Nate Thomas detailed his mindset from the battle for the starting left tackle spot.
Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman Nate Thomas enters the team's mandatory minicamp this week on one side of a critical competition on the offense: the starting left tackle spot.
For the former seventh-rounder, there is much less pressure on his spot in this battle than on Tyler Guyton, the third-year LT who has not yet definitively taken ownership of the job despite being a former first-round pick and the starter for much of the time that he's been healthy.
That door has been opened by head coach Brian Schottenheimer, and we could hear from him this week on how both Thomas and Guyton are developing.
For Thomas, he's kept a simple mindset of focusing on the controllables. He's the one out to steal a job, not fight to retain it, so, in theory, his success could come down to doing the simple things better and more consistently.
"For me, it really comes down to technique and the habits that you build," Thomas said to the team website. "Last year, it was my first year playing — coming off of injury from the year before. This has really been my first real offseason to train and get better, so that's what I did."
A dislocated knee in his rookie season in 2024 had him on IR, and in his "redshirt" year, Thomas appeared in all 17 games while making four starts.
He's been intentional about finding the help from the Cowboys coaching staff that he knows his game needs. That includes different levels of the offensive personnel as well as team legend Tyron Smith, who's joined in a volunteer assistant role.
"I took what I did last year — the good, the bad, the things I need to work on — and went to Duke [Manyweather], the dude I train with, and I said, 'Hey, help me fix some of these things that I'm having trouble with," he said. "That's what I did."
For Guyton, who faces the most pressure in this head-to-head as he tries to grab hold of a key position that should have been his from the start, he is embracing the competition reality.
"There's competition everywhere," he said. "I think Nate's an incredible player and we learn form each other. We're both really young and we have a specific set of skills that complement each other."
Schottenheimer is ready to continue seeing them duke it out because he knows, regardless of who gets the Week 1 start, both players will be pushed into the way of improvement.
"We're gonna make Tyler earn it," Schottenheimer said. "Tyler and Nate Thomas are competing right now to start at left tackle. Why? Because we think that's gonna get the best out of Tyler Guyton and the best out of Nate Thomas."
