Throughout the offseason, dating back to the first press conference of Cowboys training camp back in Oxnard, the focus of observers and reporters in and around The Star has been on what big, splashy NFL trade team owner and GM Jerry Jones might pull off. He talked about Maxx Crosby during that very press conference, and later added that he’d like to bring in another defensive piece, indicating he was willing to sacrifice draft capital to get it done. Nothing came to fruition via trade, but Jones’s continued insistence that Dallas would take the plunge on a deal has kept the rumor mill churning around this team.
This week, the chatter has been about the Cowboys possibly making a move for Steelers star cornerback Joey Porter Jr. With the way that the Dallas defense showed up flat and flaccid against the Giants on Sunday in Week 1, the eagerness to see Jones get busy on the market has been amped up.
Cowboys Don’t Yet Have a Trade Partner, Jerry Jones Says
But in his weekly appearance on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas on Tuesday, Jones threw some cold water on the possibility of the Cowboys making a move to bolster the team any time soon. Not that he’s not willing, he says–but it’s hard to get active on the trade market this early in the year, before the market has even taken shape.
Said Jones: “Temper that with availability of making moves on outside help for the roster. That’s, if you wanted to, but this is a narrow window of making changes to the roster at this date. You don’t have a lot of moving around relative to where you were other parts of the year. So, it’s not something that you can say, ‘We’re gonna reshuffle this deck,’ after your first game. That’s not practical.”
Cowboys Pass Rush Lacking
The Cowboys do clearly need defensive help, as much of the enthusiasm that surrounded this unit coming into 2026 was simply the fact that it was new and remodeled under new coordinator Christian Parker. A colder look at what the Cowboys actually did, personnel-wise, was more worrisome–they traded for Rashan Gary, who was about to be released by the Packers, gave out only one eight-figure contract to a defensive player in free agency (Jalen Thompson) and relied on draft picks to fill in the rest.
Maybe that plan will come together. But obviously, there was more investment in changing the coaching of the defense than changing the personnel of the defense. That showed, at least in Week 1.
Jerry Jones Wants to Stop the Run
Jones was also asked about the Cowboys’ pass rush, which is presumably where the team is most likely to turn should a trade materialize as the November trade deadline gets closer.
Jones gave a meandering answer, but seemed to indicate that the Cowboys made the decision to focus on stopping the run when they traded Micah Parsons before last season, and that they had to sacrifice pressuring the quarterback to get run-stoppers like Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark (neither of whom stopped the run in Week 1).
Said Jones: “Everybody wants as much pressure on the quarterback as you can get. There’s nothing that has changed my mind on having pressure on the quarterback. That particular case, what you have got to look at is, if you can get it, to give up to get it. That’s shaped, if you will, our decisions with what we’re trying to do to stop the run.”
Cowboys’ Jerry Jones Delivers Bad News on Star Trade Rumors