No one expected the Dallas Cowboys to be the winners of free agency on Day 1. That hasn’t been their motto since the early 1990s. The front office for the Cowboys firmly believes they are a draft-and-develop team with a few low-priced veterans sprinkled in. That isn’t a bad philosophy, but things have changed in recent years.
The Cowboys' two biggest rivals, the Washington Commanders and the Philadelphia Eagles, have become uber-aggressive with trades and free agency, and it’s what fueled their runs to the NFC Championship Game.
However, the expectation was that Dallas would change some in 2025 after a disappointing 7-10 season. Their philosophy of sitting out free agency has cost them in the regular season, and Stephen Jones vowed that they would be “selectively aggressive” this offseason.
Dallas even restructured the contracts of Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb to free up cap space, but that has yet to be used in a significant way.
The first day of free agency has revealed the same old Cowboys
The first wave of free agency has come and gone and as of this posting, the Cowboys haven't done anything. The plan was to keep some of their own talent, but they lost starting slot cornerback Jourdan Lewis to the Jacksonville Jaguars earlier in the day.
Many around the team believed that they would get a deal done, but that didn’t happen and now Dallas has another need on defense that needs to be filled.
Dallas will sign free agents. That isn’t a question. But will they find any difference-makers? Most of the top players are gone and a lot of the depth has already been signed. There are still quality players left, but most of them are stop-gap options with injury issues and/or age concerns.
The Cowboys haven’t changed. They just don’t believe in paying big money in free agency. It’s why they haven’t paid a single outside free agent more than $6 million a season since Greg Hardy in 2015. That was 10 years ago and the cap has since increased by more than $135 million. That wasn’t a winning philosophy in 2015 and it certainly isn’t one now in 2025.
The first wave is free agency is over. In fact, so are the second and third waves. The portion of free agency that matters is over and the Cowboys decided to skip out on it once again. So now what? The Cowboys have cap space, but there aren’t enough quality free agents available to use it on. They could be proactive and start signing extensions to players like Tyler Smith, Daron Bland, and, of course, Micah Parsons. But that really isn’t their style, either.
Instead, the Cowboys will sit on their cap space, sign a few older veterans to one-year deals, and roll over the space to 2026. And that cycle will continue to repeat year after year. The franchise desperately needs a shakeup in how they conduct business. But with Jerry Jones and Stephen Jones in charge, don’t expect anything to be different anytime soon.
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