FRISCO, Texas – The Dallas Cowboys have become a bunch of busy beavers one week before the official NFL league year begins next Wednesday, seven days from today, what with the start of free agency, the trade season and the enforcement of the now $301.2 million salary cap they've been millions of dollars in excess of until today.
All they had to do was trigger contract restructures already in place for Dak Prescott, Tyler Smith and CeeDee Lamb to create enough space to duck under when George Pickens' franchise tag cost and Javonte Williams' first-year cap total on his three-year, $24 million deal hit.
And there is more work to be done to create even more space, not only to maybe re-sign some of their own agents, and goodness knows they have a bunch, but also some of them others. And then there is the NFL Draft seven weeks away, and remember, two first-round picks will up the ante on their rookie cap allotment, too.
But now, along the way, the Cowboys must begin making other roster decisions and thought team owner Jerry Jones turned on some blinking-light statements this past week at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. This sticks out to me:
"We can't have any redshirts. We can't afford to have redshirts here," Jones said, referencing drafting players still rehabbing injuries. "Now, if you have redshirts, and something happens to you, it's out of your control. But to plan on, 'We'll see you six weeks into the season, see you in the future, in the rehab program,' a player that you are really putting stock in at a certain time, let's say recovering from a college injury relative to a draft, you will see less of that this year than maybe you've seen in the past.
"You won't see that this year."
Gotcha down, because if we think back to last year, some of these Cowboys' projections on players returning from injury, players being counted on following surgeries, players being counted on taking the next step or projections on free agents to fill holes let them down.
So let's take some shots to explain.
- Projection I: Digging In – The Cowboys were counting on the on-time return of cornerback Trevon Diggs from his 2024 season-ending surgery. Diggs chose to rehab away from the team for starters. And by time he returned under the jurisdiction of the team training staff, he was behind, not only missing all the offseason but he wasn't ready to start training camp, let alone barely ready to start the season. Then the other knee and his attitude got in the way. Played in only eight games, starting six. Ruined their cornerback plans, to the point he's no longer here, the Cowboys unloading a headache.
- Projection II: Bad Bet – The Cowboys rolled the dice, making a low-level trade bet at the start of free agency on former Buffalo first-round-drafted cornerback Kaiir Elam, a guy the Bills gave up on after three seasons, along with receiving a 2025 sixth-rounder for just a 2025 fifth and a 2026 seventh. The Cowboys were looking for depth, for insurance at corner. They discovered why Buffalo gave up on him. He didn't even make it to Thanksgiving; 10 games and seven starts later he was waived when being counted on to start for reasons of injury.
- Projection III: Prolonged Redshirt – The Cowboys drafted the talented Shavon Revel in the third round, hoping he would return from his torn ACL, suffered three games into his final year at East Carolina, to potentially even start at corner. Dallas trainers did not get their hands on him for rehabilitation purposes until after the draft, likely mid-May. His conscientious rehab was encouraging, but the potentially first-round draft choice if not for his injury didn't return until mid-November, limited to seven games and five starts.
- Projection IV: Compounding Corners – As if that wasn't enough, second-year cornerback Caelen Carson, who missed nearly all the offseason following end-of-season shoulder surgery, returned for camp but suffered another injury. That slowed his availability early in the schedule, out the first six games, and severely cut into the Cowboys' depth. Played just eight games, starting three, and was then inactive in three of the final six games. And if that were not enough, then 2023 Pro Bowl corner DaRon Bland, returning from the fractured fifth metatarsal he suffered in the 2024 training camp, which limited him to just seven games that year, had the surgically-inserted screw in his foot break, causing him to miss five games in 2025. He not only ended up on IR to finish the year but had season-ending surgery again to replace the screw.
- Projection V: Costly 2025 Season Mistake – With all the misfires at cornerback, this one might have been the costliest: Not re-signing noted slot corner Jourdan Lewis in free agency, the Jaguars guaranteeing the ninth-year veteran $20 million on a three-year, $30 million deal that paid him $12.5 million for 20215, nearly four times his $2.8 million, one-year deal he played for in 2024 with the Cowboys. Said Jones, "We let our nickel (Lewis) get out of here last year; have a little more appreciation for where we aren't at nickel. He wouldn't get out this year. Bam, that's how you learn." Meaning, the hard way.
- Projection VI: Micah Saga – The Cowboys expected they would eventually sign Micah Parsons to a long-term deal, or that he would play under his fifth-year option. Neither took place, as the team found a deal it couldn't refuse and traded him away to the Packers for much-needed defensive tackle Kenny Clark and a bundle of draft choices, which left them short-handed at defensive end and applying pressure.
- Projection VII: Linebacker Roulette – The Cowboys signed former Bears head coach Matt Eberflus' rotation linebacker Jack Sanborn to start at middle linebacker. He lasted five games before less-than-satisfactory play and a knee injury limited him to just one more the rest of the season, finishing on IR. That then caused the Cowboys to move veteran free agent Kenneth Murray from outside linebacker to the middle. Murray was not as instinctive in the middle. Both guys now are impending free agents. On top of all that, having traded for Cincinnati linebacker Logan Wilson at the deadline, the sixth-year veteran started only one of seven games he was active for and wasted this year's seventh-round draft choice since Wilson recently has been released.
- Projection VIII: Sam Not The Man – There were high hopes that Sam Williams, returning from his 2024 season-ending torn ACL suffered at the start of training camp two years ago, would blossom into a full-time starting and impactful defensive end. But the former second-round draft choice in the final year of his contract never took that next step, instead turning into a rotational player, starting just five of the first seven games and never starting again over the final 10. Williams finished the season with but one sack, 24 pressures and now is an unrestricted free agent likely without much of a market value. If that is the case, maybe the Cowboys re-sign him to a marginal one-year deal as a designated pass rusher, if that.
So instead of me having to sum all this up, we'll rely on Jones to do it for us in this week's final word segment, as he did so, so self-deprecatingly honest near the end of that one hour, 49 second combine session on the Cowboys bus in Indy.
"We made decisions last year that we were all a part of, whether it be personnel or what we did. It's not just Flus (Matt Eberflus), but you can say Flus was involved in those decisions, it's not a player," Jerry said. "Those combination of things have put us where we are.
"Obviously, I can say no on anything, so with that in mind, do I say no or yes just because I've decided to turn that over? And that would be no, hell no, you know I don't. And I have a lot of input on what we're doing."
And then Jerry went here about last year:
"We could have done a better job of addressing some of the holes we had on our defense, we could have done a better job. That's hindsight, but we could have done a better job. You could start with understanding that a little bit. That if you have those holes then you should might do a system. We need to anticipate having holes more than, let's say, what we did last year. We need to look ahead and say, 'OK, Overshown might not be back, really might not be back until X. Or what if Revel doesn't get his feet back under him until …'
"Some of those things we could see. We couldn't see a Diggs. We couldn't see a redoing of Bland (foot surgery). Couldn't see those types of things that happened last year. This is not an excuse time. I'm just saying the things I'm criticizing me about is you're supposed to plan on some of that happening – a lot of other people did, and they had a better year than you had.
"I can do a better job there."
About as honest as Jerry could be when so many projections backfire for one reason or another.
