Building a Roster: Projecting the Dallas Cowboys final-53 man roster

Dallas Cowboys: Cornerback (5)

Trevon Diggs, Anthony Brown, Daryl Worley, Jourdan Lewis, Reggie Robinson

Cornerback is a mystery right now. The Dallas Cowboys are making over the unit and brought in a lot of new blood here in 2020. Trevon Diggs wins the honor of being CB1 with Anthony Brown playing slot and Daryl Worley winning the CB2 spot over Jourdan Lewis who remains the odd man out another season.

Reggie Robinson is a special teams ace and developmental prospect at CB. The hope is he can develop into a starting CB next season.

Dallas Cowboys: Safety (5)

Xavier Woods, Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, Chidobe Awuzie, Donovan Wilson, Darian Thompson

The reason the Dallas Cowboys can go just five-deep at CB is because they have versatile safeties who can man up and essentially play cornerback themselves.

As explained many times before, there’s a lot of overlap between box safety and a slot cornerback and on any given down a safety can play a CB role inside and vice versa. Xavier Woods’ rookie season is a good example of that as he was listed as safety but took more gradable snaps as a cornerback. Chidobe Awuzie looks to do that same thing in 2020.

If Chido really does move inside to play that box DB role, then Ha Ha Clinton-Dix can focus on his strength as a deep safety in 2-deep looks. Ha Ha isn’t a great open field tackler and is best used in deep zone coverage. Donovan Wilson is a favorite of many and should get a chance to see the field more in Year 2. Darian Thompson is a guy the last coaching staff trusted and provides a little stability and depth to this unit as well as special teams.

Conclusions

As you can see, the defense took the majority of the roster spots and that’s for a few reasons:

1. The defense has far more unknowns than the offense.
2. The defense is churning their roster and needs to prep for major turnover in 2021.
3. Special Teams wants defensive players more than offensive players.
4. Defense naturally cycles players in and out while offense rarely works in rotations.

This will be interesting to monitor as training camp nears and more is revealed regarding scheme and personnel.

Don’t expect major surprises from the Dallas Cowboys roster decisions this year. History tells a lot about what to expect and for a team with Super Bowl aspirations, gambles will be minimized.