Rookie review: TE Luke Schoonmaker looks for Year 2 breakout like Jake Ferguson

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The Cowboys will be relying on the Dak Prescott to Jake Ferguson connection a lot this season, but where does that leave Luke Schoonmaker?

With the 24th overall pick in the upcoming 2024 NFL Draft, the Dallas Cowboys may not be telegraphing exactly what they plan on doing, but their glaring roster needs paired with the list of prospects they’ve brought in for pre-draft visits don’t leave a whole lot of mystery about the direction they’ll likely go. Leaving their need for starters at left tackle, center, and linebacker until the draft has many fans uneasy, as it goes against how Dallas typically approaches the offseason. Sure, being a draft-focused team has yielded them plenty of regular-season results and a talented core of homegrown players, but recent history with a disappointing 2023 draft class is a real reason for concerns about how dependent the Cowboys may be on next week’s rookie crop.

One current example of this type of player currently on the roster is tight end Luke Schoonmaker. After seeing first-round prospect Dalton Kincaid go one pick before the Cowboys selected Mazi Smith, and Sam Laporta and Michael Mayer coming off the board within the first three picks of the second round, the Cowboys were pigeonholed into taking the fifth tight end at the 58th overall pick with Schoonmaker. The Packers took Oregon State’s Luke Musgrave with the 42nd overall pick, who scored against the Cowboys in their 48-32 Wild Card loss - a game Schoonmaker played just 19 snaps and caught one pass.

That season-ending Packers loss was a failure on a multitude of levels by a Cowboys team that lost at home for the first time in 16 games to squander yet another 12-win regular season, but it stood as the last chance for their 2023 draft picks to make the impact they desperately needed but didn’t get. The Cowboys were too dependent through most of the season on a fairly narrow game script to win, and a huge part of this was pushing the ball downfield in the passing game to build leads and allow their defense to play from ahead. After starting just eight games and catching no more than four passes in any of them in 2022, TE Jake Ferguson surprisingly became a vital part of the DNA of Mike McCarthy’s offense last year with a breakout campaign.

Giving little room for Schoonmaker to see the field, Ferguson averaged 10.7 yards per catch as a dynamic middle of the field option for Dak Prescott in all 17 games. Ferguson scored five touchdowns in the regular season and did his best to keep Dallas in the playoff game with three touchdowns on ten receptions as well. Where the game seemed sped up at times for Schoonmaker, who looked clunky as a route runner and struggled to make plays after the catch, the exact opposite could be said about Ferguson who effortlessly became a reliable option in the passing game right next to CeeDee Lamb and Brandin Cooks. With all three players still under contract, the Cowboys may not be wrong for seemingly relying even more on their pass offense to make up for deficiencies elsewhere this season, but through the draft and player development for still unproven prospects like Schoonmaker, there’s hope they can achieve the balance Mike McCarthy strives for on this side of the ball in the final season of the his contract.

With McCarthy taking over play-calling duties last season, the expectation was the Cowboys would feature more West Coast concepts on offense. Instead, the Cowboys own “Texas Coast” approach took on a life of its own with McCarthy having to lean on what worked best in relying on Prescott’s arm. Tony Pollard was inconsistent as a lead running back, making the Cowboys too one-dimensional at times and allowing defenses to key heavily on Lamb in efforts to slow them down. These efforts by opposing defenses were futile when the Cowboys were in the friendly confines of AT&T Stadium, where they won all of their regular-season games by scoring an average of 37.4 points per game. After scoring his first NFL touchdown in the home opener against the Jets, Schoonmaker was hardly heard from in these home outbursts for the offense, catching just three more passes on eight targets. On the road, where the Cowboys struggles on this side of the ball were well-documented all season, Schoonmaker was slightly more active with a touchdown at the Panthers and now-infamous near touchdown on fourth down at the Eagles.

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The Cowboys offense played an entirely different style away from home a year ago, one that tried to execute more of those traditional West Coast concepts and establish a downhill run game. While at least the concepts were there for the Cowboys to play this style of offense that teams like the 49ers, Dolphins, and Packers had so much success with, their version of it was a shell of these other teams proficiency in it - all three of which beat the Cowboys head-to-head a year ago. The Cowboys did not perform best with two tight ends on the field together last year, but at least knowing the core concepts were installed and can be improved on may be a glimmer of hope for Ferguson and Schoonmaker to coexist enough for last year’s second-round pick to not look like a wasted draft asset.

While most up-to-date mock drafts have the Cowboys addressing a position with a need for an immediate starter like left tackle or center, there is merit to trying to hide a weakness at one position by creating an overwhelming strength at another. This idea isn’t totally lost to mock drafters who are in the know like Peter Schrager, who recently linked speedy Texas WR Xavier Worthy to the Cowboys first pick. The Cowboys receiving group would immediately go from a talented duo of Lamb and Cooks with young potential behind them to a trio that puts an immense amount of vertical stress on a defense, with Worthy breaking the combine’s 40-yard dash record.

In a lesser way, there is hope the Cowboys could create a similar type of situation at tight end. They likely won’t be in the draft market for one a, thanks to not only Ferguson commanding the volume of targets he does along with Schoonmaker still being a work in progress, but Peyton Hendershot, Princeton Fant, and John Stephens Jr. also on the depth chart with some levels of intrigue. The Cowboys have had much better success playing the long game with draft picks ascending in year two and three instead of making the immediate impact they seemingly need from this month’s class, making TE a possible surprise position where a sophomore jump from Schoonmaker could pay off greatly for an offense that could do well to be slightly less dependent on Prescott’s arm.

Schoonmaker may not be the most physically imposing blocker at the point of attack in the run game, but he is agile enough to mirror defensive ends and get some push up field. Staying on the field with a RB like Jonathon Brooks or Rico Dowdle in the backfield as opposed to the more finesse player in Pollard could be the biggest key to Schoonmaker’s development in 2024, as well as working more with John Fassel’s special teams units where he had a bigger role than he did on offense as a rookie. Unfortunately, for the second straight year the TE out of Michigan will not have a clean bill of health through the offseason program. After missing rookie minicamp, OTAs, and part of training camp with plantar fasciitis last year, Schoonmaker had shoulder surgery following this season but should be on track to see more of the valuable offseason program in year two.

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It may be far too early to tell where the surprise contributors will come from on this Cowboys roster next season, but when looking over a 2023 draft class that has room from top to bottom to do a lot more than any player did in year one, there are few that could make as much of a difference in the trajectory of the team as Schoonmaker pairing up with Ferguson to give the Cowboys a true dual threat at tight end.