Health of Trevon Diggs, Shavon Revel vital to Dallas Cowboys’ cornerback success
Heading into the NFL Draft, the Dallas Cowboys had a blinking light at the cornerback position after the departure of Jourdan Lewis and the season-ending knee injury to Trevon Diggs.
In the third round of the draft, the Cowboys drafted East Carolina cornerback Shavon Revel Jr. to address that blinking light. Well, kind of.
Revel, who was regarded by league scouts as a likely first round talent going into the 2024 season, suffered a torn ACL in September and missed the rest of his senior year and the entirety of the pre-draft process.
While the Cowboys did get solid value for a likely day one starter at cornerback, Revel’s injury adds yet another question mark at the position group heading into the season.
“That’s a big question for me,” owner and general manager Jerry Jones said after picking Revel. “This is the best medical we got about being ready. In other words, he’s better than the guys that we’re counting on being ready that we’ve got on an injury situation. Feel good about it. Feel very good about it.”
Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said he expects Revel to begin training camp on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list before hitting the field for the first time while the team is in Oxnard.
“We will get him in here and see where he is,” Stephen Jones said. “[The doctors] feel optimistic. This kid’s very motivated. This man’s very motivated, and there’s obviously an opportunity here. He is young, if he exceeds expectations and starts to practice up during the process of training camp, but we also know it could be later than that.”
On the flip side, Diggs is recovering from a bone chondral surgery he had done in January that could require as much as eight months of rehab. It’s the second straight offseason that he is rehabbing a knee injury after tearing his ACL in October 2023.
“He’s working hard,” Jerry Jones said. “That’s very important because if he will be very good and diligent as to his rehab process, then he’ll get back quicker.”
“When he does getback, [he will be] sounder than if he has not worked as hard. He’s more subject to injury. He’s learned that one time. My point is, I have a lot of hope that his actual rehab and experience from the time before [in 2024] is really helping him out, and I think it has.”
Dallas will need both cornerbacks during the 2025 season. DaRon Bland returns as the only healthy starter from a season ago at the position. Josh Butler — who started three games in Bland’s absence and played well — is also recovering from a torn ACL. Caelen Carson will enter his second season after a rocky rookie year that saw it get cut short with season-ending shoulder surgery.
In March, the Cowboys traded for Kaiir Elam, a former first-round pick that never found his footing with the Buffalo Bills and will look for a bounce-back in Dallas. Seen by the coaching staff purely as an outside corner, he could be in line to begin the season as a starter if Diggs and/or Revel are not ready.
The hope from the Cowboys is that at least one of their two injured outside cornerbacks will be ready to start the season. In that instance, Bland would slide to the nickel corner spot. Diggs and Revel would assume their starting roles on the outside upon their returns.
This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 4:52 PM.
