There may not be a Dallas Cowboys player with a bigger opportunity in 2024 than Jalen Tolbert. With veteran WR3 Michael Gallup now out of the picture, Tolbert has a chance in his third season to make a real impact on the field.
With two lackluster seasons to start his career, Tolbert heads into 2024 with a chance to put his career on a new trajectory. While it isn’t a given that he will outright win the job with other possible suitors lurking around, it is safe to say he is currently sitting in the pole position.
Regardless of whether he wins the job or not, Tolbert appears set to get the most extensive action of his young career, and with that, we take a look at what may be reasonable benchmarks for him to hit as a result.
On the surface, setting the benchmark at 500 yards for a guy who has a total of 280 receiving yards in his career seems lofty. However, Gallup finished with 418 yards on 34 receptions and two touchdowns last season, and many believe that Tolbert is a younger, better version of what Gallup was last season.
If that proves to be true, 500 seems quite fair when it comes to expectations. While the yardage will be less important than the overall impact, and we understand that, the best way to prove that is with the statistics and data. More opportunities should equate to more production, which should, in turn, result in more yards and even more touchdowns as well.
That isn’t rocket science, but it’s a simplistic way to show that whoever is WR3 this year, Tolbert or not, the standard of approval is going to settle somewhere better than what Gallup was able to provide last season.
Looking around the league at some of the best WR3s in the NFL, guys like Tennessee Titans’ Tyler Boyd finished with 667 yards and two touchdowns, while Los Angeles Rams WR3 Tutu Atwell finished with 483 yards and three touchdowns.
Even the Seahawks’ Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Buccaneers’ Trey Palmer hovered around the four and three touchdown mark, while Smith-Njigba eclipsed 600 yards and Palmer fell just below 400.
All this is to say that the parameters for the position are set. And with a QB like Dak Prescott coming off of his best season in the second year of Mike McCarthy’s offense, Tolbert has a chance to be in the ballpark of all these guys. It doesn’t have to be great to be productive, and while we have only seen a glimpse of Tolbert’s potential, it shouldn’t be unrealistic to think he could be in the mix with many of these guys.
But what say you, BTB? Does Tolbert eclipse 500 receiving yards, or do you see him falling below that number, setting the stage for the Cowboys to still be on the lookout for their WR3 next season?
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