All year long we’ve looked at the rookie class and given previews and reviews on each player for every game of the season. Now let’s look back the season in its entirety and breakdown each rookie and how they performed. Let’s continue with second-round defensive end Donovan Ezeiruaku.
Season stats – Snaps: 603, Total Tackles: 40, Total Pressures: 36, QB Hits: 12, Sacks: 2, Tackles for loss: 9, Forced Fumbles: 1, Safeties: 1, Penalties: 2
Donovan Ezeiruaku’s rookie year with the Cowboys was mostly what
you’d hope for from a second-round edge rusher with some interesting production, real flashes of star potential, and a few rough edges that remind you he’s only 22. On the stat line, he finished the season with 40 total tackles, two sacks (which should have been three) and nine tackles for loss across all 17 games. He handled a genuine starter’s workload, playing on over 600 defensive snaps, good for more than half of Dallas’ defensive plays up front. That level of usage and steady involvement already says a lot.
Where he really pops is in the advanced numbers. PFF’s grading had him 73.1 overall by the end of the year, consistently ranking as one of the top rookie defenders in the league, and listing him as having the second-highest overall grade of any rookie rookie edge rushers from the 2025 draft. As a pass rusher he showed just how efficient he was with a pass-rush win rate that led the entire rookie edge class at 28%, plus the second-most quarterback hits totaling 12 hits. He was also credited with 24 defensive stops, again best among rookie edges, and an outstanding 88.8 run-defense grade in November when he briefly paced all edge rushers in that category. Put simply, the sack total stayed modest, but the underlying pressure and run disruption were absolutely real.
Early in the year, Ezeiruaku was all about near-misses with hits and hurries but without the finish, as quarterbacks got the ball out quickly behind a shaky Cowboys secondary. His first sack finally came in October against Washington, and both of his official sacks this season were classic moments of how he can win one-on-ones with relentlessness and energy. More than the sacks, though, he showed a complete profile in how he could bend the corner off the edge, convert speed to power into tackles and tight ends, and hold up against the run instead of being a boom-or-bust pass-rush specialist.
There were issues. Discipline became part of his story in the second half of the season. In Week 4 he was flagged for unnecessary roughness against Green Bay, one accepted penalty on his individual log but still a 15-yarder the coaches will point to in meetings. But in the season finale against the Giants, his year ended on a sour note after seeing a would-be sack wiped out by a tripping penalty, then he got involved in a post-play scrum, grabbed guard Greg Van Roten’s facemask and ripped his helmet off. That drew an unsportsmanlike conduct flag, an automatic ejection, and later a fine from the league office. It’s the kind of moment that will follow him into the offseason and be used as a teaching point about composure, especially for a player who otherwise had a clean record for the most part.
What’s notable is what you don’t see on his résumé, there were no reported injuries that cost him games, and he finished the year having played in all 17 contests, something not many young front-seven players can say. That durability, plus his motor and production, is a big part of why fans and analysts kept him in their top-rookie lists right through the season.
Summing up Ezeiruaku’s rookie season in plain language, he was one of the Cowboys’ best draft hits of 2025 and proved to be a blue-collar, high-effort, high-impact edge who created steady pressure, tackled well, and held up against the run, even if the sack column never caught up with how often he won. The numbers say he was one of the better rookie defenders in the league, and the tape backs that up. Dallas came out of 2025 with a young edge rusher who looks like a long-term starter, and if the coverage tightens up and the scheme improves around him, those sacks have every chance to show up in increased numbers in 2026.
