Mac Engel: Cowboys' Mazi Smith struggles: Is he the team's biggest draft gaffe?

Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Aug 18, 2025

Published in Football

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

FORT WORTH, Texas — Mazi Smith’s job security with the Dallas Cowboys is a scathing indictment on the team’s position group, and probably the guy who drafted him, too.

If the team had anyone else of note it liked behind him, it’s highly doubtful the third-year pro would be on the Cowboys when roster cuts are announced on Aug. 26. He’s apt to stick around because there is no one else.

Of the growing list of concerns and red flags attached to Smith was his presence in the third quarter of the Cowboys’ preseason game Saturday night at AT&T Stadium against the Baltimore Ravens. It wasn’t anything that he did, or didn’t, do. It was that he was actually in the game.

By that point in the game, Smith should have been entrenched on the sidelines as just another bored spectator. Any player worth a bleep is not playing in the third quarter of a preseason game. Players who are fighting for a roster spot, or a spot in the NFL, play in the third quarter of a preseason game.

(For those of you brave enough to watch this game, you watched one of the worst preseason games the Cowboys have played this century. These first two fake games under first-year coach Brian Schottenheimer may drive him into retirement before the start of the regular season. The Cowboys lost this one 31-13.)

Rather than Smith securing his spot on the team, and in the league, he is instead nailing down his status as Cowboys vice president of player personnel Will McClay’s worst draft pick.

The only other candidate who is remotely worthy of this discussion is, like Smith, “A Michigan Man.” Defensive end Taco Charlton was the team’s first-round pick, 28th overall, out of Michigan in the 2017 draft. He made it two-plus years before he was cut in the middle of the 2019 season.

Smith is on a similar path as Taco.

A relatively rare Will McClay draft miss

Since McClay was handed the task of running the team’s draft in 2014, the club has consistently had far more hits than misses on picks. As much criticism as the Cowboys deserve for failing to do much of anything in the month of January, they have done well under McClay in April and May.

An exception is April of 2023, when they used the 26th pick in the NFL draft to select a player who looks great on paper, and in the weight room, but not so much on the field. Few are immune to these types of evaluation bombs.

The player can lift multiple 18-wheelers with one arm, is blessed with “measureables,” played at a power conference school and has just enough positive game footage to convince a team he is worthy of a high grade on his pre-draft report. The team sees what it wants, and the pick fills a need.

Smith was drafted for need, and he hasn’t come close to filling it. As such, the Cowboys remain vulnerable against the run in the middle.

No notable nose tackle since Jay Ratliff

The Cowboys have not had a Pro Bowl-caliber nose tackle since Jay Ratliff. If you’re too young to know who that is, Jay played for the Cowboys from 2005 to 2012. A converted defensive end, Jay was not a prototypical tackle. He had a motor that had no “OFF” switch, and a mean streak that could make a hungry grizzly bear run in the opposite direction.

Ratliff is the outlier. McClay has hunted for the more classic-looking nose tackle since he got the job, and he really hasn’t found one. With his wide frame, Smith looks like he should be able to play the position.

Since he entered the league, other than the Cowboys’ game last year against the Giants in New York, Smith really has not played the part. He knows it, too. When speaking to the local media last week, he didn’t do anything other than own all of it.

He actually had a few moments Saturday night against the Ravens, but he was playing against the backups of the backups.

The problem is the Cowboys have no one else to move him off the roster.

So Mazi Smith will stick around a little bit longer, but he’s not apt to change his status as the one that Will McClay badly missed on.

____