Pro Football Rumors
The Cowboys will soon need to make a decision on Tyler Smith‘s fifth-year option. The team’s top offensive lineman can be counted on to remain in Dallas for at least two more years, though.
Smith’s 2026 option is expected to be picked up, Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News reports. The 24th overall pick in 2022 has one Pro Bowl nod on his resume. As a result, Smith will be in line to collect $21.27MM guaranteed for the ’26 campain in the likely event his option is exercised.
Of course, an extension could very well be in store as well. Smith is among the players known to be on the Cowboys’ radar for a long-term arrangement. The 24-year-old was drafted with the intention of starting his career along the interior, but an injury to Tyron Smith changed those plans. Tyler Smith spent much of his rookie campaign on the blindside and flashed the potential to operate as a long-term answer at left tackle.
The team’s preference is to keep the Tulsa product at guard, though, something which was the case in 2023. Last spring, Dallas selected Tyler Guyton in the first round of the draft and gave him a large workload at the left tackle spot. Smith primarily played at left guard, and with Guyton in place for the foreseeable future that setup can be expected to continue moving forward.
Offensive linemen are grouped together for the purposes of franchise tags, something which could lead to complications if team and player reached that point after the 2026 campaign. An extension could be in place well before that point, especially if Smith is seen as one of Dallas’ top priorities for a new deal. Micah Parsons is atop that list, and the process of working out his extension (as was the case last year with Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb) is widely seen as taking much longer than needed.
Considering the Cowboys’ track record on that front, it would come as little surprise if talks on a long-term agreement took place over an extended period. The top of the guard market now has four players attached to multi-year deals averaging $20MM or more per year, while Trey Smith is set to earn over $23MM on the franchise tag (or a similar amount if a Chiefs extension agreement can be worked out). A top-15 guard in terms of PFF grades each of the past two years, Tyler Smith could find himself among the top earners at his position by 2026 or sooner depending on how contract talks progress.
