Emmitt Smith doesn’t think Dallas Cowboys are 'ready' to draft Ashton Jeanty

The Dallas Cowboys have frequently been linked to former Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft. Jeanty played high school football in Texas and has said that he hopes to be drafted by the Cowboys in April.

Meanwhile, NFL.com’s Bucky Brooks unveiled his first mock of the opening round of the 2025 NFL Draft recently, and he has the Cowboys selecting Ashton Jeanty.

While some believe that Jeanty would be a good fit in Dallas, former Cowboys star Emmitt Smith disagrees. Smith spoke with Maggie and Perloff about why he doesn’t feel like the Cowboys should draft Ashton Jeanty.

“If he comes to the Cowboys right now, he’s going to get beat up,” Emmitt Smith said. “I don’t think we’re ready. We don’t have the right mindset. We don’t have the right commitments. I just talked about commitments and being [misaligned]. I think we are drafting exciting pieces… that would get fans, ‘Oh, we got Ashton Jeanty, oh, we’re going to be able to run the ball.’”

It’s not that Smith doesn’t believe in Jeanty as a player. He just doesn’t believe that the Cowboys have the right mindset to use him correctly.

The Hall of Famer feels that the Cowboys had really good running backs last year that they didn’t utilize correctly.

“OK, you’re trying to tell me Ezekiel Elliott and Rico Dowdle could not carry that team? No. There was no commitment to run the football,” Smith said. “And when there was a commitment, when Dak Prescott went down, Rico ran the ball well.

“So don’t tell me we can’t run the football. Dak went down. They shifted Cooper Rush, they brought his passes down and created more runs for the running game. And then you start having this level of balance and start to show some kind of consistency.”

To Smith’s point, Dowdle finished the 2024 season with 1,079 rushing yards. He topped the 100-yard mark four times over the final six games after not rushing for 100 yards in any of the first 10 games.

There’s no doubt that Ashton Jeanty has an impressive resume, including finishing as the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy last year after rushing for 2,601 yards and 29 touchdowns.

But if the Cowboys aren’t going to be committed to running the football, there’s no reason to draft him, according to Smith.

“You need to do that the whole entire year,” Smith said of being balanced. “That’s the formula that I’m talking about. So quit trying to do what everyone else is doing in the National Football League. Your quarterback is not Patrick Mahomes, he’s not Josh Allen, he’s not Joe Burrow. He’s Dak Prescott.”