Jerry Jones talks possibility of ‘dramatic’ offseason moves for Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys have one last game to get to on Sunday afternoon, but a thorough evaluation process will take place as soon as the team returns to Frisco on Monday morning.
A large part of that process will be evaluating how to improve defensively after a season that was derailed by defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus’ group that sits at the bottom of the NFL in most defensive metrics and statistics. However, the buck doesn’t stop with Eberflus, according to owner Jerry Jones. At the end of the day, there could be a reality where it doesn’t even include him.
“I can make the case that we haven’t had a satisfactory defense for five or six years,” Jones said. “[It’s] everything. I think you can look back relative to decisions we made three years ago, five years ago and look at why we made some of the decisions we made on coaches. What did we expect from them relative to what we’re doing with our personnel?”
“That’s why it’s inaccurate to put this on the evaluation of Eberflus. It really is. I don’t want it to sound like it’s as simple as evaluating Eberflus. It’s much broader than that.”
The Cowboys are heading into a pivotal offseason after putting together one of the league’s best offenses. Jones agrees with that notion. Even after a calendar year that has seen the team trade away Micah Parsons and trade for George Pickens and Quinnen Williams, Jones could be looking at similar sizable moves.
“I think we can do some things to maybe make as dramatic a difference as we have could in a long time,” he said. “You can take that either way you want to do it. You can take it because you’re as dissatisfied as you’ve been in a long time. You can say do you really want to evaluate. The good news about this is in many ways, it’s the same motions that you’re evaluating on our staff and how we play defense.”
Jones pointed to even when things were going better defensively, notably under defensive coordinator Dan Quinn from 2021 to 2023, that they still had issues stopping the run. Decisions that were made then play into the evaluation as much as decisions they make now.
“We need to look at the decisions we’ve made on defense over the last several years,” he said. “We need to approach some things differently. That’s the only way you can address this out of internal things we’re looking at.”
How long the process will take wasn’t exactly determined by Jones, but he did indicate that they will have to move quickly based on the timeline of dominoes falling around the league.
“It starts first thing tomorrow,” he said.
This story was originally published January 4, 2026 at 1:27 PM.
