The Dallas Cowboys biggest positional battle, bar none

With Dallas Cowboys training camp set to kick off later this month, this positional group is the most competitive battle that will take place in Oxnard.

The Dallas Cowboys will be kicking off practices at training camp nearly three weeks from now. Soon after, the preseason will begin. And before you know it, yet not soon enough, the real games start.

But the Cowboys still have many unanswered questions to answer first. Chief among them are concerns about the wide receiver corps following a down season and the exodus of Dez Bryant, who was released earlier this year.

Many are also wondering who will get the starting nod at free safety. Whether that will be former sixth rounder Xavier Woods or will Dallas possibly make a move to acquire All-Pro Earl Thomas from Seattle? Staying in the secondary, will Jourdan Lewis win back his starting job after playing with the second team during OTA’s?

Then there are the rookies. Will first rounder Leighton Vander Esch outplay Jaylon Smith for the starting middle linebacker role? Can Connor Williams smoothly transition into an offensive line that could have as many as four potential Pro Bowlers in 2018? And will Michael Gallup skyrocket up the wide receiver depth chart to emerge as one of Dallas’ top catching threats?

But undoubtedly, the Cowboys biggest positional battle will be at tight end. Following the unexpected retirement of future Hall of Famer Jason Witten this offseason, Dallas was left with no clear successor to crown as his replacement. Instead, the Cowboys have four candidates who are wildly inexperience.

Without Witten, Dallas is left with Geoff Swaim, Blake Jarwin, Rico Gathers and rookie Dalton Schultz on their depth chart. And as one Cowboys insider explained recently, this group has everyone grasping at straws trying to figure out which tight end will win the starting role.

"“Who will open training camp as the starter? I’d say Swaim,” wrote Nick Eatman for DallasCowboys.com. “Who will open the regular season as the starter? I’d say Jarwin. Who would the Cowboys prefer wins the job outright? I’d say Schultz. And [who] would the fans want to win this job? I’d say Gathers.”"

Of the four, Swaim has the most experience by far. Selected in the seventh round of the 2015 NFL Draft out of Texas, the 24-year old has been with the Cowboys for three seasons. Although Swaim has shown to be a capable receiver, his career total of nine receptions isn’t reassuring.

The only other tight end on Dallas’ roster to log regular season snaps is Jarwin. An undrafted rookie free agent out of Oklahoma State last season, Blake played a total of 12 snaps in 2017. Nine of them on special teams.

A sixth round pick out of the now famous 2016 NFL Draft, Gathers is a converted basketball player who has spent the past three years attempting to make the difficult transition to the NFL.

Last preseason, Gathers wowed fans by scoring two touchdowns in his first two preseason games. Unfortunately, a concussion landed him on Injured Reserve, stunting his growth at the position. Gathers still needs to improve as a blocker and on the mental aspects of the game before the Cowboys coaching staff trusts him enough to give him a significant role.

Finally, there is Schultz. Selected in the fourth round of this year’s draft out of Stanford, the 6-foot-5, 244 pound rookie was used mainly as a blocker in college. But Schultz is coming from a program that runs a similar scheme as the Cowboys do, so his transition should be relatively smooth.

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At the end of the day, a case could be made for all four of these candidates to start at tight end for the Dallas Cowboys when the regular season kicks off in September. That’s what makes it the biggest positional battle the Cowboys have hosted in years, bar none.