Which 1 of these young Dallas Cowboys is key to success in 2025?

As we look ahead to the 2025 season, this football team has some young players on it that need to turn the corner, or they could be in real trouble.

Two of them are raw talents that have not yet found their footing, but I think 2025 is the year that both of them need to produce for this football team to be able to compete in a loaded NFC East.

That said, both Mazi Smith and Tyler Guyton are supposed to be next in line to help the Dallas Cowboys in the future. Guyton will only be entering his second season, while the Smith experience hasn’t been all that positive.

The 2023 first-round pick has fallen short of expectations throughout his first two NFL seasons, and he posted 41 tackles, a sack, and three quarterback hits while starting all 17 games in 2024.

Who Is More Important?

Smith and Guyton are two guys that need to have a good season, but which one of them is more important to the success for the Dallas Cowboys in 2025?

While Guyton showed flashes of a Pro Bowl-caliber left tackle as a rookie, he really struggled with pre-snap penalties. Even though Guyton ranked 26th in snaps played at left tackle, he committed the second-most penalties at the position (18), per Pro Football Focus.

With their jobs on the line end of the season, Cowboys coaches started him ahead of first-round rookie LT Tyler Guyton. https://t.co/8VnJ3dTbDS

— Ed Werder (@WerderEdNFL) March 10, 2025

Guyton’s penalties derailed a number of promising drives and Mike McCarthy responded by essentially benching the rookie, though not entirely.

He only started 11 of the 15 games he played, but would check into those games after the first couple of possessions. It was a weird process that Cowboys fans could not wrap their mind around.

As for Smith, we have been waiting for him to show us something. By that we mean more than one decent game. Dude has shown hardly any improvement in his first two seasons.

I feel like 2025 might be his last chance to show this team anything.

Cowboys have a new defensive coordinator in Matt Eberflus this year and he expressed hope that Smith will be able to break out in his scheme.

“Yeah, I’m excited about Mazi,” Eberflus said, via the team’s website. “I liked him coming out. He’s a real explosive athlete, with a big body type that can move really well. Excited about bringing his game to the next level, and he could certainly do that.”

Do I believe what he said about Mazi? Not at all, but he is a guy on the roster right now that has to do something or they are going to struggle big time.

Who To Trust

Honestly, do you trust the guy who can’t stop the run, or the guy that can’t stop backing the offense up?

As a raw talent, I tend to lean toward Guyton more, if he can clean the silly stuff up than I think in terms of team success in 2025, this offense will need Guyton to produce than the defense will need Mazi.

In addition to his struggles with consistent run blocking and pass protection, Guyton was flagged 14 times in 15 games. He had five games with multiple penalties called against him.

He drew four flags alone in the win over the Commanders in November.

Guyton will be a starter in 2025. The only question is: on which side of Beebe at center will Guyton line up on.

https://twitter.com/VoiceOfTheStar/status/1891981521487061347

Ideally, he’s better suited at right tackle.

He’s more comfortable there and wouldn’t be protecting Dak Prescott’s blind side.

At this very moment I don’t trust either one of them. They need to show me when it matters that they can get it done, and until they do so, we should all just hope and prey that they can get it figured out.