Cowboys defensive makeover is even more extreme than you think

• Of the 27 players on the opening-day roster against the Eagles in 2025, 15 are no longer with the Cowboys. Rosters in the NFL churn about 30% each year, the churn for the Cowboys defense is almost twice that at 56%.
• The churn among the starters is even higher at 64% with seven of the 11 listed starters already off the team.
• Of the 11 starters listed, only two (Kenny Clark and DaRon Bland) are likely to return as starters; Malik Hooker will likely lose his starting spot to the combo of Jalen Thompson and rookie Caleb Downs, Sam Williams will be lucky to make the roster as a backup.
• DeMarvion Overshown, Shavon Revel Jr., and Caelen Carson were all starting by the end of the season, with varying degrees of success, but they were not on the active roster at the start of the season.
• The Cowboys brought in more players over the course of the season like Jadeveon Clowney, Logan Wilson, and Quinnen Williams, but only Williams is still with the team.

I’ve listed the current offseason roster below. The roster is still in flux, of course, and I may not have slotted every player correctly on the depth chart, but the green cells do give you a good overview of the additions the Cowboys have made since Week 1, 2025.

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• There are 38 defenders (excluding UDFAs) on the roster right now, a number that will eventually have to be trimmed to 27 or 28.
• There are only two returning starters from Week 1 last year (Kenny Clark & DaRon Bland), but if you add DeMarvion Overshown, Donovan Ezeiruaku, and Shavon Revel – and assume they’ll all start – the Cowboys will still have six new starters on their defense this year, maybe seven if Revel can’t hold on to his starting spot.
• In total, the Cowboys added 13 new players to the defense, including six or seven new starters.

Overall, this is a significant overhaul of the defense in just one year. And as Jerry Jones pointed out, the personnel changes are accompanied by a change in scheme and a completely new coaching staff. And it’s not just a quantitative change, it’s also a qualitative change to the defense.

A change of this magnitude is not just unusual, it’s unprecedented for a team like the Cowboys that likes to keep things comfortable and is generally averse to change. The Cowboys of the past would have talked about a two- or three-year rebuild, but they are doing this in one year. If ever the “all-in” label could be applied to anything in Dallas, it’s on this defensive rebuild.

Will it work from day one? Who knows. There are so many moving parts to this that predicting an outcome is impossible. But the Cowboys don’t need to have a world-beating defense from day one anyway. Even a middling defense that doesn’t need the offense scoring touchdowns on every possession to keep them in games would already be a giant step forward for this team.

But if they pull it off, they become an almost automatic contender.