Horrendous might be a complement to how bad the Dallas Cowboys linebackers were a year ago, and honestly, I can’t believe that I actually like them more than anything other than the defensive line on that side of the ball.
A lot of this is also banking on DeMarvion Overshown staying healthy and on the field, but one guy that seems like he can’t be talked about enough is Dee Winters.
Overshown is expected to be the green dot this season for the Cowboys defense and that is okay, but Dee Winters is going to be much more helpful to this defense than most people think under Christian Parker.
Winters is also being looked as the green dot.
The Cowboys are
Major Impact
Winters is coming off the best season of his career with the 49ers, but still has not even played his best football.
Trading a 5th round pick for a player entering the final year of his rookie deal, with a cap hit of just $3.71 million. That is great work by Jerry Jones and the front office for once.
I think Winters is the best thing they could have done after not landing Styles or trading a higher pick for someone else.
The Cowboys had only three off-ball linebackers, DeMarvion Overshown, Shemar James and Justin Barron before adding Winters.
He’s an immediate upgrade to Shemar James and Justin Barron on the depth chart. Perfectly good use of a 5th.
Winters started 27 games for the 49ers across the last two seasons, including all 17 games in 2025.
He totaled career-highs in tackles (101), interceptions (one, a pick-six of Philip Rivers), passes defensed (five) and tackles for loss (eight) in 2025. Winters’ 101 tackles led San Francisco after he started all 17 games.
Read that again, he led the 49ers a season ago in tackles, nearly 30 more than Kenneth Murray who was the green dot and starting guy for Dallas a year ago. He is better than Murray. I know that is not hard to do, but he is.
The best thing about Winters is how good he is sideline to sideline. That has a major impact when you are playing linebacker. Guys in open space, being able to get from one side of the field to the other in the blink of an eye, unlike the other guys they had tried to play last year.
We will really get a good understanding of how bad Murray was for this team when you see Winters play football this season, it will truly be eye-opening.
Now, I am not saying that Winters is going to make the Pro Bowl or be an All Pro, but he led the 49ers in tackles last year. Think about that.
Let me say this before ending this, the Cowboys secondary is still not good, even with Caleb Downs being able to play nickel back, DaRon Bland is not even 100% yet and is still working with the rehab team during the entire session of minicamp last week.
And it all it cost them was a fifth round pick.
Super Bowl bound now.
We are going to have to live with them struggling a bit still in that area, but expect the rest of the defense has been improved enough to hopefully live with it and get at least slightly below average play from them.
I understand that giving up big plays might still be an issue for the secondary, but the linebackers like Winters and the defensive line are much more improved, which should help limit everything else.
I could be wrong, but I think the defense is going to actually be able to reduce the damage by a little bit and not make the offense score 30 plus points a game this season, which would help everyone on the team.
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