For a team that was resisting a fire sale, the Jets are currently standing in front of a burned-out building with a credit-card reader.
And they’ve added three first-round picks, and more. (Which arguably makes it anything but a “fire sale"; it’s more like full retail.)
First, they sent cornerback Sauce Gardner to the Colts. Now, the Jets have shipped defensive tackle Quinnen Williams to the Cowboys.
The Cowboys, per multiple reports, are giving a first-round and a second-round pick to the Jets for Williams. Per NFL Media, it’s the Cowboys’ first-round pick and not the first-round pick they acquired from the Packers for Micah Parsons. The Jets also will be getting former first-round defensive tackle Mazi Smith.
Williams was the third overall pick in the 2019 draft. He was a first-team All-Pro in 2022, and he’s a three-time Pro Bowler.
He now joins one of the worst defenses in the NFL, a 3-5-1 team that is facing a steep uphill climb to the playoffs.
Williams is signed through 2027. His base salary for 2025 is $15.65 million. Next year, it increases to $20.75 million. In 2027, it becomes $25.4 million.
Cowboys owner and G.M. Jerry Jones is a very good businessman. Whether he’s a good football executive remains up for debate.
His ultimate goal isn’t winning games. He acts like it is. And, sure, he’d rather win than lose. But the real victories come on the balance sheet, and he knows how to keep his team profitable.
By keeping it relevant.
Jones essentially admitted that he’s part carnival barker, part snake-oil salesman during a Monday appearance with Stephen A. Smith of Sirius XM.
“What you do is a little bit of my philosophy,” Jones told Smith. “Controversy. Controversy. I’m serious. I’m dead serious. Not serial killing. Not that. But controversy. The Dallas Cowboys probably have the kind of interest that we have in no small part because we stay out front and we stay controversial. When it gets slow, I stir that shit up. Fact. Fact. Fact. . . . My point I just want to be relevant. I just want you to be looking at us. . . . I don’t think that has ever kept us from scoring a touchdown, one. I don’t think it has kept us from having a football player, one. I don’t think it has ever kept us from having the financial wherewithal to get a football player.”
While it’s difficult if not impossible to draw a line between Jerry’s antics and his football team’s achievements, it’s a given that distractions don’t help. And Jerry’s creates distractions. If distractions generally are regarded as less than ideal, the stir-shit strategy definitely won’t make the on-field product better.
If anything, it will only make it worse.
But it has been successful, as it relates to the pursuit of profit. Despite no NFC Championship appearances in 30 years and counting, the Cowboys remain highly relevant on the national stage.
The Bengals announced their trade of linebacker Logan Wilson to the Cowboys. They will receive a seventh-round pick in the 2026 draft in return.
The Cowboys did not rework his deal to facilitate a trade, according to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, and they will inherit the remaining $2.684 million salary for this year. He will count $2.895 million against the Cowboys’ salary cap.
Wilson entered the league as a third-round pick of the Bengals in 2020. He played in 76 regular-season games, with 65 starts, and totaled 531 tackles, 19 tackles for loss, 5.5 sacks, 25 passes defensed, 11 interceptions, seven forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries.
The Bengals, though, saw his role diminished in Week 6 when he played 12 defensive snaps. The Bengals benched him in Week 8, and he was inactive for Sunday’s game against the Bears ahead of the trade to Dallas.
In his final three games with the team, he played 59 special teams snaps and 58 on defense.
“I appreciate everything Logan has done as a player and as a person during his time in Cincinnati,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said in a statement. “He has been a central part of our defense over the past six years, and he will be remembered as a leader in our locker room. I wish him the best moving forward.”
The Bengals are on pace to set the NFL record for points allowed (534, 2024 Panthers) and yards allowed (7,042, 2012 Saints). The Cowboys rank 31st in total defense.
Dak Prescott got hit by Cardinals edge rusher Calais Campbell late in the first half Monday night. It had the Cowboys quarterback walking with a slight limp as he left for the locker room at halftime.
Prescott, though, played the entire second half and appeared no worse for wear, even running three times for 25 yards.
“I’m fine,” Prescott said after the 27-17 loss to the Cardinals. “A little ankle roll at the end of the first half, but that’s fine going into a bye week. It will be more than great. I finished the game and I was fine on it, so it’s not even anything to have concerns about. With the extra time, I’m fine. Body’s great.”
The body might be great. The record is not.
The Cowboys are 3-5-1 heading into their off week.
As Prescott said, it’s now or never for the Cowboys to get hot.
Though a full weekend of college football and NFL action, ESPN and ABC were not available to millions of YouTube TV subscribers.
The first slate of missed games may not be the last.
Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, Google and Disney “remain far apart” in their positions. The major issue, as it always seems to be, is money. Google, per Karp, wants rates similar to what major cable providers like Charter/Spectrum and Comcast pay for the various Disney-owned channels. The fact that YouTube TV doesn’t have the same number of subscribers has prompted Disney to resist.
Meanwhile, ESPN continues to use its highly-compensated employees to spread the Gospel according to Mickey. The overt social-media shilling doesn’t seem to be resonating with the masses, who (correctly) are resisting the idea of pointing a finger at one side or the other and blaming both.
It’s not complicated. Get in a room, lock the door, and do the deal. It’s going to happen, eventually. Make it happen. Give a little. Get a little. Emerge from the negotiations with the best possible outcome: A compromise that leaves both companies equal parts satisfied and disappointed.
Caught in the middle are the consumers, who had to come up with alternative mechanisms for watching the Cardinals-Cowboys game on Monday night. And standing on the sidelines, apparently, is the NFL, which could pull a Moe Howard and clunk heads together, if it wanted.
Inevitably, ESPN will issue a P.R.-manicured announcement bragging about last night’s viewership. Whatever it is, it surely will be lower than it would have been. And that hurts the NFL, which wants maximum eyeballs on its games.
If the NFL is working behind the scenes to try to resolve the issue, the NFL is doing a great job of keeping those efforts quiet. Regardless, the league absolutely should be doing something.
There was no short-term agreement that allowed last night’s game to stream on YouTube TV. Karp notes that Disney had suggested a Tuesday pause for election coverage, but Google declined.
Disney’s motivation for making the election-day pitch is obvious. There are many other networks that will be covering the drip-drip of election returns. But there was no other way to watch Monday Night Football on YouTube TV.
We won’t take sides in any of these disputes, even if/when one of them involves NBC and Comcast. We just want people to be able to watch football, without having to spend time or money figuring out a workaround.
The sad, simple reality is that the major corporations don’t really care about the consumers. They care about maximizing profits. About pumping up the stock price. About winning the periodic showdowns with other major corporations.
We may have to accept it. We don’t have to like it. And we absolutely don’t have to silently take it. If we do, it will morph from the exception into the norm.
So make yourself heard. Blame everyone involved. If they want to get this done in time to minimize the inconvenience and expense that the consumers will experience, they will. More accurately, they would have — before the consumers were deprived of the football games they wanted to watch on Saturday and Monday.
