{"id":267150,"date":"2026-04-26T15:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T15:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/267150\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T15:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T15:22:08","slug":"how-jerry-jones-cowboys-rebuilt-their-defense-through-the-2026-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/267150\/","title":{"rendered":"How Jerry Jones, Cowboys rebuilt their defense through the 2026 NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

FRISCO, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys<\/a> knew change needed to define the 2026 offseason, particularly on defense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After three consecutive 12-win seasons, Dallas produced back-to-back years with fewer than eight wins for the first time since the Dave Campo era. A Dak Prescott season-ending hamstring injury didn’t help the Cowboys’ 7-10 season in 2024, but the defense also allowed 27.5 points per game that year.<\/p>\n

Without All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons<\/a> in 2025, Dallas bottomed out for one of the worst defensive seasons in team history. The Cowboys yielded a league-worst 30.1 points per game. Matt Eberflus was a one-and-done defensive coordinator.<\/p>\n

Change began swiftly in Dallas, firing Eberflus just two days after the 2025 regular season concluded. Instead of hiring a retread ex-NFL head coach as their next defensive coordinator, as Dallas had done previously, Jerry Jones went outside his comfort zone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jones hired Christian Parker, the Philadelphia Eagles<\/a>‘<\/a>\u00a0defensive passing game coordinator\/defensive backs coach under Vic Fangio, as his new DC, despite never having been a coordinator before. Parker, 34, is the youngest defensive coordinator in franchise history. Parker’s scheme takes the Cowboys out of their longtime 4-3 defensive structure and into a 3-4, multiple-scheme look that descends from the Fangio tree.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“When I look back, and I see where we’ve had some of our disappointments, it’s when we’ve played well, relatively speaking, and have been in the ballpark with our record,” Jones said. “But when we got down to that playoff kind of football, it’s pretty obvious. … No matter what, we’re going to change things around here. and we’re going to try to see if something else works. … It was very healthy. But what it did do, no matter what you say, if you look at these results where we are here tonight, and that’s why I started off with that. Between the coaching, the scheme, the players and everything else, we didn’t change it for change’s sake. It was more than that, hopefully.”<\/p>\n

Dallas went almost exclusively defense in the 2026 NFL Draft<\/a>, selecting defensive players with five of its seven picks<\/a>, including the Cowboys’ defensive version of Cooper Flagg:<\/a> Ohio State All-American safety Caleb Downs. The Cowboys couldn’t have sung his praises any louder.<\/p>\n

“People are drawn to him,” Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said. “He’s very approachable, very serious. There’s a military background in his family. There’s a coaching background in his family. He’s very curious about all kinds of things. And I just think what I love about him is he is so comfortable in his own skin. … You see that in his play. You see that in the way he takes charge. … The communication of this guy is different. He’s not asking approval. He’s saying, “Hey, close left; rip, rip; lulu’\u2026 whatever the [play] calls are, he’s driving the defense.”<\/p>\n

Cowboys 2026 draft picks\u00a0RoundPickPlayerGrade1No. 11 (from\u00a0Dolphins<\/a>)Caleb Downs, S, Ohio StateA1No. 23 (from Eagles)Malachi Lawrence, DE, UCFC3No. 92 (from 49ers<\/a>)Jaishawn Barham, DE, MichiganA4No. 112Drew Shelton, OT, Penn StateA-4No. 114 (from Eagles)Devin Moore, CB, FloridaB+4No. 137 (from Eagles)LT Overton, DE, AlabamaB+7No. 218 (from\u00a0Titans<\/a>)Anthony Smith<\/a>, WR, East CarolinaB-<\/p>\n

Veteran acquisitions like safety Jalen Thompson<\/a> from the Arizona Cardinals<\/a>, safety P.J. Locke<\/a> from the Denver Broncos<\/a>, inside linebacker Dee Winters<\/a> from the San Francisco 49ers (via trade<\/a>) and Green Bay Packers<\/a> Pro Bowl edge rusher Rashan Gary<\/a>, whom they also acquired via trade, capped off the Cowboys’ defensive makeover.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We have five first-round draft picks that we didn’t have this time last year on defense,” Jones said. “Quinnen [Williams], [Kenny] Clark, Gary, Downs and Lawrence. We’ve added nine new players on defense this offseason between trades and free agency. Nine new on defense. … We have changed the concept of what we’re doing defensively. … We’ve executed on a dramatic change.”<\/p>\n

The Cowboys see Alabama edge rusher LT Overton, whom they picked 137th overall in the fourth round on Saturday, as the replacement for defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa<\/a>, who is now a San Francisco 49er after being traded for the 92nd overall pick in this draft. Overton, a 6-foot-3, 274-pound edge rusher out of Alabama, has a robust frame. He could stand to fill out to maybe 290 to transition to being a defensive tackle. Being equipped with an 81-inch wingspan will certainly help that position change. Jones justified trading Odighizua by saying he couldn’t have three interior defensive linemen with $20 million average per year salaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We would love to have Osa, but we couldn’t afford Osa. So we got a guy that does a lot of the things he does, little bit different, but [he] does a lot of things he [Odighizuwa] does but one we could afford,” Jones said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRISCO, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys knew change needed to define the 2026 offseason, particularly on defense.\u00a0 After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[34582,73961,99707,115,49953,46793,99708,102,113,99706,104,103,7702,80,77851,17183],"class_list":{"0":"post-267150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-caleb-downs","9":"tag-caleb-downs-cowboys","10":"tag-christian-parker-cowboys","11":"tag-cowboys-defense","12":"tag-cowboys-defensive-coordinator","13":"tag-cowboys-news","14":"tag-cowboys-stats","15":"tag-dallas","16":"tag-dallas-cowboys","17":"tag-dallas-cowboys-2026-offseason","18":"tag-dallas-headlines","19":"tag-dallas-news","20":"tag-micah-parsons","21":"tag-nfl","22":"tag-rashan-gary","23":"tag-stephen-jones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}