What can Cowboys expect from second-round Luke Schoonmaker?

David Helman

Dallas Cowboys insider

None of this is Luke Schoonmaker’s fault.

The Cowboys’ latest tight end spent five years working at Michigan to get to this point. He impressed enough in 43 career games and over a five-month draft cycle to become a top-60 draft pick. From the sound of it, he’s already hard at work making sure he justifies the decision to select him 58th overall in the 2023 NFL Draft.

“No school is a great relief,” Schoonmaker joked at the team’s rookie mini-camp on Friday. “Because now I can spend all day — recovering, watching movie, walkthroughs, exercising, stuff like that. Also being in the weight room. Just being completely immersed in football is so great.”

Cleaner clearly deserved the opportunity. It’s just a harsh reality of the modern landscape that, due to factors beyond his control, he will probably be the most scrutinized member of this year’s Cowboys draft class.

Why? To begin with, it is a matter of need. His college teammate and fellow rookie, Mazi Smith, had been called up to tackle one of the thinnest positions on the roster. The same can be said for third round pick DeMarvion Overshown. Not the case at tight end, where Schoonmaker will join a pair of young talents in Jake Ferguson and Peyton Hendershot who have been pleasantly surprised as rookies.

Talking about choice also shows how intense the NFL’s draft cycle has become in recent years. At the time he was selected, questions arose about Schoonmaker’s “advanced” age of 25, or his modest production in Michigan’s incredibly tough offense.

If we can be honest with ourselves, it’s also fair to point out that Schoonmaker wasn’t one of the much talked about names that fans and media put at the top of this deep, tight league. Whether good or bad, outsider consensus helps shape draft weekend stories.

Need proof? Recall that the player most likely to be compared to Schoonmaker is the man taken right after him, Bills guard O’Cyrus Torrence. The Florida product is no more of a proven pro product than Schoonmaker, but he was considered a first round talent by many pundits and he plays a thin position on the Cowboys roster. Those factors alone made him a popular pick as the Cowboys made their decision on Friday night.

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It’s an interesting debate, but not one that will provide a definitive answer in the next two or three years. So rather than trying to predict the future, I thought it would be interesting to see what the past can tell us about these kinds of decisions.

Dating back to 2011, 50 tight ends have been selected in the draft roster of Schoonmaker – Day 2, during the second and third rounds. The numbers are fairly encouraging for a position that’s notoriously hard to learn at the NFL level.

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At the bare minimum, 37 of those 50 players managed to complete their rookie contracts, or are still with their original team at the time of writing. That’s 74% who are at least useful enough to fill a role for four years. A big part of that is the versatility of the feature. Tight ends tend to have size and athleticism, obviously making them useful as blockers and receiver, but those skills also lend themselves to earning a lot of special team snaps.

Still, the main thing that makes a tight end worthy of a top-100 pick is the receiving skill, and the returns there aren’t bad. About 25% of those players average (or average) at least 450 yards per season for the teams that fielded them. Star players like Travis Kelce, Zach Ertz, and Mark Andrews have been found in this neighborhood of the draft board, though they are admittedly a minority.

Schoonmaker only managed 637 yards during his Michigan career, but 66% of that production came last fall. It’s a development he thinks he can improve on in the NFL.

“I’m excited to show that. I think it’s something I can take on and show that I can be used in a more receiving role,” said Schoonmaker.

The bar he has to set is not that high – at least not as a rookie. Over the past decade, Day 2 tight ends have averaged 18 catches for 203 yards while playing about 32% of their team’s offensive snaps during their rookie seasons. He will compete with the likes of Ferguson and Hendershot for playing time, but Dalton Schultz left a whopping 817 snaps to replace.

“During a 17-game season, all these guys in the tight end room will contribute,” said Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy during the draft. “I would definitely watch [Schoonmaker] as starter type as far as its impact. He will clearly play all four positions in the tight end area: on the line, off the ball, lead-back and moved.”

There is an obvious counterpart, which is that the guard is not only a thinner position, but also a position that does not require rotation. Of the 47 guards called up on Day 2 over the past decade, 18 of them (38%) managed to play 80% or more of their team’s snaps as rookies. It’s a bit easier to find a starter among Day 2 guards, considering it’s happened at least once in nine of the past 11 draft classes.

Checkers, of course, are about more than one season. Jason Witten contributed just 347 yards to the Cowboys’ cause as a rookie. Kelce, another future Pro Football Hall of Famer, played exactly one moment during his rookie season and that came on special teams. Like any choice in any version, the story will be written over several years.

Furthermore, there is no neat conclusion. It’s a lot of effort for a question that can’t be answered yet. But looking back at previous choices can at least give us an idea of the thought process and what to expect.

David Helman covers the Dallas Cowboys for FOX Sports. He previously spent nine seasons covering the Cowboys for the team’s official website. In 2018, he won a regional Emmy for his role in the production of “Dak Prescott: A Family Reunion” about the quarterback’s time in Mississippi. Follow him on Twitter @davidhelman_.