Blogging The Boys
All year long we’ve looked at the rookie class and given previews and reviews on each player for every game of the season. Now let’s look back the season in its entirety and breakdown each rookie and how they performed. Let’s start with first-round offensive guard Tyler Booker.
Season stats- Snaps: 1,003, Pass Blocks: 631, Pressures: 25, Sacks: 3, Penalties: 7
Booker’s first season in Dallas looks very much like the start of a long-term answer at guard after the departure of Zack Martin. Drafted 12th overall and dropped straight into the starting lineup, he finished his rookie year as the Cowboys’ clear Rookie of the Year and one of the few unquestioned wins on a team that struggled for consistency. Across the season he handled a huge workload in protection and the most of any rookie interior lineman, yet he allowed only three sacks all year. For a first-year right guard that is big-time reliability.
The advanced numbers back up the eye test. Booker allowed 25 pressures, which puts him inside the top tier of all right guards, not just first-year players. ESPN’s trench metrics chart him with a pass-block win rate around 95%, comfortably above league average for guards and a big reason Dallas ranked in the top half of the league in pass protection despite broader offensive struggles.
Booker’s work in the run game is just as important. PFF graded him with a 76.8 run blocking grade, that’s seventh-best among all guards this year. You can see his impact in games like the Christmas win over Washington, where the Cowboys piled up 211 rushing yards and repeatedly gashed the interior. Even late in the year when most rookies hit the wall, Booker was still there helping the offense to 143 rushing yards at 4.8 yards per carry against the New York Giants. He wasn’t a perfect finisher on every snap, but the pattern was clear, when Dallas wanted to run between the tackles, they were happy to run behind him.
There were bumps along the way. Early in the season he suffered a high-ankle sprain, missed time, and came back in Week 7 still finding his rhythm. In his first three NFL starts he allowed nine total pressures, and even later in the year there were games where stunts and late movement bothered him and where his penalties cropped up in bad spots. Coaches, and Booker himself, talked about consistency as the main lesson from year one. That lines up with the numbers where three sacks and 25 pressures on that many pass-block reps is excellent, but seven penalties and some rough stretches after the injury give him obvious points to attack in his second season.
NFL.com placed him among the top rookies of the 2025 class, and coaches have repeatedly called him a foundational piece in the middle of the Cowboys’ line. When you put it all together – league-leading pass-pro volume for a rookie, solid run-blocking and resilience coming back from a high-ankle sprain –...
