The idea of being underappreciated is an interesting one, especially for the Dallas Cowboys.
It’s difficult to be underrated, a different thing than underappreciated but you get the idea, while playing for the Cowboys because you get so much attention. There does come a point though where players are so overly-criticized due to the attention that they effectively become underrated or under-appreciated which is an interesting phenomenon.
Maybe there is a player that immediately comes to mind for you on the team when the phrase “underappreciated” pops up. Perhaps you know immediately who you would name.
Recently the folks at NFL.com took a stab at naming a player of this variety for every single team and their Cowboys selection is… interesting.
NFL.com named Jalen Tolbert the most underappreciated player on the Cowboys
When this offseason began it feels like Cowboys fans agreed that the biggest need on the team was at wide receiver. There were obviously a lot of needs, but the case for that being the top one was well noted.
We said this many times in the lead up to the NFL draft. It was a big reason why so many people, including the Cowboys themselves, wanted Tetairoa McMillan to be the pick in the first round.
The Cowboys were seemingly so intent on improving at receiver though that they traded with the Pittsburgh Steelers for George Pickens after the draft was over. Consider that all of this (the McMillan hype and the Pickens trade) came about half a year after the Cowboys sent the Carolina Panthers (coincidentally the team who drafted McMillan) a fourth-round pick for a different receiver in Jonathan Mingo. The overall point here is that the position has been getting serious attention.
It is for this reason that it is a bit strange that NFL.com chose Jalen Tolbert as the most underappreciated player on the roster.
One of the immediate benefits of the George Pickens trade: Jalen Tolbert stops getting hate he doesn’t deserve. A third-round pick out of South Alabama back in 2022, Tolbert unsurprisingly needed a couple seasons to find his bearings in the NFL. He broke through in Year 3, though, catching 49 balls for 610 yards and seven touchdowns. Not to say that’s eye-popping production, but it represents encouraging growth. And yet, through the first four months of this year, Tolbert’s name became something of a punchline when Cowboys critics rhetorically asked, “Who are Dallas’ weapons beyond CeeDee Lamb?” With Pickens’ arrival as the new WR2, Tolbert is a more-than-functional WR3, so everyone can get off the man’s case.
It is unfortunate that we have to have this conversation in this way because nobody wants to pick on Jalen Tolbert. By all accounts he is a hard worker who has done his absolute best to become the team’s complement to CeeDee Lamb. It feels fair to say that nobody thinks anything is Tolbert’s fault and that we respect his efforts.
That being said, to the author’s point it has been three years and Tolbert has yet to break 1,000 yards… on his career. While he certainly has improved and deserves credit for that, the “punchline” nature of it all was fair. It is exactly why the Cowboys traded for Mingo, wanted to draft McMillan and also traded for Pickens. It wasn’t an actual punchline and it wasn’t Tolbert’s fault, it was simply the overall facts.
Looking at his draft class it is easy to see that Tolbert has had rather average production relative to the group. That is respectable and worthy of praise as competing in the NFL is not easy. But it doesn’t mean that criticism for the role he was intended to fill not being filled is unwarranted.
You’ll note that Pickens’ name is at the top of this list which is again seemingly why the Cowboys felt like Tolbert was not enough for them to operate at full capacity. This is fair! It isn’t an indictment of Tolbert to say that he hasn’t been amazing. Unfortunately for him the “punchline” of it all was about what he represented in the front office not properly filling the WR2 spot, especially after trading away Amari Cooper three years ago.
Consider that just last week we talked about the history of the Cowboys having multiple players reach the 1,000-yard receiving mark in the same season. The last instance of it occurring was Michael Gallup alongside the aforementioned Amari Cooper in 2019.
Within that discussion we noted that the Cowboys haven’t even had multiple players reach 800 receiving yards in the same season since 2021 when CeeDee Lamb, Cooper and Dalton Schultz each did it. 2021 was the year before the Cowboys drafted Jalen Tolbert and since then the team has only had one player reach 800 yards, a pretty low bar, in each season and it was (obviously) only CeeDee Lamb.
Again, nobody has any issue with Tolbert specifically or personally. But acting like asking for more from him and from the role he has been playing is unfair feels a little bit like a stretch.