Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb said Friday he must recommit to the basics after dealing with drops that he attributes to looking ahead to big plays rather than securing the football.

Speaking on 105.3 The Fan, Lamb explained that successive successful catches can make the fundamentals feel automatic until a mistake occurs.

“I just gotta focus up. I’m always thinking about a big play. Naturally, it’s caught, it’s caught, it’s caught, it’s caught, right? But then it becomes so normal that you lose track of the fundamentals,” he said. “It always brings me back to square one. Catch, tuck, then make your move. Catch, tuck, then make your move. Catch, tuck, then make your move.”

Lamb said every drop last season stemmed from the same issue.

“Every single drop has been always taking my eyes off the ball when the ball arrived because I’m automatically thinking I caught it. It’s just a way of the game humbling me and bringing me back to square one.”

The five-time Pro Bowl selection also outlined his practice standard.

“As many times as I’m targeted, the ball should never hit the ground, whether it’s PBU, whether it’s a drop, whether it’s a bad ball, regardless of what it is. Any time the ball is targeted to me, I consider it a catchable ball. I don’t care if the ball is out of bounds. I don’t care if it’s all the way inside.”

Lamb finished the 2025 season with 75 receptions for 1,077 yards and three touchdowns on 117 targets across 14 games. Pro Football Focus charged him with eight drops, a figure that ranked among the higher totals leaguewide and produced a drop rate of approximately 6.8 percent.

Those numbers marked a step back from prior peaks. In 2023 he led the NFL with 135 catches for 1,749 yards and 12 touchdowns. The following year he recorded 101 receptions for 1,194 yards and six scores. Even with the reduced volume and production in 2025, Lamb still extended his streak of consecutive 1,000-yard seasons to five, joining Hall of Famer Michael Irvin as the only Cowboys receivers to achieve that mark.

Career totals through six seasons stand at 571 receptions for 7,416 yards and 41 touchdowns in 95 games. Independent tracking sites have recorded 43 career drops against those receptions, a ratio higher than some historical benchmarks but still reflecting a high-volume target.

Lamb has already experimented with unconventional drills during training camp in Oxnard. Video from earlier this week showed him catching balls from a JUGS machine while wearing a mesh net that obscured his vision, an exercise designed to sharpen concentration and hand-eye coordination under distraction.

Quarterback Dak Prescott continues to rely on Lamb as a primary option in the passing attack alongside George Pickens. The pair combined for more than 2,500 receiving yards in 2025, giving the Cowboys one of the more productive wide-receiver tandems in the NFC.

Lamb’s willingness to address the drops publicly aligns with comments he made throughout last season. After a Week 1 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in which multiple drops proved costly, he took full responsibility and said the game had a way of humbling players at key moments.

At 27 years old and entering his seventh NFL season, Lamb remains under contract with Dallas after a March restructuring. His availability has been strong overall, with only six missed games across his career, though injuries limited him in recent years.

The emphasis on fundamentals comes as the Cowboys prepare for the 2026 regular season. Coaches and teammates have noted Lamb’s consistent work ethic in camp, including the extra attention to ball security that he described Friday.

Lamb’s career catch rate has hovered near 68 percent overall, and his yards-after-catch production has long been a strength. In 2025 he still generated more than 300 yards after the catch despite the lower touchdown total.

Observers tracking advanced metrics noted that his average depth of target rose in 2025 compared with the previous year, indicating a return to more intermediate and deeper routes even as targets per game dipped to about 8.4.

The receiver’s message Friday was straightforward: the solution is not complicated. By returning repeatedly to the sequence of catch, tuck and then run, Lamb aims to eliminate the mental shortcuts that have led to dropped passes.

Whether the renewed focus translates into fewer drops and a return to double-digit touchdowns remains to be measured once the regular season begins. For now, Lamb has made clear that he intends to treat every target as catchable and every practice repetition as an opportunity to rebuild the foundation.