and four scores as a rusher last season. His best game came in a 33-30 overtime win at USC, where he caught 17 passes for 224 yards and a touchdown.
Meanwhile, tight end Jake Ferguson caught 59 passes for 454 yards as the Cowboys’ third-leading receiver last year but failed to reach the end zone in 14 games played. That was a far cry from 2023, when he established career-highs with 71 catches for 761 yards and five scores.
To be fair, the team’s entire offense regressed once starting quarterback Dak Prescott was lost for the season with a hamstring injury. With a healthy Prescott, the Cowboys averaged a league-best 29.9 points per game in 2023. Without him, they scored 20.6 points per contest.
According to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, Warren was the only tight end among this year’s prospects to earn an “elite” distinction following the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine. His performance caught the eye of Network’s Lance Zierlein, who called the 6-foot-5, 256-pound tight end “the ultimate ‘whatever, whenever’ player” in this year’s draft.
“Warren can access all three levels of the field,” Zierline wrote, adding that he “plays with swagger and ‘best player on the field’ energy.”
Assuming the Cowboys are content to run the ball with free-agent additions Miles Sanders and Javonte Williams, Warren’s selection makes perfect sense. Dallas hasn’t had a true No. 2 receiver to complement Lamb since Amari Cooper had 865 yards and eight touchdowns in 2023.
Last season, the Raiders’ Brock Bowers showed the league just how good a first-round tight end can be by tying Lamb with exactly 1,194 yards, the eighth-best number among NFL pass-catchers.
While most scouts stop short of putting Warren on Bowers’ level, he’d be an immediate upgrade over Ferguson, who is due to become a free agent after the 2025 season.
