Some help is on the way for Dallas’ beleaguered defense.
Dallas has opened defensive tackle Perrion Winfrey’s 21-day practice window as he returns from injured reserve.
Winfrey, 25, suffered a back injury in late August and was subsequently placed on injured reserve.
A Browns fourth-round pick in 2022, Winfrey appeared in 13 games for Cleveland as a rookie before the team cut him in 2023 after he was involved in a second off-field incident. He appeared in one game for the Jets in 20223 and has not played in a regular-season game since.
Though the Cowboys rank No. 2 in points and yards, they are also No. 31 in points allowed and yards allowed.
Dallas will face Arizona on Monday night before a Week 10 bye.
The Cowboys stole George Pickens.
They sent a 2026 third-round pick and a 2027 fifth-round pick for Pickens and a 2027 sixth-round pick, and they are paying the wide receiver only $3.656 million this season.
Pickens, though, is in the final year of his contract and due a substantial pay raise on a long-term deal. The question isn’t whether the Cowboys can afford him, but whether they should pay that much for a second wide receiver with huge needs on the defensive side of the ball.
The franchise player designation for wide receivers is projected to be $28 million, and Pickens likely will get more than $30 million per season on the open market.
The Cowboys have not engaged in contract extension talks with Pickens or his representatives, Ed Werder of ESPN reports.
Would Dallas consider trading Pickens before Tuesday’s deadline if it can get more than it otherwise would get in compensatory picks?
The Cowboys are 3-4-1 and rank 31st in total defense and 31st in points allowed.
Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs was placed on injured reserve over the weekend as he deals with both a concussion and a knee injury, which led to a question for team owner Jerry Jones on Tuesday about whether Diggs has played his final snap for the team.
Diggs missed most of 2024 with a knee injury and his decision to rehab that injury away from the team this offseason led to the Cowboys reducing his salary. He returned to play in Week 1 and appeared in the first six games of the season before suffering a concussion at home ahead of Week 7. He also picked up an injury to his other knee and the health issues as well as the lack of guaranteed money left on his contract have led to thoughts that he’s close to the end of his time in Dallas.
During an appearance on 103.5 The Fan, Jones said “I don’t see that today at all” when asked if Diggs has played his final game for the team and that the corner has “to get well and he hasn’t been.” He also took issue with former Cowboy Micah Parsons’ assertion that the Cowboys rushed him back to the field.
“Diggs’ biggest problem is he’s injured and it’s not the same knee he’s been doing his rehab with,” Jones said. “That’s his No. 1 challenge. Unfortunately, he’s got a handful of challenges here that are physically related. That’s why he’s got the status he’s got today.”
Diggs will miss at least three more games and the Cowboys’ season could be lost by the time he’s eligible to return if head coach Brian Schottenheimer’s planned changes don’t spark an immediate turnaround to the team’s defensive performances. That could impact any plans to bring him back, but Jones isn’t writing him off at this point.
Defensive problems have been a constant for the Cowboys this season and they were impossible to miss during the team’s loss to the Broncos on Sunday.
The Cowboys gave up 179 rushing yards and gave up points on seven of the Broncos’ nine possessions after an interception to open the game. The result was a 44-24 loss that dropped them to 3-4-1 on the season.
On Monday, head coach Brian Schottenheimer said that nothing stood out positively to him on either side of the ball while making it clear that the defensive issues were paramount. Schottenheimer called the effort “not acceptable” and that “making adjustments to scheme, changes to personnel” are all things the team is looking to do as they try for better performances in the future.
“There’s always reasons to change, and there will be change,” Schottenheimer said, via the team’s website. “I can promise you that. I can show you that. We’ve already had meetings, and we’ve talked about those changes. We’re in the mode right now of where we’ve got kind of a one-game season. . . . I just say that because we’ve got Arizona before the bye and, really, bigger changes to our style will happen over the bye week. That’s when we get a chance to say, ‘OK, now we’re looking back at nine games. What were those issues and did we get them corrected?’ No? Well, now we need to do this and we need to do that.”
If the Cowboys can’t beat the Cardinals, any changes they make ahead of their final eight games might not be significant enough to overcome the hole their defense has helped to dig in the first half of the season.
The animosity between the Cowboys and linebacker Micah Parson lingers, nearly two months to the day after Dallas traded him to Green Bay.
The latest flash point relates to Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs, who was placed on injured reserve over the weekend.
“Honestly, I feel like they fucked my dog over, you know what I mean?” Parsons told Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports after Sunday night’s win over the Steelers. “He’s coming off a catastrophic knee injury and I just didn’t think they did right by him. He didn’t participate all camp and he’s going out there playing Week 1 and 2. I just don’t think you do that to a player like that. . . .
“And the type of knee injury he had, they forced him out there. He has no reps really. He’s telling me he was in warmup phase during Week 1. Even with the ramp-up, I just feel like you just don’t do that.”
Diggs suffered a concussion at home before the Week 7 win over the Commanders. He missed that game before landing on IR before Week 8.
“I just feel like they screwed him over,” Parsons said. “The organization let him down. You know what I mean? You just don’t do that to a player. And I just think it was mad wrong and I just pray for him.”
The Cowboys declined to respond to Parsons, via Epstein. Diggs’s contract is not guaranteed beyond 2025; he has a $14.5 million base salary in 2026.
