The deadline for the Cowboys and receiver George Pickens to finalize a long-term deal passed without a failed game of beat the clock. For the Cowboys, the clock was never even ticking.
The inability, as of 4:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, for the Cowboys and Pickens to sign a multi-year contract before the end of the regular season also means that the practical window for trading Pickens has closed.
It’s not impossible. But who would do it? If Pickens were traded, the new team would step into the Cowboys’ shoes. There could be no long-term deal until the end of the regular season.
The new team would be trading for a one-year, $27.3 million contract and the ability to sign him after Week 18 — or to tag him again in 2027, at a price tag of $32.76 million.
Of course, the two-year payout of $60.6 million could be attractive, given that the market has moved beyond $40 million per year. But it’s not ideal to the relationship to acquire Pickens with the intention to tag him again, even if the Cowboys quite possibly intend to do just that.
The Cowboys would have wanted too much for Pickens to justify a guaranteed return of one or maybe two years.
Although the notion of a potential tag-and-trade outcome was mentioned very early in the offseason, it was never a serious possibility before the time passed for Pickens to be signed to a long-term deal. Now that the team trading for Pickens couldn’t extend his contract, it makes no sense for anyone to even try.
So the can gets kicked into January. And don’t be shocked if the Cowboys try to drag their feet again, given that next year’s tag will still be $10 million below the current bar set by Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
At some point (and no later than March 2028), the Cowboys will have to decide whether to make a much more significant financial commitment to Pickens. Which means that they’ll likely have to choose between keeping Pickens or CeeDee Lamb.
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The Cowboys had already announced they weren’t going to extend George Pickens’ contract, but it became official Wednesday.
The deadline passed for the sides to complete a long-term deal.
The Pro Bowl wide receiver will play 2026 on the one-year, fully guaranteed $27.3 million franchise tag. Pickens signed the non-exclusive tag on April 29.
He will be the only player in the NFL to play on the franchise tag.
Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts and Jets running back Breece Hall were tagged by their team, but both signed long-term deals this offseason. In addition, Colts quarterback Daniel Jones, who received the transition tag, signed a two-year, $88 million contract in March.
The Cowboys now cannot extend Pickens’ contract until the end of the regular season, and he is scheduled for free agency again in March.
Pickens will need another season like last season to potentially become one of — if not the — highest-paid at his position. He earned his first Pro Bowl in his first season in Dallas in 2025, making 93 receptions for 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns.
Panthers quarterback Will Grier has chosen to retire, the team announced on Wednesday.
Grier, 31, had rejoined Carolina as a free agent in April after turning down a chance to join the Cowboys’ coaching staff. The Panthers brought him into the league as a third-round pick back in 2019.
But after participating in the club’s offseason program, Grier has elected to hang up his cleats.
Grier started just two games in his career, both of which came as a rookie for the Panthers.
He also spent time with the Cowboys, Bengals, Patriots, Chargers, and Eagles throughout his career.
Carolina now has Bryce Young, Kenny Pickett, and undrafted rookie Haynes King on its roster at QB.
Jerry Lewis was big among the French. Jerry Jones is not.
During Tuesday’s World Cup semifinal game between France and Spain at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, the owner of the football team that plays there was shown on the oversized video board hovering over the pitch.
The image of Jones wasn’t shown in the Fox broadcast. At the times the Jones booing happened, the feed showed an image of FIFA president Gianni Infantino watching the game. The broadcasters pointed out that the boos were for Jones, not Infantino.
It’s unclear how many Cowboys fans are even in the building that Jones built. Regardless, plenty of folks who were there jeered Jerry.
Marty Schottenheimer was a head coach for 21 years. He never won a Super Bowl before retiring after the 2006 season.
His son, second-year Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer, has a chance to get what his father never could.
“It’s always something I’ve always dreamed of, you know,” Schottenheimer said recently on The Twins Take Podcast. “I want to win a Super Bowl. I don’t want to win it for me.”
The elder Schottenheimer died in 2021.
His teams went to the playoffs 13 times, but the only time he reached the conference championship game, in 1993, his Chiefs were blown out by the Bills for the AFC title.
“I’ve said this from the very beginning: When we get our Super Bowl rings, I’ll be getting an extra one for my dad,” Schottenheimer said.
The Cowboys have not reached the NFC Championship Game since 1995, which was their last of five Super Bowls. Schottenheimer is the seventh coach since Barry Switzer, the team’s coach from 1994-97.
“I want to win it for the people under my leadership,” Schotenheimer said. “I want to win it for Dak Prescott. I want to win it for CeeDee Lamb and Quinnen Williams, for your players that put in so much, you know, hard work and the sacrifice that goes into what we do. You know, from us as a coaching staff, it’s the hours; it’s the mental strain of game planning. But for the players, they put their bodies on the line.
“I make no qualms that that’s the goal. The Super Bowl next year is Feb. 14th, 2027. We plan on being there.”
Defensive end Charles Snowden won’t be available for the Cowboys to open the 2026 season.
The NFL announced that Snowden has been suspended by Commissioner Roger Goodell for the first three games of the year. The announcement did not specify a reason for the suspension, but Snowden was arrested for DUI while playing for the Raiders in December 2024.
Snowden will be able to participate in all practices and preseason games this summer before his suspension goes into effect.
The Cowboys signed Snowden to a one-year deal in June. He had 67 tackles, eight tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks in 31 games for the Raiders over the last two seasons.
Tony Romo has a Cowboys’ team-record 248 touchdown passes and ranks second in franchise history with 34,183 passing yards. He won 78 regular-season games.
Romo, now an analyst for CBS Sports, did not win a Super Bowl.
He never got closer than the divisional round, even when the Cowboys entered the postseason with home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs. In fact, Romo was only 2-4 in four postseason appearances.
If Romo has a regret, he said on Pardon My Take that it’s not bringing a Lombardi Trophy to Dallas.
“I’m not a guy with big regrets, I guess you could say. The only regret I guess I would have is that . . . my job was to bring a Super Bowl to Dallas, and I didn’t do it,” Romo said, via RJ Ochoa of BloggingTheBoys. “So that always sticks with me a little bit. Because you give your whole body, heart, soul, everything into it, and you just wanted that for . . . all the fans, the Joneses, for everybody that you’re around. And so that one always sticks with me a little bit just because I had that opportunity and just wasn’t able to do it. So that part of it kind of still . . . sits there.”
Romo was “Wally Pipp’ed” by rookie Dak Prescott in 2016 after Romo injured his back in the preseason. He retired after the season rather than go elsewhere at 37.
“At the end it was like . . . I could go somewhere else and do it, because I was like, I’ve got to win a Super Bowl,” Romo said on Pardon My Take. “It’s literally what you play the game for. Nothing else matters. And it just was like . . . but would that be the same if I went somewhere else and did it? Because at that point, I’d known the game at such a high level. My last 20, 25 games, we were pretty successful, when [I was] healthy. But I was getting injured more often. [The] body breaks down in some ways through the years.
“I think it was as simple as it just wouldn’t feel as important. It would be important to me, but it was for the people I was around. All the fans that we had.”
Cowboys wide receiver George Pickens skipped most of the team’s offseason program, but he reportedly opted to get some more work in with his teammates this week.
Clarence Hill of DLLS Sports reports that Pickens is taking part in a retreat for skill position players that quarterback Dak Prescott put together in Park City, Utah. Hill adds that Pickens and Prescott have also been joined by wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, tight end Jake Ferguson and other key players as there is 100 percent participation at the workouts.
Pickens did not take part in any of the team’s voluntary work after signing his franchise tag this offseason, but did report to their mandatory minicamp. He did not participate in team drills, however.
The Cowboys have said that they have no intention of negotiating a long-term deal with Pickens ahead of the July 15 deadline to get one done, but his presence at minicamp suggests that he will be reporting to training camp at the end of the month.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has long forced assistant coaches on his head coach.
In 2007, Jones hired Jason Garrett for an unnamed position while he hunted for a head coach. Garrett wasn’t hired as head coach but instead became the offensive coordinator for Wade Phillips. Jones has made several other assistant coach hirings himself since.
So, it should come as no surprise that Jones guaranteed Brian Schottenheimer a job regardless of what happened in the Cowboys’ head coaching search in 2025. Schottenheimer had an “agreement” to remain with the team as offensive coordinator if the team didn’t hire him as head coach.
“So, what we did is while they were going through the process -- ‘cause there’s a process, right? I wasn’t sure, and there was a number of other teams -- saying this very humbly -- that were courting me and trying to say, ‘Hey, we want you to come be our coordinator,’” Schottenheimer said on The Twins Take podcast. “And so, you know, after just talking it over with Stephen [Jones] and Jerry, like, OK, while we figure this out and you guys go through the interview process, which there’s a thorough interview process you have to go through. We had made an agreement that I would stay here no matter what. And I didn’t want to leave. ... I really wanted to be the head coach and put our fingerprint, our blueprint on it. And that’s what God had planned.”
The Cowboys did not have an eye on some of the hot offensive assistants that offseason, bypassing Ben Johnson and Liam Coen, among others, to interview Leslie Frazier, Robert Saleh and Kellen Moore. Moore likely wanted to call plays himself. Saleh and Frazier are defensive coordinators.
They hired Schottenheimer as head coach, and he went 7-9-1 in his first season as a head coach.
Marcellus Wiley, as they say, is having a moment. And not the good kind.
The former NFL defensive end and ESPN/Fox personality was arrested over the weekend for domestic battery. On Monday, his wife made very strong allegations against him in divorce paperwork and in a request for a restraining order.
Wiley has posted on social media clear, loud denials as to the alleged battery, and as to the claims made by his wife in court filings.
Wiley has yet to deny this one: TMZ reported on Wednesday that Preferred Bank sued Wiley in December 2025 for failing to satisfy a $500,000 loan.
Per TMZ, Wiley and his company, Dat Dude Entertainment, borrowed the money in May 2023, promising to pay it back after one year. The bank, per TMZ, claims it didn’t receive the money or the associated interest. Wiley allegedly received multiple extensions until December 2025, when the bank then filed suit.
As of this posting, Wiley has not addressed the TMZ report.
Wiley spent 10 years in the NFL, playing for the Chargers, Bills, Cowboys, and Jaguars.
