Inside The Star
Back in April, the Dallas Cowboys drafted two rookie running backs to shore up their backfield. And then seemingly forgot all about them.
Both Jaydon Blue (5th round) and Phil Mafah (7th round) spent most of the year watching the Cowboys play along with the rest of us.
Blue saw action in all four games Dallas played in October. In the months of September, November, and December he was inactive.
No real reason was given for his inactivity other than he “had to get better” in practice.
In his four-game stint in October, Blue had 22 carries for 65 yards and one catch for five yards and hadn’t score a touchdown.
For Mafah, his season was derailed by an injury in the final game of the preseason. He had looked very good up to that point.
Still, he remained on injured reserve for the first 17 weeks of the season.
All of that changed, for both Blue and Mafah, on Sunday in the Week 18 finale.
While Hunter Luepke started at running back, Blue and Mafah got the lion’s share of the work in the backfield for Dallas.
Blue finished with 16 carries for 64 yards against the Giants. His 14-yard run for a touchdown put the Cowboys up by four at halftime.
Mafah added five carries for 18 yards and a one-yard touchdown run to open the fourth quarter.
He also had two catches for 11 yards, one going for a first down.
Overall, both rookies had a disappointing year. But their last game of the 2025 season is something they can build on for 2026.
Here’s how the rest of the 2025 class fared on Sunday and for the season:
The first round pick, Tyler Booker, started his 14th game of the year on Sunday. He missed three games to an ankle sprain in weeks 4–6.
Booker played every down when the offense was on the field in those 14 games, a total of 1,002 snaps, along with another 74 on special teams.
He was flagged six times during the entire season. Four were for holding, with one declined, and the other two were personal fouls for unnecessary roughness.
Booker had a solid year and appears to be the best pick of the Cowboys’ draft so far.
The second rounder, Donovan Ezeiruaku, had a finale to forget in his ninth-straight start.
Ezeiruaku was ejected from the game with just under 10 minutes left in the third quarter after ripping off the helmet of a Giants’ player during a post-play scrum.
Before getting the heave-ho, Ezeiruaku had one tackle in 23 snaps (30.7%). He had a sack wiped away by a penalty earlier in the game.
For the year, Ezeiruaku had two sacks and 40 tackles in 17 games.
He added 12 quarterback hits and a safety in what was a solid rookie year.
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