Mailbag: Would adding Von Miller make sense for Cowboys’ defense? – Nick Eatman, DallasCowboys.com
Would Von Miller improve the Cowboys pass rush?
With Von Miller’s recent post on his social media that had him in a Cowboys uniform, is that foreshadowing of what’s to come? Or is that common for players without a team to post that? Either way, my real question is if a move like that would make sense for the Cowboys? He’s older but still seems productive. – Jeff Lyons / Claremore, Okla. Nick: A few questions to address here. For one, no I don’t think it’s common for players to post pictures like that.
Then again, it’s rare that free agents are on the street for this long, still lobbying for work. At least, that’s what it might seem Miller is doing. Then again, he could be just having fun and knowing that he could stir up the pot by posting something like that, especially in a Cowboys uniform.
But the real question you want to know and really we all do – would that move actually make sense? Honestly, I don’t think the Cowboys would be in a situation to ignore it. Yeah, you can look at his age at 37 years old, but the number that matters more to me is the nine sacks he had just last year. In fact, in his 14-year career, he’s produced at least five sacks in 13 of them. I mean, until he shows you that he’s really slowing down, then I think some NFL team should give him a shot. And in saying that, why not the Cowboys – a team that he not only wants to play for considering his Texas ties, but a team that was terrible on defense last year and still have plenty of questions to answer regarding a pass rush.
Sure, I think the likes of Rashan Gary and Ezeiruaku and Malachi Lawrence and even Sam Williams should give them a boost off the edge. But I wouldn’t hate it if the Cowboys entertained this. Now, from what I’ve been told, there isn’t much interest right now from the Cowboys’ side. But let’s get to training camp and see if it appears there is a need for better rushers off the edge. If so, I wouldn’t doubt the Cowboys will look for outside options and this one might actually top the list.
3 EDGE Rushers Cowboys Should Target Instead of Von Miller – Randy Gurzi, SI.com
Three edge players the Cowboys could add not named Von Miller.
Joey Bosa
The best option out of the three players that we’re looking at today would easily be Joey Bosa. The third overall pick in the 2016 NFL draft, Bosa is entering his 11th season in the NFL. He spent nine years with the Chargers and had 343 tackles and 72 sacks in that span, but he also dealt with plenty of durability concerns, which had a lot to do with them moving on ahead of the 2025 season.
Bosa played last year with the Buffalo Bills, appearing in 15 games and recording 29 tackles, five sacks, and an NFL-leading five forced fumbles. There will always be durability concerns with Bosa, but he’s somebody who is well-rounded, incredibly experienced, and knows how to get after the quarterback. If Dallas gets into the regular season and isn’t seeing what they like out of their group of pass rushers, signing somebody such as Bosa, assuming he’s still available, would be a winning move.
These Cowboys players have the widest range of outcomes in 2026 – RJ Ochoa, Blogging the Boys
Oh the places these players could go.
It is important to have a spectrum of sorts. We all have hopes, wants, wishes, dreams, ambitions, you name it. There are ways that we’d all like to see this upcoming Dallas Cowboys season go. In a perfect world, stop me if you have heard this before, this would be the one that finally delivers the ring, the one ring to rule them all, to Mordor.
You never know, though. Seasons can go a number of different ways because they are built upon a number of different things, including a number of different players. There are always a wide range of outcomes for these sorts of things and today we want to focus on the player portion of it all.
Donovan Ezeiruaku
It feels fair to say that there is a world where Donovan Ezeiruaku is the best pass rusher on the Dallas Cowboys. Heck, maybe there is a world where he is a top 10 pass rusher.
Ezeiruaku stormed on the scene in training camp last year, but obviously everything about the Cowboys defense (and the Parsons trade) broke the second the regular season actually started. On some level we can give people like Ezeiruaku a mulligan for their involvement.
That is no longer the case. The defense has been outfitted very differently and there is as strong of a presence along the interior as there ever has been by way of Quinnen Williams. No one is expecting Ezeiruaku to be anything specific, but he has to live up to his second-round billing.
And he could! That feels probable, actually. But when you say things like “second-round pick” and “Dallas Cowboys” you have wounds from the past that make you wonder if it is worth just never actually selecting anyone there again.
It would be a real bitter pill to swallow if he was unable to take that step and if he was just another second-round miss from the team. This season is going to tell us a lot which of them it really is.
How are Super Bowl-level NFL rosters built at each position? – Bill Barnwell, ESPN
A blueprint for the Cowboys to build a Super Bowl roster.
How do you build an NFL team capable of making it to the Super Bowl? Ask 10 of your friends and you might get 10 different answers. Ask 10 NFL general managers and their responses might vary just as significantly.
While there might be a few commonalities here and there, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to building a roster. There are plenty of cliches about how teams need a great defense, a great quarterback, a dominant offensive line or loads of experience to make it to a title game, but it takes only a few seconds to think about clear counterexamples to each of those potential rules or paths forward.
The 2025 Seattle Seahawks, of course, did something that a lot of people (myself included) didn’t think was possible: win a Super Bowl with Sam Darnold as their quarterback. Darnold was excellent during different stretches of the season and played one of his best games as a pro in the critical NFC title game victory over the Rams, but even the well-traveled QB admitted he didn’t play very well in the Super Bowl. The Seahawks fielded a great defense all season, and when Darnold did struggle, Devon Witherspoon & Co. made up for their quarterback.
The New England Patriots, who came up just short in the Super Bowl, might be an even bigger outlier of a roster build. One year removed from being one of the worst teams in the league, the Pats accelerated their development through a massive free agent spending spree. At the same time, they benefited from the same second-year leap at quarterback that we’ve seen drive success for teams such as the Kansas City Chiefs with Patrick Mahomes, the Baltimore Ravens with Lamar Jackson and the Philadelphia Eagles with Carson Wentz, with that last squad winning the title even after its franchise quarterback was injured.
Let’s take a big-picture look at how NFL teams build Super Bowl winners. The calculus of NFL roster building evolved in 2011, when the league and its players landed on a new collective bargaining agreement that locked rookie salaries in place and established clear timelines to free agency. Teams have gotten younger as a result, with general managers leaning into the cost control afforded by draft talent. The average snap-weighted age for NFL teams in 2010 on a given play was 27.7 years old. In 2024, that figure had fallen by more than a half-year to 27.1 years old.
Daily discussion question: What is the oldest piece of Cowboys memorabilia you have?
