We\u2019re now just about a week into free agency and the Dallas Cowboys have been pretty active. Granted, many of the deals they have done so far are for players that will have to fight for playing time, special teams, or even just make the roster.<\/p>\n
Plenty of those deals described above have been of the one-year variety, but there were two players acquired early in free agency that are on multiple-year deals and are expected to be starters when the 2026 season opens. Edge Rashan Gary and safety Jalen Thompson are veterans who have produced in the NFL, and have done it consistently. We are including Gary among the free agency deals, even though technically he came through a trade.<\/p>\n
Gary is expected to provide solid edge play against the run while sprinkling in some decent pass rush. Thompson is a versatile safety who will play multiple roles in Christian Parker\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week we asked you to grade these acquisitions.<\/p>\n
For Gary, the overwhelming majority ended up giving the trade a \u2018B\u2019 grade. That tracks. Gary has always been consistent, but never really great. There is no doubt he will help the defense, but he\u2019s not going to elevate the defensive line play to new levels. He did get 29% at the \u2018C\u2019 level, which shows that some people wanted a little more than what they think Gary will provide.<\/p>\n
Jalen Thompson trade grade<\/p>\n
As for the Jalen Thompson deal, fans were much more enthusiastic. While the winning grade was still \u2018B\u2019 with 51%, the grade of \u2018A\u2019 was given by 36% of respondents. That\u2019s trending in the right direction. Thompson is seen as a key acquisition to make the backend of Parker\u2019s defense work correctly.<\/p>\n
In the end, both of those grades are probably fairly accurate. Agree or disagree? Let us know why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re now just about a week into free agency and the Dallas Cowboys have been pretty active. Granted,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2066],"tags":[230,229,257,5355,2461,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-812056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-cowboys","8":"tag-cowboys","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-cowboys","11":"tag-dallas-cowboys-free-agency","12":"tag-dallascowboys","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116228193231429189","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}