All year long we\u2019ve looked at the rookie class and given previews and reviews on each player for every game of the season. Now let\u2019s look back the season in its entirety and breakdown each rookie and how they performed. Let\u2019s continue with second-round defensive end Donovan Ezeiruaku.<\/p>\n
Season stats – Snaps: 603, Total Tackles: 40, Total Pressures: 36, QB Hits: 12, Sacks: 2, Tackles for loss: 9, Forced Fumbles: 1, Safeties: 1, Penalties: 2<\/p>\n
Donovan Ezeiruaku\u2019s rookie year with the Cowboys was mostly what you\u2019d hope for from a second-round edge rusher with some interesting production, real flashes of star potential, and a few rough edges that remind you he\u2019s only 22. On the stat line, he finished the season with 40 total tackles, two sacks (which should have been three) and nine tackles for loss across all 17 games. He handled a genuine starter\u2019s workload, playing on over 600 defensive snaps, good for more than half of Dallas\u2019 defensive plays up front. That level of usage and steady involvement already says a lot.<\/p>\n
Where he really pops is in the advanced numbers. PFF\u2019s grading had him 73.1 overall by the end of the year, consistently ranking as one of the top rookie defenders in the league, and listing him as having the second-highest overall grade of any rookie rookie edge rushers from the 2025 draft. As a pass rusher he showed just how efficient he was with a pass-rush win rate that led the entire rookie edge class at 28%, plus the second-most quarterback hits totaling 12 hits. He was also credited with 24 defensive stops, again best among rookie edges, and an outstanding 88.8 run-defense grade in November when he briefly paced all edge rushers in that category. Put simply, the sack total stayed modest, but the underlying pressure and run disruption were absolutely real.
Early in the year, Ezeiruaku was all about near-misses with hits and hurries but without the finish, as quarterbacks got the ball out quickly behind a shaky Cowboys secondary. His first sack finally came in October against Washington, and both of his official sacks this season were classic moments of how he can win one-on-ones with relentlessness and energy. More than the sacks, though, he showed a complete profile in how he could bend the corner off the edge, convert speed to power into tackles and tight ends, and hold up against the run instead of being a boom-or-bust pass-rush specialist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All year long we\u2019ve looked at the rookie class and given previews and reviews on each player for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2066],"tags":[230,229,257,436,2461,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-688064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-cowboys","8":"tag-cowboys","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-cowboys","11":"tag-dallas-cowboys-news","12":"tag-dallascowboys","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115920277573635133","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}