Jake Ferguson Camp Update — August 23: Standing Out in the Saints Practice

Jake Ferguson was one of the offensive standouts of Tuesday's joint practice against the Saints in Oxnard, named alongside George Pickens and Ryan Flournoy in Randy Gurzi's review at Cowboys On SI, and the team's own practice report singled out a designed pitch from Dak Prescott to Ferguson as part of the first unit's creative play-calling. A tight end taking a pitch is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that only happens to players a staff is actively scheming touches for, and it extends a camp-long pattern: every week of Oxnard reporting has had Ferguson's name somewhere in the first team's good plays — the daily Prescott connection on seam and intermediate throws earlier in August, the goal-line-option framing from the beat, now a schemed touch against another team's defense.

Saturday he rested with the rest of the front-line offense in the 34 to 13 preseason win in Arizona, where most starters on both sides sat, per the Associated Press, so there is still no game usage on file — Brian Schottenheimer has said Dallas will not play many starters this preseason, per Grant Afseth at Dallas Sports Journal.

Back in June the argument on Ferguson was that his 82 catches — more than all but two tight ends — were the durable half of last season's line, since tight end target volume is among the stickiest stats in football, while the eight touchdowns were the fragile half. Three weeks of camp reporting keep filling in the durable half, and the goal-line framing, if it survives into September, would prop up the fragile half too.

The checkable things: whether the Prescott-to-Ferguson connection gets a live series in the preseason finale before rosters cut to 53 on Sunday, August 30, and whether the goal-line-first-read framing shows up in any charted situational period. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._