Dallas Cowboys

Dallas Cowboys

The projected NFL salary cap for 2026 is $295,500,000. T he Cowboys currently sit at $34,906,087over the cap, with $330,406,087 in cap commitments already on the books. This means flexibility is not something Dallas will have, it's something they will need to create. The franchise tag becomes a timing mechanism. A tool that prevents emerging talent from touching the open-market while Dallas works backwards through extensions, restructures, and cuts.

There's been no shortage of coverage on this site concerning the diminishing job safety of Cowboys defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus. As team owner/president/general manager Jerry Jones' negative comments on the situation continue to escalate, the likelihood that Eberflus gets a Year 2 in Dallas continues to fall. As Jon Machota of The Athletic so candidly put it, "at this point, a second season of Eberflus as DC would be a surprise."

It stands to reason that the Dallas Cowboys are going to make a change at defensive coordinator sometime soon. For the most part, the Cowboys defense has been objectively awful across the entire season. The team as a whole had the three-game winning streak where everything was sort of working together, but the defense has let the group down time after time after time after time.

The 2025 season has been filled with plenty of ups and downs for the Dallas Cowboys. It's been a rollercoaster ride of a year, but Dallas will ultimately miss the playoffs for the second-straight season. While the two games left in the regular season don't mean anything in terms of standings, there are plenty of players on Dallas' current roster who could be playing their final two games as a Cowboy.

I know the Cowboys defense has been a roller-coaster in 2025, but the interior defensive line has quietly become one of the most fascinating late-season storylines. For years, we have seen Dallas' defense be defined by pressure of the edge. This season, the middle of the line finally started forcing offenses to rethink how they attack the defense. Now two games remain, and the defensive tackles carry the weight of the defense in the final stretch.

Dallas did not do a good job in either area when they lost to the Chargers, but with a few extra days to find this motivation for their first Christmas Day game since 2010, the Cowboys did something they hadn't done since their last Super Bowl-winning season and earned a season-sweep of the Commanders in the process. The Cowboys won 30-23 at the Commanders on Christmas, their first regular season Christmas Day win since the season finale in 1995 against the Cardinals.

Santa Claus is coming to town and before we know it we will be ushering in a new year. And for teams like the Dallas Cowboys who have already been eliminated from the playoffs, the off-season preparation is starting earlier than many of us would like. Then again, maybe the timing isn't that bad after all. With the Cowboys early elimination from the postseason already confirmed, we still have time to get in our wish list for the organization to Santa. A little Christmas magic could be exactly what the Cowboys need after yet another disappointing season, which is why we decided to put our wish list out there for you to enjoy.

It's amazing to think about how exciting it was to watch Trevon Diggs pick off 11 passes during his second year in the league back in 2021. The guy was such an incredible ball-hawking corner who had a football magnet for hands. Sure, he had a little gamble in him, and sometimes that left him exposed, but more times than not, his decisions worked out favorably as he racked up the interceptions. With each additional pick, the excitement grew. It was fun to watch.

Tyler Guyton's second NFL season has come to an end. He has been placed on injured reserve, the Cowboys announced on Wednesday. Guyton last played in Week 12 and has been dealing with an ankle injury since. Having been eliminated from the playoffs, the Cowboys have only two games remaining in their season. IR stints at least four weeks, so today's move ensures Guyton will now turn his attention to 2026.

In case you were unaware the in-season version of Hard Knocks has been covering the NFC East (yes the entire division) for the last few weeks which means that the Cowboys have gotten some air time on HBO and HBO Max. It has been interesting to see some behind-the-scenes footage over the past few games, but obviously it would have been more fun had the team kept on winning.

Shemar James was the second rookie the Cowboys selected in the fifth round back in April. He's outplaying Kenneth Murray, who has started all but one of the Cowboys' 15 games this year. One could even argue that James looks a little better than Logan Wilson as well. In Sunday's loss to the Chargers, James had the most defensive snaps (50) out of all the linebackers. He was fifth out of all the defensive players in defensive snaps.

For the last two decades, the NFC East had not done something that all of the NFL's other seven divisions had. Have a team win consecutive division championships. The last time an NFC East team defended its crown had been all the way back to the 2004 season. The Philadelphia Eagles won four straight titles from 2001 through 2004. For the next two decades, none of the four teams could defend their title.

So, normally not winning your division would set you up for a decent path the following year, but, of course, in the Cowboys' case for next season, the NFC is loaded this year, and the second place teams are better than them. Just looking on the surface, the Cowboys will play the teams that finish second in their division, and after this weekend it looks as if they will play teams such as the Packers, Ravens, and Buccaneers.

We've got a team that I think has got a top future, as far as next year's concerned. Starting with the offense, starting with that as we stand here tonight. And I think we've got the bones of a heck of a defense out there as well. And so, I think that as we do things that are directed toward making us better, period, no matter who we do it with, as we do those things, we're starting [from a] real good spot.

For Philadelphia, they've also struggled in recent weeks; if not for the Dallas Cowboys' failure to win, this division could have actually been a close race. Instead, they are a win away from both clinching their ticket to the postseason and from becoming the first team to win back-to-back NFC East titles in two decades. As seven-point favorites, they are pretty clearly poised to do just tha