2023 rookie review: RB Deuce Vaughn has a big opportunity in a jumbled backfield (2024)

It isn’t too often that a team’s sixth- and seventh-round picks from a year ago have a very clear path to go from backup players to real contributors on offense, but that is exactly what the Dallas Cowboys are hoping for with both RB Deuce Vaughn and WR Jalen Brooks. Both players have been getting valuable work in the team’s OTA practices, and have seen players ahead of them on the depth chart leave in free agency. The first domino to fall all the way back in March was last year’s starting RB Tony Pollard signing with the Tennessee Titans. Although Deuce Vaughn wasn’t the first player that came to mind when thinking of who will fill Pollard’s shoes, with the Cowboys re-signing Rico Dowdle and bringing back Ezekiel Elliott as well, Vaughn is still a very interesting player to monitor going into year two of both his career and the Cowboys offense being called by HC Mike McCarthy.

McCarthy’s first year as play-caller was mostly a success, as the Cowboys were again near the top of the league in every important metric on offense, but with it came another empty trip to the postseason. As if the pressure hasn’t been turned up on McCarthy enough ever since first arriving in Dallas, he now has to find a way to, at the very least, build on what his offense did in 2023 despite losing several key starters, and better yet find ways to improve by taking full advantage of new personnel. The Cowboys have not had this much uncertainty in just how they’ll line up on both sides of the ball in some time. Although OTA practices are now such a small peek at anything relevant to on-field results, one example of this has already been noticed with Vaughn reportedly getting reps as a receiver out of the slot.

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The Cowboys have a major need for more explosive chunk plays on offense that come from anyone other than WR CeeDee Lamb, whose absence from OTAs allowed the Cowboys to work some more unique looks. Vaughn only appeared in six games on offense as a rookie, with his longest run of 13 yards coming in week two against the Jets (on a drive that ended in fellow rookie Luke Schoonmaker’s first touchdown) and longest reception being 11 yards both against the Jets and later at home versus the Giants. This is still a player capable of making big plays with his speed, vision, and change of direction ability when put in the right situations. The Cowboys did not do the 5’5”, 176-pound Vaughn many favors in his limited playing time with the starting offense last season, often telegraphing that the ball was coming his way and allowing defenses to key on him in a way that limits his best traits.

Dallas’ plans at running back centered around Pollard, and now without him and any new draft picks on the roster, McCarthy and OC Brian Schottenheimer may be forced to get a lot more comfortable with these lesser-used packages for not only Vaughn but possibly Malik Davis as they piece together the run game with Dowdle, Elliott and Royce Freeman also in the fold.

The saving grace for the Cowboys run game as a whole in 2024 may be their re-commitment to getting a better push up front, locking Tyler Smith in as the starting left guard by drafting Oklahoma tackle Tyler Guyton in the first round this April and potentially replacing the loss of starting center Tyler Biadasz with third round pick Cooper Beebe - a teammate of Vaughn’s at Kansas State. This is a familiar place for the Cowboys to be in when it comes to strengthening the offensive line as their best play to go “all-in”, and it will take this unit coming together early in the season and quickly gelling to raise the play of the Cowboys current platoon of running backs. The Cowboys did not have season-long continuity up front for much of last season with Pollard as an inconsistent lead back partly because of it, and this was especially true early in the year when Vaughn was seeing the most work:

However, it should be noted that, of those first five games where Vaughn saw a consistent workload, only one of them - against the 49ers, when everything went wrong - featured all five starters along the offensive line. The Cowboys’ run game as a whole had struggled during that stretch, so it’s not like Vaughn was the only one struggling at the time.

Still, much of the sentiment from fans and media hasn’t focused at all on Vaughn. That may be a mistake, as Vaughn’s electric preseason performances a year ago still happened, and the running back will only be more comfortable in the offense this year. The fact that the Cowboys didn’t draft a running back, even choosing Marist Liufau over two different running back prospects, likely suggests the team still has confidence in their small running back.

Vaughn will also have veteran Royce Freeman to compete with in this overcrowded Dallas backfield, but the Cowboys are not giving up on his on-field potential. Vaughn can be much more than just a great story as a draft pick to the team his father Chris Vaughn works at, with Chris even making the call on draft day last year to break the news to his son.

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Creating mismatches with skill position players and getting the ball out of Dak Prescott’s hands quickly and decisively will still be staples of McCarthy’s offense. The Cowboys have this in their WR1 with Lamb, they have it with emerging star TE Jake Ferguson, they may feature WR/returner KaVontae Turpin more on offense to do so, and also have Vaughn as a second-year player ready to fit this role.

If the Cowboys learned their lesson of counting on 2023 draft picks across the board to contribute too much too early, they’ll need to see some major second-year leaps from the same players to take this pressure off their most recent draft class. The first step for a lot of these sophom*ore players is finding a path to climb the depth chart, which Vaughn has already done with a lot more room to grow as he proves himself through training camp.