Aldon Smith, a first-round pick who was a dominant pass rusher early in his career, has died. He was 36.
“We are devastated by the sudden and tragic passing of Aldon Smith,” the 49ers said in a statement. “Aldon’s undeniable talent and sheer dominance on the field were on display from the moment he joined our organization, having recorded one of the best rookie seasons the National Football League has seen. Beyond his excellence as a player, Aldon will be remembered for his infectious smile that lit up every room he walked into. Our entire organization sends its deepest condolences to the Smith family and all who knew and loved Aldon.”
The seventh overall selection in 2011, Smith had 33.5 sacks in his first 32 regular-season games. He finished second for the defensive rookie of the year award in 2011, and he was a first-team All-Pro and a Pro Bowler in 2012. He started Super Bowl XLVII with the 49ers.
He served a nine-game suspension in 2014 for violating the league’s substance abuse policy. Following a DUI arrest in August 2015, the 49ers released him.
That season, he appeared in nine games with seven starts for the Raiders. He was suspended indefinitely by the league after the Week 10 of the 2015 campaign. He missed all of the 2016 and 2017 seasons.
The Raiders released him in 2018, after an arrest for domestic violence. He joined the Cowboys in 2020, starting all 16 games and finishing with 5.0 sacks. The Seahawks signed him during the 2021 offseason; he was released in August.
We extend our condolences to Smith’s family, friends, teammates, and coaches.
Cowboys Clips
Friday night’s World Cup match between the United States and Paraguay looked great. Most of the images from the 4-1 U.S. win didn’t look anything like the stadium in which it was played.
But it was indeed SoFi Stadium. With rich, lush, naturally green grass.
“Wonder if we could get that all season,” 49ers tight end George Kittle said on Twitter.
Although the 49ers’ annual visit to their home away from home to play the Rams won’t happen this year (they’ll square off in Australia), the 49ers will be at SoFi Stadium to play the Chargers in Week 15, for a Thursday night game.
Friday night’s soccer match showed what SoFi could be, what it would be, if Rams owner Stan Kroenke were to embrace grass.
But he won’t. It costs too much money to maintain a high-quality grass field. It complicates the effort to have all sorts of other events at the venue.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made that point earlier this year, regarding his no-questions-asked willingness to install grass at AT&T Stadium for the World Cup.
“We have more flexibility with the way we handle our surface at the stadium,” Jones said at the annual meetings in Phoenix, via Jordan Raanan of ESPN. “We have no belief that it’s any safer to play on a grass [field] or a turf. We are ambiguous as to the safety of it. The turf, actually like many things, improves the economics of being able to play this game and our players are the biggest benefactor of all. They get the best benefit of when we do good things financially, the players are benefiting. So I’m working for you, baby, OK, if you’re a player.
“And so the combination of that, I’m very comfortable putting some grass down for soccer under regulations and proud to be able to do it but quickly get that turf back out there to go about the other business of the stadium and the team.”
The safety narrative is a weak one. The NFL has muddied the issue by focusing on the statistical claim that the injury rate is the same on grass as it is on turf. This ignores player experience beyond the question of actual injuries. The human body takes less wear and tear when the forces it creates are absorbed by a grass field than when the forces ricochet back into the feet and up through the legs.
Besides, how does Jerry Jones hosting a bunch of other events in a football stadium benefit the football players on the Cowboys? At best, it gives him more money to pay players. In a salary-capped environment, however, who cares? The TV money and the ticket revenue from the football games gives owners more than enough money to finance the roster.
The simple reality is that the overwhelming majority of players — 92 percent — prefer grass.
“I’m going into year 10, and I can say wholeheartedly that grass feels way better than turf,” Giants offensive lineman Jermaine Eluemunor recently said, via Rohan Nadkarni of NBC News. “With MetLife getting grass, obviously it’s cool for FIFA and the World Cup. It’s one of the biggest stages in the world but, at the same time, the NFL as a whole is one of the most profitable businesses in the world, and so you would think that us as players would have a say in the fields that we get to play on.”
The players do have a say. In an environment of collective bargaining, however, they need to be willing to give something up to get something else. When the original artificial turf — a thin sheet of green all-weather carpet rolled over concrete — began to proliferate, the NFL Players Association allowed it. The owners secured the discretion to choose the playing surface without any real pushback.
Now that the pushback is happening, the only path for making high-quality grass universal comes from bargaining for it. And, if need be, going on strike to get it.
It all comes back to the fundamental imbalance between management and labor in pro football. The owners will shut the sport down to get what they want. The players won’t.
If the choice is football on artificial turf or no football at all, the players will choose football on artificial turf. And the owners will ignore the P.R. complications flowing from the hypocrisy of writing a blank check for FIFA, because at the end of the day it’s all just words. Until the words are backed up by actions, nothing will change.
Hell, Jones probably likes the fact that the grass vs. turf debate exists. His view is that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And so, on top of the fact that Jones and other owners make more money from staging their teams’ games on turf, the organic debate over an inorganic playing surface becomes another twist in the ultimate reality show.
And it’s a twist with no stakes. Unless and until the NFLPA is willing to do something other than create public pressure at which the owners won’t even blink, the back-and-forth over turf vs. grass will be nothing but noise.
So that’s the real question. Will the players simply talk about their preference for grass or, when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires in 2031, will they do something about it?
Given that most of the men who’ll be playing pro football in 2031 are currently in college or high school, it’s way too early to know the choice they’ll make. History, however, tells us that the decision between playing on artificial turf and not playing at all will be a no-brainer.
In the interim, is it possible that the players could emerge from talks over an expanded season with universal grass fields? Yes. To get there, however, they may have to be willing to go not from 17 regular-season games to 18 but from 17 to 20.
Dak Prescott and Tony Romo own all of the Cowboys’ major passing records. Prescott, in fact, needs only six more touchdown passes to surpass Romo’s team-record of 248.
What they don’t have is a Super Bowl ring.
Romo went 2-4 in the postseason in his career, and Prescott is 2-5.
The Cowboys have not played in the NFC Championship Game since 1995, the longest drought in the conference.
That’s why Prescott and Romo aren’t in the same class in Cowboys’ history as Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman.
Prescott isn’t alone among Pro Bowl quarterbacks lacking a championship, with Buffalo’s Josh Allen, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow among those in the same spot. But Prescott has played longer, and Burrow has played in a Super Bowl and Allen and Jackson have played in conference championship games.
“If you play this position — I’ve said it before — how you’re judged is winning that last game,” Prescott said this week, via Todd Archer of ESPN. “Anything other than that, you’re warranted to get [the criticism] because you’ve not won that game. If you’re not wired that way and if it’s not what pushes you, you should probably find a different job and a different position. I think we all feel the same and if I know those guys are like me, it’s an obsession.
“So, yeah, it’s about making sure that you give everything that you can to this team and give them the chance to do it.”
Prescott enters his 11th season as the longest-tenured player on the team. He has gone from an afterthought as a fourth-round pick to the highest-paid player in NFL history, with a deal that runs through 2028.
“It feels like yesterday at times,” Prescott said, “and then you’re watching cutups or clips from maybe plays back then, and I look at myself and realize even the way I looked or the way I’m playing the game, it feels like a long time ago from that standpoint.”
The Cowboys drafted linebacker DeMarvion Overshown in the third round in 2023. They were excited about his potential then and as excited now.
Overshown, though, has not fulfilled that potential because of unfortunate injuries.
He has played only 19 games in three seasons.
Overshown said this week that he is aiming to be a player “everybody can look at and say ‘this is our guy; this is the guy that’s going to lead our defense to the next level.’”
The Cowboys, despite his injury history, appear ready to hand him the middle linebacker job along with the green dot.
“I’ve been wanting to be MIKE for the longest, since my rookie year,” Overshown said, via Tommy Yarrish of the team website. “I felt like it was going to come to a time where I wore the “C” on my chest and I had the green dot, and now I’ve got it. I’m excited.”
Overshown played weakside linebacker in the past, but he said the middle linebacker “role fits me.” He sees himself as an extension of new defensive coordinator Christian Parker on the field.
It’s a big year for Overshown as he heads into a contract year needing to prove he can stay healthy and live up to his potential.
“We all know what year this is for me, it’s a contract year, and you give me the green dot, so I’ve got an opportunity to prove myself,” Overshown said.
Former NFL wide receiver Lance Rentzel died Sunday in Virginia, Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News reports. Rentzel was 82.
Rentzel was a star at Oklahoma, earning first-team All-Big Eight honors and playing in the Senior Bowl and College All-Star Game after his senior season. The Vikings selected Rentzel in the second round of the 1965 NFL draft, and the Bills took him in the sixth round of the 1965 AFL draft. He signed with Minnesota, where he played two seasons.
After his second season, Rentzel exposed himself to two young girls on a St. Paul, Minnesota, playground. He pleaded guilty but served no jail time with the charges reduced to disorderly conduct after he promised to seek psychiatric treatment. The Cowboys traded him to the Rams in a three-team deal.
The Vikings traded him to the Cowboys for a third-round pick in the 1967 offseason.
Rentzel wrote in his biography, When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow, that he battled mental illness.
He was arrested again in November 1970 after exposing himself to a 10-year-old girl in Dallas. Rentzel pleaded guilty in 1971 and was sentenced to five years of probation and mandatory psychiatric care with no jail time. The Cowboys traded him to the Rams.
Rentzel played two seasons in Los Angeles before police raided his home and arrested him for possession of marijuana. He pleaded guilty, and because he was already on probation with the NFL, Commissioner Pete Rozelle suspended Rentzel for the 1973 season.
Rentzel returned in 1974 in what was his final season before retirement.
He played 115 games over nine seasons and totaled 268 receptions for 4,826 yards and 38 touchdowns and also contributed 26 rushes for 196 yards and two touchdowns.
Rentzel was married to and divorced from entertainer Joey Heatherton.
He is survived by brothers Del Rentzel and Chris Rentzel of Dallas, and a daughter, Jenny.
“To all who knew him,” his obit reads, via Sherrington, “Lance was larger than life – hilariously funny, unfailingly optimistic and happy, warm in spirit, and deeply loyal. He formed many close relationships over the years, most notably the enduring bonds that he shared with his teammates.”
Cowboys wide receiver George Pickens signed the franchise tag on April 29. The team hasn’t seen him since despite Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones saying shortly after Pickens signed the $27.3 million tag that the “expectation” was Pickens would participate in the voluntary offseason program.
Pickens hasn’t, which begs the question of why he even signed the tag.
The Cowboys will hold their mandatory minicamp next week, and quarterback Dak Prescott said Tuesday that he has not talked with Pickens about whether the Pro Bowler will attend.
Further, Prescott said he has not thrown with Pickens since April, which is before the team’s offseason program began.
Prescott, though, is unconcerned about Pickens’ absence.
“I’m excited about when he gets in and the work that we’re going to have to build off of,” Prescott said, via Todd Archer of ESPN. “But George is George, and he’s fine.”
The fine for missing all three days of the minicamp is $107,911.
Pickens, 25, earned his first Pro Bowl in his first season in Dallas in 2025, making 93 receptions for 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns.
The Cowboys are having an open competition to see who Dak Prescott’s backup will be this season.
Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer said today that quarterbacks Sam Howell and Joe Milton are in an open competition to be the No. 2 quarterback in Dallas, and both of them will get equal reps until the decision is made.
“It’s going to be a fun competition,” Schottenheimer said.
The Cowboys acquired Milton from the Patriots in a trade last year. He played in four games behind Prescott, completing 15 of 24 passes for 183 yards, with a touchdown and two interceptions.
Howell signed with the Cowboys in March after spending last season as a backup for the Eagles. He has started 18 games in his career, all for the Commanders.
The Cowboys drafted cornerback Shavon Revel Jr. in the third round in 2025, knowing he would miss part of his rookie season. Revel likely would have gone higher in the draft if not for his torn ACL in September 2024 while practicing with teammates at East Carolina.
He played seven games last season with the Cowboys, but Revel feels even healthier this offseason. He has shed his knee brace and is getting a full offseason of practice.
“It’s very beneficial,” Revel said, via Tommy Yarrish of the team website. “Just because I can clean up a lot of things, a lot of errors I didn’t see last year, or I did see last year, that I could clean up this year.
“We’ve got a new coaching staff, they’re very detailed and very technical. When it comes to things, each day is intentional to get better. That’s what I feel like I’ve been doing. Of course there’s some things I need to work on. My knee is 100 percent, so now it’s time to focus on situational ball and I’ve got to see what I need to fix or get better at.”
New Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker met Revel in a combine meeting while Parker was still with the Eagles.
“He has a hell of a story,” Parker said. “Football means a lot to him, and he wants to work hard at it, so I think that’s where it starts. He has that built in his mind. Physically, his traits, the height, the speed, the power, he has all of that. So now it’s about just working from the neck up in terms of how the position needs to be played.”
Revel will compete with Cobie Durant for the starting job opposite DaRon Bland.
It will still be some time before we see the Cowboys defense against an opposing offense, but there’s been enough practice time for members of the Dallas offense to draw some insights into the new scheme.
Defensive coordinator Christian Parker was hired after last year’s unit finished near the bottom of the league in most major metrics and the team moved to acquire new players at all levels of the defense this offseason. Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb’s initial impression is that combination is going to be a tough one for opposing offenses to crack from week to week.
“It’s annoying,” Lamb said, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com. “It’s been annoying to prepare against. But obviously seeing it in practice every day, it’s kind of unique. Just seeing the different guys communicate and be able to understand and take what they learn from the meeting room and being able to easily translate it on the field. It’s good to go against. It’s very tricky.”
While it remains to be seen just what things will look like come September, there’s a lot of room for improvement after the 2025 effort and the Cowboys appear well positioned to take a step forward in their first season with Parker calling the defensive shots.
Cowboys cornerback DaRon Bland and edge rusher Donovan Ezeiruaku aren’t practicing with their teammates yet as they continue rehabbing. Both, though, are expected to be cleared for the start of training camp.
“We’ve got a few guys that we’re going to be smart with,” Schottenheimer said from OTAs on Thursday via Patrik Walker of the team website. “Donovan Ezeiruaku and DaRon Bland, guys like that, you’ll see them throughout the next couple weeks advance into more individual drills and stuff like that, but a few of those guys are gonna be really smart with.”
Bland missed the final three games of the regular season because of a left foot injury, and he underwent surgery on Jan. 13. He missed the start of the 2024 season after surgery to repair a stress fracture in the same foot.
Ezeiruaku underwent offseason surgery to repair a labrum tear in his hip.
The Cowboys do not expect either player to begin camp on active/physically unable to perform.
“Oh yeah, [they will be ready]. Absolutely, yeah,” Schottenheimer said. “Both guys are doing great. It’s more of us taking precautions and being smart. You know, they both want to get out there, but, again, it’s OTAs. It’s more important that they’re learning the scheme and system and all of that, as opposed to them going out there and getting a tea lunch.”
