What Jason Witten’s possible retirement means for the Dallas Cowboys

Due to the possible retirement of legendary tight end Jason Witten, how will the Dallas Cowboys address the position moving forward?

Prior to Friday, the Dallas Cowboys seemed fairly secure at the tight end position. Although it was rumored as a possible area of need in this week’s NFL draft for America’s Team, the simple number of tight ends on the roster seem to indicate something different.

Before James Hanna retired last week due to a lingering knee injury, the Cowboys’ current roster bolstered a whopping five tight ends. Filling out the depth chart are three young players in Geoff Swaim, Blake Jarwin and Rico Gathers. At the top of the positional group is stalwart tight end and forever starter Jason Witten.

The 35-year old Witten is entering his 16th NFL season and, as of a couple weeks ago, seemed to have every intention of playing out the year and possibly more. How quickly things can change.

On Friday, longtime NFL insider Chris Mortensen reported that Witten intends on retiring from the Cowboys in order to joining ESPN’s new Monday Night Football broadcast team as an analyst.

Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones confirmed that he has had several meeting with Witten this week. And that the longtime Cowboy has some professional decisions to make and needs a few more days to do so.

To say this news came as a shock would be an understatement. The single most reliable player on the Cowboys roster for the past decade has been Witten, who hasn’t missed a single game since his rookie season way back in 2003.

In many ways the 11-time Pro Bowler is the face of the franchise and the leader in the locker room. Losing Witten would be a tremendous blow to this franchise and the league as a whole.

Being Day Two of the 2018 NFL Draft, the attention of the Cowboys has to immediately turn to possibly replacing the veteran tight end. There are many quality candidates still available as only one tight end prospect, South Carolina’s Hayden Hurst, was taken in the first round on Thursday night.

If the Cowboys wish to address their newest possible need with either their second round pick (50th overall) or their third round selection (81st overall), there are likely four strong candidates to do so. Those players being South Dakota State’s Dallas Goedert, Penn State’s Mike Gesicki, Oklahoma’s Mark Andrews and Indiana’s Ian Thomas.

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But honestly, the Dallas Cowboys will never find a player like Jason Witten. And they currently have three young tight ends on the roster worth developing. The Cowboys do have nine remaining draft picks to spend within the next two days. They’ll now likely use one of them on a tight end. But Dallas has enough talent on the roster to wait until Day Three of the draft if they wish to do so.