A few days ago, ESPN published an article in which Aaron Schatz looked at the biggest remaining roster holes for all 32 NFL teams following the draft. When reading through those various needs, thoughts arose about whether the Cowboys could be potential trade partners to fill those holes, and whether the best value of some players on the Cowboys 90-man roster is in the draft capital they might be worth in a potential trade.
But before we look at other teams’ needs, we first have to figure out whether
the Cowboys have any surplus players at all, and in that context, Schatz makes a somewhat surprising claim about the Cowboys in the article.
“The Cowboys have a surprisingly solid two-deep across their depth chart.”
After years of deriding the Cowboys for their stars-and-scrubs approach and the accompanying lack of quality depth across the roster, that line was jarring, but upon further inspection it felt true. The Cowboys may not have world-beaters at every starting position – and Schatz points out that while edge rusher isn’t a hole per se, the position still has questions for the Cowboys – the talent at the second level looks more promising than it has for years.
The Cowboys won’t issue a depth chart until the first preseason game, so we’ll turn to the Ourlads.com depth charts (which are usually quite accurate) to see what the depth currently looks like for the Cowboys, starting with the defense.
First though, we’ll look at how many players made the season opening roster last year for Vic Fangio’s, and by extension Chris Parker’s, defense in Philly and compare that to the Cowboys’ numbers:
Philly Wk1, 2025: 10 DL (incl. OLBs), 4 LBs, 10 DBs (6 CBs, 4 S)
Dallas Wk1, 2025: 11 DL, 6 LBs, 10 DBs (6 CBs, 4 S)
The Cowboys started the season with 27 players on defense, the Eagles started with 24. For our purposes, we’ll assume the Cowboys follow the Philly model this year, with 24 defenders and the same split the Eagles had last year. This is what the presumptive depth chart would look like:
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; }| Pos | Starter | Backup | Depth 1 | Depth 2 | ||||||||||||||
| LOLB | Gary, Rashan | Lawrence, Malachi | Liufau, Marist | Land, Isaiah | ||||||||||||||
| DT | Williams, Quinnen | Overton, LT | Odeleye, Adedayo | |||||||||||||||
| NT | Ogbonnia, Otito | Toia, Jay | Dunn, Tommy | Gilliam, Kelvin | ||||||||||||||
| DT | Clark, Kenny | Bullard, Jonathan | Withers, DJ | |||||||||||||||
| ROLB | Ezeiruaku, Donovan | Houston, James | Williams, Sam | Wheat, Tyrus | ||||||||||||||
| LILB | Overshown, DeMarvion | James, Shemar | Robinson, Curtis | Patterson, Langston | ||||||||||||||
| RILB | Winters, Dee | Barham, Jaishawn | Barron, Justin | |||||||||||||||
| LCB | Bland, DaRon | Moore, Devin | Carson, Caelen | Butler, Josh | ||||||||||||||
| RCB | Durant, Cobie | Revel, Shavon | Bridges, Trikweze | Kendrick, Derion | ||||||||||||||
| NB | Downs, Caleb | Steward, Reddy | Ballentine, Corey | Childress, Zion | ||||||||||||||
| SS | Thompson, Jalen | Bell, Markquese | Wood, Julius | |||||||||||||||
| FS | Hooker, Malik | Locke, P.J. | Clark, Alijah | |||||||||||||||
| Legend | Bold = Top 24 | Free Agents/Trade | Draft Picks | UDFAs | ||||||||||||||
The starters and backups (marked in bold) add up to 24 players, so that’s the Cowboys’ presumptive defense at this point. At first glance, that leaves the 19 players in the depth columns as excess players, but do any of them have any trade value?
Marist Liufau and Caelon Carson might draw some moderate interest based on their draft pedigree and the two years left on their rookie contracts. But do the Cowboys really want to give up on either player after just two years? Probably not.
There might be more interesting trade options among the presumptive starters, and two players stand out here.
Malik Hooker is listed as the starter by Ourlads, but he might be already have been relegated to backup by this point. In any case, the Cowboys brought in two safeties via free agency and one via the draft. There might not be a lot of snaps left for the fourth safety, and if the younger guys push hard enough in training camp, Hooker, a former first-round pick, might make some interesting trade bait for the Cowboys.
And if the Cowboys decide to stick with Hooker, Markquese Bell might be an interesting, low-cost alternative for a safety-needy team. The Cowboys would have to take a $6.2 million cap hit in a trade, but the trade partner would get a 27-year-old safety, with four years of experience, who is under contract for two more years at a ridiculously low $3.8 million over those two years.
On offense, it’s equally important to understand how the Cowboys started last year:
- WR: 5
- OL: 11
- QB: 2
- TE: 3
- RB: 4
That’s 25 players in total. I’ll stick with that number, but assume they’ll go with six wide receivers and 10 OL, which gives us this depth chart:
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; }| Pos | Starter | Backup | Depth 1 | Depth 2 |
| LWR | Pickens, George | Valdez-Scantling, Marquez | Smith, Anthony | Brown, Camden |
| RWR | Lamb, CeeDee | Mingo, Jonathan | Holden, Traeshon | Hudson, Jordan |
| SWR | Flournoy, Ryan | Turpin, KaVontae | Johnson, Tyler | Campbell, Parris |
| LT | Guyton, Tyler | Thomas, Nate | Pete, Shiyazh | |
| LG | Smith, Tyler | Keegan, Trevor | Wingfield, DJ | |
| C | Beebe, Cooper | Hennessy, Matt | Leverett, Nick | |
| RG | Booker, Tyler | Bass, T.J. | Johnson, Marcellus | |
| RT | Steele, Terence | Shelton, Drew | Cornelius, Ajani | |
| TE | Ferguson, Jake | Spann-Ford, Brevyn | Trigg, Michael | |
| TE II | Schoonmaker, Luke | Fant, Princeton | Rogers, DJ | |
| QB | Prescott, Dak | Howell, Sam | Milton, Joe | |
| RB | Williams, Javonte | Blue, Jaydon | Abanikanda, Israel | |
| RB II | Luepke, Hunter | Davis, Malik | Mafah, Phil | Richardson, Dominic |
| Legend | Bold = Top 25 | Free Agents/Trade | Draft Picks | UDFAs |
On offense, the Cowboys are returning all 11 starters from last year, so trade options would likely have to come from backup and depth players.
There’s not much in terms of trade value among the depth guys listed here, though perhaps somebody could be enticed to swap another depth guy for Joe Milton.
But there might be more interesting trade options a little further up the depth chart, starting with Luke Schoonmaker. For a team looking for TE help, the Cowboys could sell him as a high-potential guy stuck behind an entrenched starter. He only has one year left on his rookie contract, so that limits his appeal from a cap point of view, but the Cowboys could point to Dalton Schultz, Geoff Swaim, or John Phillips and their career arcs once they left Dallas.
But the most interesting trade bait might be T.J. Bass. In a league starved for quality offensive line play, this is a guy who has played over 300 snaps in each of his three NFL seasons, has improved his PFF grade every season, and has played both guard positions. But do the Cowboys have enough talent to replace Bass?
Now that we’ve looked at potentially tradeable players, here’s what ESPN determined as each team’s biggest remaining roster hole:
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; }| Offense | Defense | ||
| Need | Team | Need | Team |
| WR | NYJ, IND, KC, LV, WAS, CHI, MIN, ATL, NO, ARI |
S | MIA, PHI |
| WR depth | CIN, WR, LAR | CB | NE, TB |
| LG | BUF, SF | Edge | DEN, GB |
| Center | BAL, NYG | Edge Depth | HOU, JAC, SEA |
| RG | TEN, LAC, DET | ||
| RB | CAR | ||
| QB | CLE | ||
There are simply not enough quality wide receivers in the league today, and the Cowboys are feeling the squeeze as well: they went out and signed two free agent WRs just to have enough bodies for training camp.
Guards are also in high demand, and the five teams listed here could all be in play for T.J. Bass.
Nobody needs a TE, so getting a return on the Schoonmaker pick remains a pipe dream for Cowboys fans, just like nobody is going to fork over anything of value for Joe Milton.
Less than a third of the 32 teams have a need on defense, which makes moving Cowboys defenders tricky. No big need for linebackers, so getting a return on Marist Liufau is likely out of the question. Can the Cowboys interest the Patriots or Bucs in Caelon Carson? After all, the Patriots currently have a fifth-round rookie and a rookie UDFA penciled in as outside corner backups, and the Bucs entire CB depth needs help.
At safety, moving Hooker or Bell might also be a pipe dream. You probably don’t want to trade to your division rival, and the question for Miami, the only other team with a need at safety, is whether they want to improve at all. Covers.com projects the Dolphins to win a league-low 4.5 games this year, ESPN’s Mike Clay projects just 2.5 wins, and it feels unlikely they’d give up any type of draft capital in a year they are intentionally tanking.
This exercise leaves us with the realization that the Cowboys don’t have many – if any – surplus players that could generate some kind of draft capital right now.
At the same time, there will only be 55 players on the season-opening roster, and when you look at the “backup” columns in the first two tables, the Cowboys added five free agents and five draft picks to build “a surprisingly solid two-deep across their depth chart” as Schatz writes – and that’s before factoring in the wholesale rebuild of the defensive starters.
It’s going to be an interesting season.
