Cowboys EXCLUSIVE: Is Jake Ferguson 'The Next Travis Kelce'? Super Bowl Speculation
The Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers are playing in the Super Bowl, and a common denominator of both teams is that they have superstar tight ends, something that the Dallas Cowboys might have on their hands in Jake Ferguson.
Dallas tight end took his career to new heights in his second season, and in an exclusive interview with CowboysSI.com, he revealed how he elevated his game to a Pro Bowl caliber in 2023.
Could Dallas Cowboys tight end Jake Ferguson be the next version of Kansas City Chiefs superstar Travis Kelce?
"It was a lot of me watching (Dalton Schultz) be a vet," Ferguson said. "How he took care of his body, how he approached practice, approached meetings, and stuff like that was really just how a vet takes care of himself and how he holds himself, and so that was a lot of me looking up, taking a lot of pieces from his game."
It so happens that Kelce has mentioned Ferguson as one of the young tight ends he views as up-and-coming. But before that? It's about continuing to replicate and exceed what Schultz did here.
Schultz spent five years in Dallas before joining the Houston Texans in free agency last year. Still, his one season as the veteran tight end in the Cowboys locker room paid dividends for the development and maturity of Ferguson in his rookie season.
Ferguson just turned 25, and as a young man who entered the league at age 23, he said that one of the biggest reasons for his success in Year 2 was changing his diet and “not eating Oreos.”
As for the Super Bowl stars ahead of Ferguson, such as 49ers tight end George Kittle and Chiefs star turned Taylor Swift's boyfriend, Travis Kelce, Ferguson's current career trajectory places him alongside those NFL greats.
In Year 2, Ferguson had 761 yards receiving, 71 receptions, and five touchdowns, which led to him becoming a Pro Bowler, much like Kittle did in his second season. Kelce, on the other hand, didn't make a Pro Bowl until his third season but became an unstoppable force in the NFL and is arguably the greatest receiving tight end in the game's history.
Dallas' young star has a long way to go before he matches the career numbers of Kittle and Kelce, but based on his current trajectory, there's a chance that he could be an integral piece in helping the Cowboys franchise win its first Super Bowl since 1995.
