The Dallas Cowboys played their first preseason game against the Los Angeles Rams on Saturday night and there were a few noticeable absences. Star edge rusher Micah Parsons continues to stay off the field as he enters a nasty holdout with Jerry Jones and the front office. CeeDee Lamb also didn’t play in Saturday’s game but found out what it was like to be hit in one after getting run over by an official on the sidelines.
With these events, you couldn’t blame a Cowboys fan if more action was happening on the field than off it Saturday night. But that’s not true for the players that played against the Rams. One rookie that has been rumored as a cut candidate made his claim to a roster spot and the 230-pounder is beginning to build momentum as the calendar heads into mid-August.
Dallas Cowboys rookie Round 7 RB Phil Mafah
— Jacob Gibbs (@jagibbs_23) August 11, 2025
Every preseason touch pic.twitter.com/B5YYbcmAMt
Cowboys RB Phil Mafah is Making a Strong Bid for a Roster Spot After 1st Preseason Game
One of the biggest competitions on the Cowboys roster is at the running back position. Dallas signed veterans Miles Sanders and Javontae Williams one-year deals in free agency, but they added two more runners in the draft by selecting Texas’s Jaydon Blue and Clemson’s Phil Mafah.
Front offices say they want younger, cheaper options at the running back position. But the Cowboys have been searching for one since Ezekiel Elliott left town for the first time after the 2022 season. After watching Rico Dowdle and an aging Elliott struggle last season, the Cowboys took some action and Mafah bowled into the competition like he was the Kool-Aid Man.
A 234-pound sledgehammer, Mafah scored 28 touchdowns including 13 in his junior season (2023) at Clemson. The rookie also earned an elite composite size grade in the RAS process but didn’t have a full score as he was recovering from a torn labrum in his shoulder. That’s not to say anything about his toughness, as he managed to play through the pain in his senior season, but he showed a lot of what got him drafted against the Rams.
Mafah’s stats aren’t going to sound fantasy football alarms. He finished with 36 rushing yards on 10 carries and caught a pair of passes for two yards. But he also showed plenty of burst and caught the attention of Cowboys’ beat writer Kyle Youmans.
“While Mafah’s stat line won’t jump off the screen…he was impressive with his entire body of work,” Youmans wrote. “The seventh-round draft pick showed an instinctive ability to pick up the blitz and was given the second-highest pass blocking grade [according to Pro Football Focus] over a short sample size.”
This could be the beginning of an intriguing camp battle moving forward. Williams didn’t play on Saturday night, perhaps signaling his spot at the top of the depth chart. Blue and Sanders didn’t play due to injury, but the Cowboys may lean toward keeping the cheaper fourth-round pick on the roster. It could bring the battle down to Sanders and Mafah and if the rookie plays the way he did on Saturday, the veteran could be looking for a new job.