Blogging The Boys
The Dallas Cowboys first-round pick grades his debut performance against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Fast forward to a little more than four months since hearing his name called, Booker took the field last Thursday night against the Eagles for his NFL debut as the starting right guard on the offensive line.
While it was far from his best showing, in his own words, there were still positives to take away from his debut that saw him allow only two quarterback pressures.
“I feel like I have a lot of room for improvement,” Booker said. “I have a lot that I need to get better at. I’m not going to sit here and say that it was my worst performance ever. But at the same time, to be where I want to be and who I want to be, I have to play a lot better than I did on Thursday.”
In his introductory press conference, Booker said that the player he was most looking forward to going up against was Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter. Booker, of course, didn’t get that opportunity in the opener after Carter was ejected before the first play for spitting on Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott.
While the case could be made that the Eagles lost their best defensive player for the night in that incident, it didn’t change much for Booker who felt that the offensive line was going to play efficiently anyway.
“I felt that way regardless of the situation,” Booker said. “I was a firm believer in our ability to play effectively…I was just focused on the first play of the game. I was focused on controlling the controllables.”
The Cowboys owner and general manager had a lot to say during his first radio interview of the season.
Overall thoughts on Cowboys’ 24-20 loss to the Eagles
The word that Jones used the most to describe Dallas’ 2025 season opener was “pleased.” Evidently, he takes no consolation in losing the game, but was happy with some of the things that came from it.
“I thought that in particular, I thought that Dak had one of the best games that I’ve seen him play…” Jones said. “I felt really, really, really good about the way our offensive line played. I think that bodes well for as we start down this season.”
Later on, Jones would say that Prescott and new defensive tackle Kenny Clark graded out as the team’s highest rated players based on their internal grading system from Thursday night.
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