George Pickens lined up outside for most of 2025. He beat one-on-one matchups and hauled in deep passes like it was a walk in the park. But when CeeDee Lamb went down with an injury, the Dallas Cowboys moved Pickens to the slot and watched him run short, quick routes with just as much ease. This season, offensive coordinator Klayton Adams wants a bigger look at Pickens in the slot.

“I think year two is a good opportunity to force the issue on some of those things,” Adams said, per DLLS Sports’ Abby Jones. “I think we’ll probably see more of that as we get into training camp, of what he’s comfortable doing and what he’s not comfortable doing.”

Last season, Pickens took 80 snaps (8.2%) for the slot, per PlayerProfiler. Pickens does not tend to line up in this role frequently, with only 23% of snaps coming in the slot in 2024 (per NBC’s Mike Florio). But he hasn’t disappointed the staff when he has to line up there. Moving George Pickens to the slot will make coverage easier to deal with, paving the way for faster, more aggressive plays.

“The guy can pretty much do anything,” Adams continued. “Just putting guys in position where they’re very comfortable operating is really the big thing with him. When you take him off the backside of a three-by-one formation, sometimes you might be overthinking yourself a little bit with some of that stuff – it’s situation by situation – probably not something that we would want to do every single play, but he’s certainly given us confidence in doing it with him.”

Demanding a more diversified role for George Pickens is only one of the things on Klayton Adams’ mind. Dallas had the second-best overall offense in the league last season, but it had no teeth in the red zone. This has been a trend for two years now, and last season’s struggles are still particularly fresh in the OC’s mind.

“I don’t know if it’s just maybe being young or performance anxiety, but we had more self-inflicted wounds in the red zone than we did in some other areas,” Adams noted. “If you have a negative yardage run on the 1-yard line, that’s a lot different than a negative yard on the 50.”

The Dallas Cowboys spent big on first-round O-linemen in three of the last five drafts. 2022 brought Tyler Smith, 2024 brought Tyler Guyton, and last season, the Cowboys went with Tyler Booker. When they started doing it, it looked like a plan… at least for a while.

In 2022, the Cowboys were one of the best in the league when making trips to the red zone. 2023 saw a dip in redzone scoring, with only 56.3% of trips resulting in scores. 2024 brought the biggest struggles, with Dallas converting just 46% of their red zone attempts. Last season was supposed to be better, but it was only slightly so.

The Cowboys ranked 18th in the league in 2025 with a 56.9% red zone efficiency. They went to the red zone 65 times, but opted to kick field goals in 17 of them, and turned the ball over five times. Cowboys insider Tommy Yarrish didn’t think having three top-of-the-draft linemen has helped Dallas in any way.

“I’m not sure if three first-round linemen are entirely who you need to lean on here,” he wrote for a mailbag on the official Cowboys website. When the field gets condensed, it’s easier to defend both the run and the pass, so you can’t look at them to be entirely at fault,” Yarrish wrote. “It’s just a naturally difficult place to find the right answers consistently, but with the offensive firepower that Dallas has, it shouldn’t be.

“So, it’s on [head coach] Brian Schottenheimer and his offensive staff to figure out what kind of rhythm they can find when the field gets smaller in order to take seven points more often than settling for three.”

They averaged 27.7 points per game last season, and still couldn’t finish drives when the game was on the line. Bridging that gap will be one of Adams’ biggest challenges in the upcoming season.