The Dallas Cowboys agreed Thursday night to a one-year contract extension with wide receiver Ryan Flournoy worth up to $6 million, securing their third receiver through the 2027 season.
NFL insider Jordan Schultz first reported the agreement.
“Sources: The Cowboys and WR Ryan Flournoy have agreed to a 1-year contract extension worth up to $6M,” NFL insider Jordan Schultz wrote on his official X account. “Flournoy is coming off a career year with 40 catches for 475 and 4 TDs. He’s expected to have an even bigger role in the offense this season as the solidified WR3 and now gets a new deal ahead of it.”
The move came hours after Dallas signed tight end Brevyn Spann-Ford to a three-year, $18 million extension, giving the team two new deals on complementary offensive players in one night.
Flournoy, 26, was entering the final year of his existing contract and was scheduled to make $1.075 million in 2026. Without the new pact, he would have become a restricted free agent after this season.
Last year the 6-foot-1, 205-pound receiver caught 40 passes for 475 yards and four touchdowns on 56 targets while playing 16 games and starting four. He averaged 11.9 yards per catch and had a pair of 100-yard games, one at the New York Jets and another at the Detroit Lions.
That production was a sharp rise from his 2024 rookie season, when he had 10 receptions for 102 yards and no scores in 11 games after Dallas drafted him in the sixth round, 216th overall.
The Cowboys waived him during 2025 training camp, signed him to the practice squad, then promoted him. He earned playing time first on special teams before becoming a trusted target for quarterback Dak Prescott.
Pro Football Focus called Flournoy one of the NFL’s “Secret Superstar” players after his second season.
“Hiding in plain sight on a dynamic Cowboys offense, Flournoy posted an 80.3 PFF overall grade as the unit’s third-highest-graded player,” PFF’s Zach Tantillo wrote. “He brought in 40 of his 42 catchable targets and led Dallas in touchdown receptions from Weeks 9 through 18. Despite limited snaps, Flournoy ranked fourth on the Cowboys’ offense in PFF Wins Above Replacement.”
Dallas finished 7-9-1 in 2025 and missed the playoffs. The offense still ranked among the league’s strongest, finishing second in total yards and seventh in scoring, according to reporting on the team’s year-end review.
Flournoy produced those numbers while working behind All-Pro receivers CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens, a pairing that limited his snap share to a little more than 40 percent on offense.
His path to the NFL was anything but direct. The Flossmoor, Illinois, product spent six years in college at three schools.
He began at Division II Central Missouri, where he redshirted in 2018, missed nearly all of 2019 with a partially torn ACL, and sat out 2020 because of the pandemic. He transferred to junior-college power Iowa Western in 2021, then landed at FCS Southeast Missouri State, where he earned All-Ohio Valley Conference honors in both seasons and became the first SEMO player in the Senior Bowl since 1998.
At the NFL Scouting Combine he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.44 seconds, posted a 40-inch vertical leap, an 11-foot broad jump and 19 repetitions on the 225-pound bench press.
Pickens is playing 2026 on the franchise tag at $27.3 million and is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent next March. Extending Flournoy now gives Dallas a proven option in the receiving corps if Pickens does not return.
The Cowboys open the 2026 season with Flournoy locked in as WR3 and with one fewer restricted-free-agent decision to make next offseason.
