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For almost three years, return specialist KaVontae Turpin has made the Cowboys return game one of the most feared in the NFL. The former USFL MVP demanded respect from the start in Dallas, earning Pro Bowl honors as a rookie and seeing an ever-expanding role on offense along the way.
While Turpin’s workload on Mike McCarthy’s offense has seen year-to-year growth, it’s still a generally niche role. Through 11 weeks in 2024, Turpin has just five rushing attempts and 31 targets downfield. He’s on pace for a career season on offense but it’s considerably less than what many in the media and fan circles envisioned for the former TCU receiver.
Turpin has largely been stuck in a supportive and gadget role over the years. Despite the blatant need for speed and playmaking ability on offense, McCarthy has struggled to get Turpin involved. The 28-year-old hasn’t made things easy for his coach, dropping some key passes and running some undisciplined routes, but one can argue it’s not Turpin’s job to fit McCarthy’s roles but rather McCarthy’s job to find the right roles for Turpin.
Such a statement may sound like semantics or even blame shifting but the reality is Turpin is just 5-foot-9, 153-pounds soaking wet and stretched out. He’s not the plug-and-play WR McCarthy has been trying to make him be.
For the better part of the season Turpin’s results on the field have been fairly underwhelming. Until, of course, he was used in a way that leaned on his strengths over the past week. Turpin’s ability to be a gamebreaker was on full display against Houston when he took a routine slant route to the house for 64 yards. He showed off his ability to separate, create in space and take a short pass the distance in the blink of an eye.
According to Seth Walder at ESPN, Turpin’s slant route for six points was just the second slant Turpin has run all season. It’s an inexcusable situation from an offensive coach who naturally leans on slant routes to a near preposterous degree.
Rather than using Turpin on pick routes, screens and slants, the Cowboys have been running their diminutive dynamo downfield where his size and experience are understandably exposed. Over the past 2+ seasons in Dallas, Turpin has been misused and underutilized to an unforgivable degree.
An argument could be made his actual number of touches is near maxed out given his build and that McCarthy was simply preserving him as a return man. But with speed and game breaking ability such as Turpin’s, he doesn’t even need the ball in his hands to be impactful. Motioning him behind the line at the snap and dragging him shallow across the formation after the snap is a great way to spread defenses horizontally, opening space on passing routes and widening rushing lanes on runs.
It’s also worth pointing out no one has any idea where that usage rate maxes out at since it’s yet to be found. Turpin has played in 43 of a possible 44 regular season games since coming to Dallas. He’s been extremely durable even in the high impact life of a return man.
A restricted free agent in 2025, Turpin may be somewhere else in the near future. There stands a very real chance his best years as an offensive weapon are ahead of him if his next coach is more willing to feature him in ways that play to his strength.