19 in ’19 — #13: Jason Witten, a true iron man and so much more than the Lunchpail cliche

19 in ’19 highlights the 19 most impactful Cowboys, Rangers, Mavericks and Stars throughout the history of each franchise. Our staff voted on the top 19 from all four combined lists to create these overall rankings. You can find all of our team lists and profiles here.

Sometimes, the feats and accomplishments we observe in closest proximity are the ones that we fail to properly appreciate. If you’re used to seeing someone do something impressive every day, week or year, it’s easy to lose track of the context surrounding their efforts. Dallas sports fans are certainly going to experience a measure of this in the coming years with regards to Dirk Nowitzki’s career. No matter how hard you try — and here at The Athletic, we tried pretty hard —it’s impossible to really encapsulate and understand that level of greatness as it is occurring. You simply grow to used to it.

For nearly 15 years, Cowboys fan certainly grew used to not remotely worrying about the tight end position. When a spot features such steady excellence, we focus our attention elsewhere, taking consistent elite quality for granted. I think this is absolutely the case with Jason Witten’s Cowboys career. We all know Witten is the franchise’s leader in receptions and receiving yards; that he’s third in touchdown receptions. From the time he entered the league through the 2017 season when he took a brief respite to work at ESPN, Witten led all tight ends in catches and yards while standing fifth in touchdown receptions.

However, he was never widely considered the best tight end in the game at any point in his career. Early on, players who were No. 1 options in their offensive attack carried that mantle: Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates for one portion; Rob Gronkowski, Greg Olsen, and Jimmy Graham for another. Here are Witten’s ranks in receptions and yards among tight ends from his second year in the league through 2017.

YEAR	REC RANK	YDS RANK
2004	2	2
2005	4	6
2006	7	6
2007	2	2
2008	3	2
2009	2	3
2010	1	1
2011	6	3
2012	1	1
2013	6	5
2014	8	10
2015	4	7
2016	6	11
2017	6	11

On average, he finished fourth among all tight ends in catches and fifth in yards. In 2010 and 2012, when he led all tight ends in catches, his league-wide ranks were third and fifth, respectively. But, still, he wasn’t quite the touchdown machine those aforementioned players were. He wasn’t necessarily the human highlight reel most of them were, either. Unless, of course, he was doing this:

For all of these reasons, broadcasters would often “Lunchpail” Witten, to use a term popularized by my colleague Bob Sturm. He was portrayed to be all heart and grit, not a freakish athletic specimen who, in the prime of his career (let’s say 2007-2012), averaged the second-most yards among tight ends. I think characterizations such as this have two seemingly contradictory effects. One, they minimize the talent of the player and their subsequent production. Witten was absolutely a full-field threat in his prime (more on this in a bit). But two, it also leads to grit-fatigue. We get it, he’s trying very hard and laying it all on the line. He wants it the most. It frankly feels like lazy, often race-based analysis. Because we get so tired of it and even start to mock it in radio segments, we start to minimize the qualities those broadcasters or pundits are trying to convey.

The NFL has made snap count data publicly available since 2012. Using this tool at Football Outsiders, we can sort by position. Here is Witten’s chart for percent of offensive snaps played, and his corresponding league-wide ranking.

YEAR	RANK	PERCENT
2012	1	98.09
2013	1	98.7
2014	1	98.96
2015	1	98.13
2016	1	96.03
2017	1	98.4

No tight end has ever played a greater percentage of snaps in any season since they were tracked. Not one. And while the data set only begins in 2012, I’m betting if we ran this back to 2007, he would have a ten-year run atop this list.

While two or three of his positional counterpoints might have regularly bested Witten in catches and touchdowns, this is one statistic where no one comes even close. Only Greg Olsen managed to finish second more than once.

We know that Witten is the franchise’s leader in consecutive games played. But even a statistic such as that one does not fully tell the story of just how — yes, I guess — gritty Witten really is. To get a sense for how unique this is, I looked at what you might consider to be the defensive counterpart to the tight end, linebacker, and the percent of snaps played on that side. Only James Laurinaitis ever led his position group more than once.

Tight end is an incredibly physically and mentally demanding position. Other than quarterback, it probably requires the widest array of skills on the football field. You’re part offensive lineman and part wide receiver, and your responsibilities vary widely from play to play. Unlike receivers, there are no plays off for a tight end when on the field. Witten played that relentless position, then took it a step further and refused to take plays off to a degree that no one else has since this data has been tracked.

Witten has been spoken of in Lunchpail terms so frequently over his career that non-Cowboys fans simultaneously lost track of how dominant and productive he was, while also overlooking how transcendent his commitment to never leaving the field really was.

There is also a degree of recency bias in play, resulting in a bit of revisionist history regarding the type of receiving threat Witten was. Using airyards.com (data beginning in 2009), we can compare the average depth of target for Witten and two of his most commonly mentioned contemporaries.

WITTEN	GONZALEZ	GATES
YEAR
2009	7.1	8.1	9.3
2010	6.8	7.6	9.7
2011	7.6	8.8	9.6
2012	8	7.8	10.8
2013	8.1	8.5	6.7

Clearly. there is a hierarchy among the three, but the difference is not as pronounced as some make it seem.

Neither is Witten’s perceived difference in athleticism. He reportedly ran a 4.65-second 40-yard dash in the lead up the 2003 NFL Draft. Martellus Bennett ran a 4.68. For a more recent comp, Travis Kelce clocked a 4.63.

I am not saying that Witten has elite tight end speed. Rather, his elite talent has been a commitment to maintaining what he came into the league with, which is also what has allowed him to stay on the field more than any tight end of the last decade. How has he done it?

ESPN’s Todd Archer reported in 2016 that around Witten’s ninth season in the league, he made a drastic change to the way he prepares his body.

“For about the last five years, Witten has altered his workout routine. No more is he worried about strength and bulk. His workouts are more about core strength and flexibility.

Each year strength and conditioning coach Mike Woicik puts the Cowboys through a combine of sorts in the offseason program to measure strength and explosiveness and speed and quickness. Each year Witten is one of the top finishers, regardless of position or age. His numbers in Year 14 are close, if not better, than what he did at the 2003 combine, when he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.55 seconds*. This year, he was only a tenth of a second slower.”

(*Editor’s note: Most sites list Witten’s 40-yard dash time as 4.65 seconds.)

This sounds very similar to the stories we heard about Dirk toward the end of his career. It pays off by allowing the player to maintain their performance into their late 30s, at the cost of being far more time-consuming.

Peter King got to see this firsthand in 2017, when he spent a week with Witten on the Monday after a game to see just how rigorous his recovery routine really is. This is must-watch.

When King asked Witten’s about his usage of an “advanced pool, dry needling, all this other technology,” and how he uses it to get his body back on track to play 98.5 percent of snaps each week, Witten responded, “I feel like I’m ahead of the game. I feel like my edge comes from this technology. The team that I have around me that is constantly studying and learning and educating and implementing these new systems to allow me to be at my best.”

I’m not sure the average non-Cowboys NFL fan properly appreciates how good Jason Witten was at his peak. I’m not sure any NFL fan understands just how far ahead of his peers he has been in his commitment and ability to stay on the field. As Witten returns to the team at age 37, it’s pretty unlikely he’ll still play 97 percent of the team’s offensive snaps. But one thing we do know is how hard The Man In The Arena will work, when no one is watching, to be the best version of himself. And that version is a lot closer to the 21-year-old who rode the bus with Tony Romo in 2003 than any of us could have ever imagined.

(Photo by Ron Jenkins/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT via Getty Images)