Blogging The Boys
It has been a very long time since Zack Martin was not a part of the Dallas Cowboys.
It was reported on Thursday that longtime Dallas Cowboys guard Zack Martin is set to retire from the NFL after an incredible career that will land him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame someday. You cannot find a Cowboys fan who does not hold Martin in the highest regard and that is because he is among the greatest players in franchise history.
Amazingly, 11 years have passed since the Cowboys famously selected Martin over Johnny Manziel in the middle of the 2014 NFL Draft. It is hard to really contextualize what those days were like to people who did not fully live them as the franchise was in a bit of a treacherous spot.
You see, the Cowboys had just come off of their third regular season finale that was a de facto NFC East title game where the winner took the division and the loser missed out on the playoffs. Dallas lost this exact same game for three seasons in a row, amazingly, some would say cruelly, to each one of their three division rivals. You cannot write this stuff.
Given the failures, there were enormous questions surrounding head coach Jason Garrett and quarterback Tony Romo. With Manziel available for selection and having a lot of Texas A&M fans who also rooted for the Cowboys wanting to see these worlds collide, that Dallas took Martin was as dramatic of a way in which you could see a franchise select an offensive lineman.
That is the context behind the times of when the Cowboys drafted Martin, but what about the specifics of that specific time in question? As noted, that 2013 season finale was the last game that the Cowboys played without Zack Martin as a part of their franchise. Obviously the next one will be the 2025 season opener.
Here is what the Cowboys starting lineup looked like on December 29th, 2013 against Philadelphia.
OFFENSE
DEFENSE
The defensive names are a much larger blast from the past than the offense, maybe that is because Martin played with so many of them in the years that would immediately follow. It should also be noted that this was the last game that DeMarcus Ware would ever play for the Cowboys as they moved on from him...
