Cowboys roster: 5 players that could be cut by the beginning of the season

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The Cowboys will face some hard roster decisions come August.

With the Dallas Cowboys’ draft now over, there are some of the players riding a knife’s edge in trying to keep their roster spot. The five current Cowboys have all been on the roster for a few years, but are in real danger of being cut.

QB Cooper Rush
The Cowboys have Trey Lance at a $5 million cap hit, a clear sign that the front office wants to make something more out of Lance than the previous year. For a guy like Cooper Rush who was undrafted and is not a player this current coaching staff brought in means the odds are against him. The only positive note for Rush sticking around is the rule on the third quarterback. But if the team needs to find ways to save some cap space, then cutting back on quarterbacks is one way to do it. And Rush’s dead cap hit is negligible.

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DL Chauncey Golston
This is tough because Golston offers a lot of versatility on the defensive line. Unfortunately, the Mike Zimmer defense has very little place for hybrid defenders and Zimmer loves to keep things very traditional. Golston is way too undersized to play as an inside defensive lineman and as a defensive end he hasn’t registered a lot of sacks. Since joining the Cowboys in 2021, Golston has generated three sacks and nine quarterback hits. That’s a very low amount of pressure. Golston’s only hope is the coaching staff will bulk him up and try to play him at the three-tech position, a position that is extremely short in numbers on the roster.

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CB Nahshon Wright
Going back to the Zimmer defense, the secondary will look to shift to the Cover 2 or Cover 4, which means a guy like Wright, who is neither athletic or physical enough, could have trouble maintaining a role in this secondary. The hope is he’s developed enough to stay ahead of the competition, but so far he’s played 182 coverage plays for Dallas in the last three seasons. In that time he has passer rating allowed of 91.0 and has allowed a 68% completion rate. It’s not looking good for Wright at a position that is going to test its depth pieces this offseason.

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OL Josh Ball
It’s been a tough time for Ball since he got to Dallas and so far he has been given little opportunity to play. A lot of that is due to the fact the coaching staff have tried to make him the team’s swing tackle, a position he just hasn’t been comfortable playing. Jason Peters, who was 40 years old at the time, was deemed a better option than Ball in 2022. In that same year, Terence Steele tore his ACL and had to be shut down for the season, Ball got his chance and played a total of 42 snaps at right tackle. Against Houston, Ball struggled to stay on top of things and allowed a strip sack followed by allowing the defender to break through on the ensuing play which caused an interception. Since then he’s been left out of the rotation and was placed on injured reserve last year leaving people to wonder what’s next for him. With the additions in the draft and other players fighting for a position, Ball may be rolling out of Dallas.

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RB Malik Davis
Davis is already pretty low on the depth chart, but it’s worth mentioning as it pertains to the running back position, a spot with the most question marks. The Cowboys signing Royce Freeman before the draft was a signifier to Davis that this coaching staff felt uneasy about the depth at the position. The addition of Ezekiel Elliott back in Dallas pretty much ended any hope for Davis to make the roster (unless for injury). If you include Hunter Luepke as a back who can take snaps from the backfield, the Cowboys currently have eight backs on the roster, they are not going to carry half that into the regular season. You would think the two free agent veterans will have a role and make the final cut, they definitely want Rico Dowdle to be “the guy”, and Deuce Vaughn is their pet project they are trying to figure out. So where does that leave Davis?

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