From forgotten pick to WR3, this Dallas Cowboy is flying up the depth chart
Second-year wide receiver Ryan Flournoy was fighting for a roster spot toward the end of Dallas Cowboys training camp in August.
In a head-to-head battle with close friend and fellow receiver Jalen Brooks going into the final preseason game, Flournoy needed a big effort to earn the final spot in the receiver room. Just to even have a chance, it took a knee injury to Jonathan Mingo in the prior week’s preseason game to give him the opportunity after a training camp that had him as more of an afterthought.
“There were times in camp I wasn’t getting the ball at all,” Flournoy said. “I was probably wide receiver-seven [on the depth chart].”
After leading the team in receiving in that final exhibition, Flournoy secured one of the final spots on the 53-man roster, but he also knew that it could be short-lived. Mingo was set to return after four weeks, and Brooks and Jalen Cropper were hot on his tail off the practice squad. To keep his value on the roster high, he homed in on a craft that he began to specialize in late in his rookie season.
“I took special teams serious. I still do,” he said. “I knew in order to make the team, I had to make myself available and dominate. That’s what the last two preseason games consisted of, just really locking in on special teams.”
The plan worked. Flournoy hung around on the roster, and it allowed him to step into a big opportunity when CeeDee Lamb when down for three games with a high ankle sprain earlier this season.
Going into the team’s Week 5 matchup against the New York Jets, Flournoy noticed a lot of plays drawn up for him to be the first read. It was something he had not seen in a regular-season game to that point in his career.
“It skyrocketed [my confidence],” he said. “The trust the coaches gave me, I remember going into the meeting Jets week, and we didn’t have no conversations or nothing. I had just seen plays drawn up for me, and I was like, ‘Oh, they trust me. I got to step up.’ That just boosted my confidence. They see what I see in myself.”
On that afternoon at MetLife Stadium, Flournoy turned in a career-high 114 yards on six receptions in a 37-22 win.
“I feel like the [Jets game] was a big, huge confidence-booster for him,” Lamb said. “I felt like he felt like he belonged. Everybody needs that. You can tell yourself that, but until you go out and prove it to yourself, and I felt like ever since then — granted, I’ve known what he’s had in the tank — for him to go out there and do it again, and then continue to score and get himself in the end zone and continue to come up big for us, it’s huge.”
A sixth-round pick out of Southeast Missouri State — a school with just under 8,000 students enrolled playing in the lower-tier FCS — Flournoy earned a reputation in the 2024 draft cycle for being a hard-nosed, competitive production machine.
In the Cowboys’ evaluation of him at a school visit in the fall of 2023, the scout thought Flournoy wouldn’t be able to practice that day because of a broken hand he had suffered just a few days earlier. Instead, he wrapped it up and worked out like nothing was bothering him.
That made him stand out to the Cowboys from that point forward.
“It’s his work ethic,” head coach Brian Schottenheimer said. “He’s learned every position. You can put him at X, F, Y, Z, it doesn’t matter. He can play them all and play them all at a high level. That’s a lot of confidence that it gives [quarterback Dak Prescott] and the coaching staff when we’re putting together the plan and how we want to use people. I think he’s proven to himself that he belongs at this level.”
Selflessness is another word that is mentioned alongside Flournoy’s name. Given his own versatility, he is willing to move around the formation before a play if it means opening up a dynamic weapon like Lamb or George Pickens.
“He can do whatever you ask him to do, run, block, break the huddle,” Prescott said. “And CeeDee says, ‘No, I want that route,’ he goes and plays the other position and does it with such a great attitude, with such grace. One of the best teammates I’ve been around. Keeps a positive attitude, stays focused and cares a lot about his teammates, and gives it his all each and every day.”
“That just comes from CeeDee being a great receiver,” Flournoy said. “I just want to win. If he thinks that’s the best choice, sure, go ahead. He’s earned it and has established himself in this league. I respect that.”
From a forgotten third-day draft pick and a “wide receiver seven” to a rapid ascension up the depth chart, Flournoy has a case for being the third-most reliable receiver on the team going into the back half of the season. Behind Pickens and Lamb, Flournoy’s 200 receiving yards and two touchdowns are third among all receivers despite where he started the season.
“It’s really just never giving up on myself,” he said. “Even when it looks like it wasn’t going my way, I still put my head down and kept grinding. It’s just a blessing, and it’s all God’s glory that I’m here stepping up the ladder and being a target. It’s a blessing for me, for sure.”
