FRISCO, Texas – With a 7-9-1 season in the rear-view mirror, the Cowboys head to the offseason with plenty of areas to address.
From needing a new defensive coordinator to defensive personnel changes, Dallas realizes that they have a lot of work to do in front of them. And Cowboys owner/GM Jerry Jones' sense of urgency is high to compete.
"We want to, while Dak [Prescott] is playing the game and got it down the way he's got it, we want to get out here and do better than what we did this year," Jones said. "So a combination of those things give us the incentive to, dare I say it, bust the budget to try to get something down now, yes. We'll do some dramatic things."
When it's all said and done, Jones' goal at the end of his career is to be the winningest owner in NFL history.
"My goal in life is to retire as the owner that won the most Super Bowls," Jones said. "That's my goal. To be retired in the NFL as the owner that won the most Super Bowls. We've got three… I've got work to do."
The first portion of that work will come in free agency, which officially begins on March 11. How active does Jones see the Cowboys being once it rolls around?
"I don't want to sound by saying we're going to be active in free agency, then disappoint and say that we weren't," Jones said. "But if we have an opportunity in free agency, and if we have more than one opportunity, we're going to take advantage of the fact that we're in better shape today to play free agency than we thought we might be. And so we're going to use it."
Part of that free agency pool will be devoted to their current roster as well. Cowboys COO/co-owner Stephen Jones said that the team wants to sign RB Javonte Williams to a multi-year extension and Dallas is prioritizing other key contributors like DE Jadeveon Clowney and WR George Pickens.
The Cowboys traded a third-round pick to acquire Pickens from the Steelers before the season. While there was no clear answer on the team's negotiation status or plan with Pickens and his representation on Tuesday, it's clear Dallas wants to keep him on the team given how well he performed with Dak Prescott in the offense. At the same time, the deal was made with a contingency plan just in case.
"We gave up a third-round pick to have a chance to have a top number two receiver, which we were hoping to get in the draft maybe, but didn't," Stephen Jones said. "And the thought process is when you give a three, and let's say we couldn't have signed him back, then yes, it'd still have been a success because we'd have had a great year this year, and you would get a third-round pick probably back from a compensatory standpoint."
"So that was our thought process on signing a guy with one year left for a third-round pick. It happens around the league. We're not the only ones who think like that, but then you get your third back when he signs somewhere else for a lot of money, if we couldn't have signed him. Or franchise [tagged] him."
A major reason that Jones and the Cowboys are in a better position to sign external and internal players in free agency dates back to the Micah Parsons trade before the 2025 season. Jones said on Wednesday that the best is yet to come from that trade for Dallas, and it includes the extra first-round pick they'll have in the upcoming 2026 NFL Draft that was acquired form Green Bay.
"We definitely are going to take advantage of these two number ones," Jones said. "Don't think that we couldn't do some trading here with those two number ones. All of the value that you get out of having these extra picks and having some flexibility under the cap, we're going to take advantage of it."
When it comes to areas the Cowboys feel they need to address personnel wise, Stephen Jones pointed to two groups on the defensive side of the ball.
"I think, obviously, linebacker," Stephen Jones said. "We love Overshown, I think he's a core piece of the defense, but certainly we could use some help there at linebacker…"
"It's always important to be able to cover the guys. Between injuries, between [rookie CB Shavon] Revel being a little slower getting into the mix coming off his injury from college, he was obviously a little raw… I still think though we need help in the back end."
With the two first-round selections and needs all over the defense, it can be easy to assume that Dallas will use one and even both their picks on a defensive player. That may not be the case, depending on how the draft falls to them first at pick number 12.
"I think that's where you make your biggest mistakes," Stephen Jones said. "We were planning on taking a defensive player when we picked CeeDee Lamb. You got to put the board up true. It's got to be quality of player one after the other."
"Then when it's your turn to pick… if there's a guy we're really need versus a guy who's sitting in there really close, then we reserve the right to make that decision. Although the offensive guy may be a little higher, we might still go with the defensive guy, but you certainly don't want to reach just scratch an itch, if you will, to do that."
And so the Cowboys will put up the board the same way that they have in years past. That being said, Stephen Jones did discuss how time allocation towards prospects is different in the modern age of college football with the increase of influence with NIL and the transfer portal.
"The landscape of college football's changed that where you spend your time, because all the good players that are on smaller school teams find their way this day and time in NIL up to the good teams pretty quickly," Stephen Jones said.
"So you don't find those guys as much as you used to, like a [Shavon] Revel in a small school because they get found by the Power Five guys and they bring them up. One of the things we've talked about, let's focus even more so, on the Power Five schools because that's really where a lot of the top players are."
With a lot of money tied up with the elite players on the roster, Jones and the Cowboys know that they'll have to be methodical in how they approach filling in as many holes as they can on the roster, through both free agency and draft avenues to take a step towards their goals in 2026.
"We have to be efficient," Stephen Jones said. "It starts, as we've talked about with the draft, I think someone mentioned we had a draft one year where we picked the first six, seven picks were defensive players. Obviously, that's a route to go as well, but we will also be able to look at guys, priorities, Clowney."
"If we see the right deal, which is historically how we've been in free agency… part of making a great football team is having the complimentary pieces as well. I think that's where we struggled some this year."
