There are several players who fit the “jenga piece” criteria for the 2025 Dallas Cowboys.
An idea that interests me when talking about professional football teams and their rosters is figuring out who are the jenga pieces. This idea served as our discussion prompt here at BTB last Thursday. In case you missed that or are unaware of what a jenga piece is, here is the 101.
A popular board game (for lack of a better term) is Jenga. The rules of the game are that you have to stack wooden blocks and build as tall of a tower as you can. Once you use all of the blocks you have to remove pieces from the tower you have constructed to build your tower even higher. The trick is that you have to remove pieces carefully and ultimately make the right decision as to which ones you do want to remove so that the tower does not come tumbling down.
Relative to a football roster, we are on the hunt for which Dallas Cowboys players are the critical ones within the structure of the tower. We are talking about the players whom without the whole thing would tumble down. To be clear we are establishing right now that the position of quarterback is uniquely important and that without it the tower does not exist, so we are talking about non-quarterback options.
In terms of the 2025 version of the Dallas Cowboys there are five names that stand out.
Tyler Guyton
Ultimately the answer is probably one of two people and that you can sway me in either direction depending on the day or moment. One of these two is second-year left tackle Tyler Guyton.
It makes sense to not panic over Guyton’s lack of an All-Pro first year in the NFL. For so long we were spoiled by the likes of Tyron Smith, Travis Frederick and Zack Martin that we forgot what normal was like for even really, really good offensive line prospects. It takes time, generally speaking, to adjust to the professional level.
Understanding this, so much hinges on Guyton being the guy at left tackle in 2025. We are way past the point of considering Tyler Smith for that spot so this is sort of a situation where it is either going to work or not and the latter is not an option that we want to learn the outcome of.
Given that Guyton is charged with protecting Dak Prescott’s blind spot he holds an extreme level of importance. He is a foundational member to the team and so much of what they are going to do rests upon his shoulders.
CeeDee Lamb
This is the other top option and both feel a little bit like cheating since they are extensions to and insurances around the play of the quarterback. Such is life for a team’s left tackle and top pass-catching option.
We have said forever and ever how the Cowboys not having a proper second wideout has hindered the offense (more on that in a bit). While that is true, without their top receiving option they would be up a proverbial creek. For the most part Lamb has been available for the Cowboys since they drafted him (we are somehow entering year six with him on the team) and so we haven’t quite had to learn what life without his services is like.
Can you imagine? Obviously you don’t want to and thankfully after last year’s extension drama we don’t have to. But without doing so we all understand how supremely important Lamb is to what this team is looking to accomplish.
Micah Parsons
You can file this under Duh with a capital D. Micah Parsons it the best player on the Cowboys roster so without him they are nowhere near as good. If the team were ever in a situation where his future was even mildly up in the air, say with contract stuff, that they probably would want to take care of that as soon as possible. Thankfully that is not the case oops. Oops.
The reason that Parsons is a bit lower on my list is because he missed time last year, and while the team obviously was not as good without him, they did not totally fall apart. We can attribute this to a variety of things, but the main one is likely that today’s NFL is an offense-driven league and therefore your offensive superstars carry a little more worth in the terms of the discussion that we are having.
To be clear this is in no way to say that Parsons isn’t as valuable, or more valuable, than any one player. It’s just that he missed time last year and that the wheels did not fall off so that makes this conversation in this moment seem strange.
Don’t get it twisted, though. Micah Parsons is essential. Now and always. Pay the man.
DaRon Bland
The situation at cornerback makes a player from this group an obvious pick.
Trevon Diggs is regarded as the top corner on the team, but DaRon Bland is more of a jenga piece in this exercise. Consider that we have some questions about Diggs at the moment. Will he be healthy? If so for how long? What is the future like for him with this team? There are some clouds there.
This exacerbates the importance of DaRon Bland. Another way to put this is that he has the highest floor of any corner on the team, and while there are other players who can raise it like if Kaiir Elam hits or Shavon Revel plays himself and is solid, the reality is that Bland is needed and sorely so.
Brandon Aubrey
In looking at the comments from our discussion prompt there were a number of people who suggested kicker Brandon Aubrey. I thought about George Pickens for this spot but that just felt like repeating CeeDee Lamb.
Kicking plays a larger role than most people are willing to give credit. Given that the Cowboys arguably have the best kicker in the entire NFL on their roster, that elevates the importance and role that Aubrey plays within the team.
Aubrey’s distance and his control from downtown are specifically what put him in this conversation. You barely have to cross midfield to be in his range which increases your probability of scoring points. Without him and that luxury, the notion of scoring is more taxing (in a literal sense) on the overall operation of the team. He provides a great relief, so to speak.
Aubrey is another player on this list who is currently set to enter the final year of their contract with the Cowboys (along with Parsons there is also Bland in this overall regard) which suggests that the team has some work to do.
