Bill Haisten: CeeDee Lamb a perfect fit in Dallas’ fraternity of Great 88s

I’ve been in a prediction slump. I picked Texas A&M to beat Oklahoma State in the TaxAct Texas Bowl. OSU prevailed for a 10-win finish.

I picked Oklahoma to beat Arizona in the Alamo Bowl because I never dreamed the Sooners would commit six turnovers. OU found a way to lose while rolling for 568 total yards and a 201-29 advantage on rushing yards.

In the College Football Playoff, I had Texas defeating Washington and Alabama defeating Michigan. Wrong and wrong.

I did pick Bixby every week during the football season, but picking Bixby is like dunking on a 6-foot rim. It’s almost impossible to fail.

One somewhat recent prediction was nailed emphatically, however, and it was the vision I had for CeeDee Lamb as an NFL player. After the OU All-American wide receiver was a first-round selection in the 2020 draft, there was this column headline: Prestige and pressure for CeeDee Lamb, who’ll look good in Dallas’ jersey No. 88.

People are also reading…

Several months before Lamb’s final college season — during which he was an All-American and chopped Texas to pieces with a 10-catch, three-touchdown performance in the Cotton Bowl — there was this column headline: A rarity for the Sooners — a receiver (CeeDee Lamb) is OU’s best player.

Dak Prescott had a strong 2023 season for the Dallas Cowboys, and Micah Parsons is celebrated as being an elite defender, but it could be argued now that Lamb also has become the best player in Dallas.

The 24-year-old Lamb enters the NFL postseason’s first weekend as the league’s most effective receiver and with heavy responsibility. At 3:30 p.m. Sunday, a Fox-televised NFC wild-card game matches the Green Bay Packers and Cowboys in Arlington, Texas.

This is the ninth playoff meeting of the Cowboys and Packers. The 1967 Ice Bowl is among the more storied games in NFL history, but Dallas fans would consider 2014 and 2016 playoff disappointments to have been equally sickening. When Dallas lost at Green Bay in 2014, the Cowboys got jobbed on the Dez Bryant fourth-quarter, fourth-down catch that was ruled to have been an incompletion at the goal line. In 2016, Dallas was doomed by Aaron Rodgers’ late-game brilliance.

Prescott and Lamb are smart guys, so they’ve got to be aware of Green Bay’s all-time record at AT&T Stadium — 5-0 — and of Dallas’ agonizing slump in the NFC playoffs.

The Cowboys have not been NFC Championship participants since the 1995 season. That Barry Switzer-coached team conquered Brett Favre and the Packers for the NFC title and went on to win the Super Bowl. There hasn’t been another Cowboy Super Bowl since that long-ago Super Bowl 30 triumph over Pittsburgh.

By the end of the 2023 Cowboys’ 17-game regular season, Lamb had an NFL-leading and club-record total of 135 catches. The previous record of 111 was set in 1995 by another of the Dallas No. 88 wide receivers — Michael Irvin. The 6-foot-2, 192-pound Lamb was this season’s most targeted NFL receiver (181 times), and his team-record total of 1,749 receiving yards was second only to the 1,799 of Miami’s Tyreek Hill.

As for Lamb’s representation of No. 88 — the most tradition-rich jersey number in Cowboy history — Lamb fits beautifully alongside predecessors Drew Pearson, Irvin and Dez Bryant.

Three of Dallas’ Great 88s played college football in Oklahoma: Pearson at the University of Tulsa, Bryant at Oklahoma State and Lamb at OU (where he ranks sixth all-time in receptions with 173). Having set a record that may never be broken, Ryan Broyles in 2008-11 became OU’s career leader in receptions with 349.

While Irvin was a star for Jimmy Johnson-coached Miami teams, he did play one of his more memorable college games on Oklahoma soil. In a 1985 showdown in Norman, as Sooner quarterback Troy Aikman sustained a season-ending ankle injury, OU lost 27-14 to the Miami Hurricanes. Irvin scored on a 56-yard pass from Vinny Testaverde. OU would go on to win the national title that season. Irvin would go on to be a first-round pick in Tom Landry’s final Dallas draft class — the 1988 class.

Through the first 69 games of Lamb’s NFL career, he has more catches — 410 — than any of his Dallas No. 88 predecessors. Through Pearson’s first 69 games, he had 234 receptions. Irvin had 276 and Bryant had 352. Those stats reflect the evolution of football.

During the Pearson and Irvin years, the Cowboys were driven by their run game. Money also makes a statement about the evolution of football: In 1978, at $733,000, running back O.J. Simpson was paid more than any quarterback. This season, 20 wide receivers made at least $15 million. Only two running backs — San Francisco’s Christian McCaffrey and New Orleans’ Alvin Kamara — made at least $15 million.

Still on his rookie contract, Lamb made about $3.5 million this season. In 2024, his pay spikes to more than $17 million. His contract expires at the end of the 2024 season, but Dallas owner Jerry Jones and Lamb should agree on a huge-money extension during the offseason.

With a 2023 income of $30 million, Hill currently is the NFL’s highest-paid wide receiver. Prescott and Lamb have uncommon chemistry, so it seems that Lamb is destined to command something in the neighborhood of $30 million per season.

In only four NFL seasons, Lamb already has more catches than household-name Cowboys like Bob Hayes, Tony Dorsett, Jay Novacek and Billy Joe Dupree.

“(Lamb) is everything that I thought he would be,” Jones said during his weekly segment on Metroplex radio station The Fan 105.3. “He has certainly met the mark of everything that we thought he could be.”

When Lamb was a grade-school kid, Hurricane Katrina necessitated his family’s move from New Orleans to Houston. Before the start of his 98-catch senior season at Randolph Foster High School in 2016, Lamb committed to OU after having considered offers from Alabama and Texas.

With the Sooners, Lamb became more than a sure-handed target for Baker Mayfield in 2017, Kyler Murray in 2018 and Jalen Hurts in 2019. Lamb was a complete player – tremendous on downfield blocking and fighting for yards after the catch, and he’s done more of the same in Dallas.

In six games since late October, Lamb had at least 11 receptions. As Dallas closed the regular season against Detroit and Washington, he had in those games 26 receptions on 30 targets. There is no hotter player in pro football, and if Lamb sustains that level of productivity, these Cowboys might actually advance to the NFC Championship game or even beyond.

Before the Green Bay on Sunday, Lamb already has solidified his status as being deserving of his No. 88 jersey. Not just anyone can wear that jersey for the Dallas Cowboys.

Fifty years have passed since Pearson was signed by Dallas as a rookie free agent out of TU, and now CeeDee Lamb now is a perfect fit in the four-man fraternity of great Cowboy receivers – the Great 88s.

The new Tulsa World app offers personalized features. Download it today.

Users can customize the app so you see the stories most important to you. You can also sign up for personalized notifications so you don’t miss any important news.

If you’re on your phone, download it here now: Apple Store or Google Play

Patrick Prince ‘); var s = document.createElement(‘script’); s.setAttribute(‘src’, ‘https://assets.revcontent.com/master/delivery.js’); document.body.appendChild(s); window.removeEventListener(‘scroll’, throttledRevContent); __tnt.log(‘Load Rev Content’); } } }, 100); window.addEventListener(‘scroll’, throttledRevContent);

Get local news delivered to your inbox!