As NFL.com reported, Tony Pollard is set to play another contract year in 2023.

The Cowboys running back will play the 2023 season on the franchise tag he signed back in March with today's 4 p.m. ET deadline passing with no long-term deal reached.

NFL Network's Jane Slater reported Monday that there wasn't extensive discussion about a long-term deal.

Pollard will earn a fully guaranteed $10.091 million in 2023 on the tag.

Pollard enters 2023 coming off his best season, setting career highs in rushing yards (1,007) and touchdowns (nine) while adding 371 yards and three more scores through the air to earn his first trip to the Pro Bowl. Signifying his big-play abilities, Pollard had the fewest carries (193) by any 1,000-yard RB in the NFL in 2022.

In the postseason, Pollard had an efficient 77 rushing yards off 15 carries in the Cowboys' wild-card win over Tampa Bay, but a broken leg in the early going of a Divisional Round loss to the 49ers ended his breakout campaign on a sour note.

Pollard's outlook has been positive since suffering the injury, saying most recently that he feels "faster" and that he's "a little bit ahead of schedule" amid his recovery.

The emergence of the former fourth-round pick brought forth a big change in Dallas ahead of the 2023 season as the Cowboys released longtime RB Ezekiel Elliott, whose 10,598 scrimmage yards since 2016 leads the NFL.

Pollard offers an element to his game that Elliott rarely did in the past few years, and that's his consistency as a pass-catcher.

Dak Prescott is not shy to throw short check-down passes (despite what his recent interception totals may tell you), and Pollard has made more out of those opportunities than Elliott lately, helping Pollard's value for PPR leagues and with regard to receiving touchdowns.

From a fantasy perspective, a player like Pollard, who's coming off his first Pro Bowl selection and who hasn't quite hit his prime, offers terrific upside as a potential RB1.

In fact, FantasyPros' Derek Brown, during a recent "On The Hotseat" appearance on the FootballDiehards YouTube channel, told viewers he has Pollard as the top running back on his rankings this season.

"I look at Pollard, the efficiency, the opportunity... All these different things line up for him," Brown explained. "The other part about this is, with him being a full-time back, I think his target share goes up a little bit and he could have the pure run out of being Austin Ekeler 2.0 this year. Now do I think that's the most likely case? No. I mean, you can't pencil in anybody for 17 to 20 touchdowns.

"But putting him as my RB1 overall, I do think that everything lines up. We see the parity year after year after year. We could go down the list running backs who do not repeat ever. Usually, hardly ever as the RB1 overall. So really, for me, with everybody screaming at me and saying 'Well you don't have [Christian McCaffrey] as your RB1, just disregard these ranks.' Okay. Fine. If you want to go back in history, pretty much anybody that's gonna say, 'Okay, well last year's RB1 is this year's RB1,' I can also make like a stronger case to say well maybe we should throw those ranks out the window because you don't see it repeat."

For the record, Pollard currently sits at RB10 in the FootballDiehards Ranking Matrix, with my personal ranking at RB7.

Whatever the case, the Cowboys did stock up on RBs behind him, signing journeyman Ronald Jones and drafting Kansas State's Deuce Vaughn, but we're confident this is Pollard's time to start hogging the spotlight -- even on the off chance Elliott re-signs with Dallas next month.