Odighizuwa is up first when it comes to offseason negotiation priorities for the club.
Whereas last offseason focused on whether or not key members of the club would see extensions, as Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb approached the final year of their deals, this year is about guys who can sign anywhere.
Except for one big name. Micah Parsons finds himself in the same boat Prescott and Lamb did, staring at the final year of his current deal. The record-breaking edge rusher will play under the fifth-year option if no extension can be reached. But with that in their back pocket, the Cowboys are choosing to priortize someone they don’t have the luxury of waiting with.
DT Osa Odighizuwa is going to be well sought after if he hits the open market when the legal tampering period starts on March 10. Although he doesn’t have sacks in abundance, he creates QB pressures like few others from the defensive interior, and appears ready to blossom to greater heights.
With the contract Osa Odighizuwa is expected to command, the Cowboys are likely going to have to lose a player or two elsewhere on a still-thin defensive line to keep him.
It’s just one of the many reasons why Dallas Cowboys defensive end Chauncey Golston is free agency’s best value at defensive end. The soon-to-be fifth-year player is coming off the best year of his career that showed that he can make plays from multiple positions up in front. He finished 2024 with career-best numbers across the board that included 5.5 sacks and an interception off Jayden Daniels, the Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Golston won’t anchor anyone’s pass rush and he shouldn’t be expected to. He is, however, a chess piece that can be an effective rotational guy in the right spots. He can play outside and then kick inside on obvious passing downs. Injuries mostly forced him into playing a career-high 72% of defensive snaps after averaging about 30% through his first three years and he took full advantage of it, especially toward the end of the year where he recorded 3.5 of the aforementioned 5.5 sacks on the year.
He’s also an OK run defender, which nearly completes his resume. He can certainly stand to improve in that area by working on his overall awareness and the stack-and-shed aspect of his game.
Golston’s projected market value in free agency will make him a popular target
NFL cap analysts Josh Queipo and Kyle DeDiminicantanio currently have Golston’s projection at $6 million per year. Pro Football Focus has him at $6.25 million per year and Spotrac has his AAV at $7.3 million.
As of Sunday, the Cowboys have started negotiations with free agent defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa.
Odighizuwa is scheduled to become a free agent next month.
He had a career-high 4.5 sacks and 23 quarterback hits and will have a lot of teams call his agent!
“We have had negotiations with Osa,‘’ Jones told the Dallas Morning News. “I just think Osa is a really good football player. He’s an important piece.‘’
Now although he did not rule out using the tag on him, it seems very unlikely!
It would cost them $23.4 million for 2025, but the transition tag is a more palatable $18.9 million.
“It’s a tool,‘’ Jones said. “It’s something we haven’t ruled out using. We’ll just see how this week goes and how our visits [with his agent] go.‘’
Will “selectively aggressive” be this offseason’s version of “all in” for the Cowboys?
“We’re going to look at everything we can, we’re going to be selectively aggressive, Jones said. “There’s things in this league, you have certain amount of resources they allow you to have and we will look at that, but we’re going to try to improve our football team, not try, we’re going to improve our football team and we expect to have success next year.”
When it came to reflecting on the team’s approach last season, Jones didn’t want to make any excuses but pointed to injuries as a driving factor of Dallas’ struggles throughout the year and how they can grow from it and improve the 2025 roster to get back to their winning ways.
“At the end of the day, no excuses, but when you have the injuries we had, it’s difficult,” Jones said. “That makes it hard. We’re going to obviously look at everything we do in terms of how we go about making this team better, how we improve the roster, and you always look for ways to improve and that’s what we’re going to do.”
A large part of the Cowboys’ free agency approach historically is keeping their guys in house, and they’ve got several due for contract extensions this offseason and the next. One of if not the biggest proponent in that equation is Micah Parsons, who has said that he’d like to get a deal done sooner rather than later.
With deals like that of CeeDee Lamb in the past, other factors like contracts for other players have affected the timing of deals getting done, causing extensions to be signed later.
“There’s always extenuating circumstances to these things,” Jones said. “Every contract negotiation’s different. With CeeDee, there were still other receivers that were trying to get their deal done and some of them still hadn’t got those deals done.”
“As we all know, Dak’s deal, we were working on that and Dak was in and it didn’t really affect anything in terms of what we were doing. He was practicing every day and working hard and as you know, he’s not distracted by things like that.”
The Cowboys have an entirely new coaching outlook on offense, and are looking to add a rookie QB to the mix to begin learning the ropes.
When Prescott suffered a season-ending hamstring injury this past season, McCarthy felt Rush gave the team a better opportunity to win games. That told fans all they needed to know about Lance and his development; they never felt comfortable enough to win with him.
After a stretch of preseason games and one start in the season-finale, Lance will leave Dallas with a stat line of 25 of 41 passing for 266 yards and one interception. As for Rush, it remains to be seen what his market will be like and if the Cowboys, who have always valued the backup quarterback position, move to retain the free agent who went 4-4 last season as a starter. Jones said the team will wait and see how much it will cost to bring him back.
Regardless of whether there is a potential veteran quarterback to back up Prescott in 2025, Jones emphasized that one of the team’s goals is to exit the NFL draft with a rookie quarterback to develop.
“You know, I think one of our goals is to get a young quarterback in the draft,” Jones said. “I don’t know where that’s going to be.
“That’s why we gave a [fourth-round pick] for Trey. It seems like all the quarterbacks, even guys we have in the fourth round, go in the first. They always go so much higher than what you think.”
The last time Dallas selected a rookie quarterback was in 2020, during Mike McCarthy’s first season with the Cowboys, when they picked Ben DiNucci in the seventh round. Jones did not specify what round they might consider taking a rookie passer, but for now, the most likely option would be in the fifth round, where the team has three draft picks.