Cowboys Trade Deadline: Stephen Jones Says It Is Quiet in Dallas — 'We Haven't Gotten Calls. Right Now It's Pretty Quiet on Our Front'
With the deadline Tuesday at 3 p.m. Central, the Cowboys' EVP told 105.3 The Fan on Monday that nothing is heating up and no team has called about Dallas players — while the afternoon's deals (Godchaux to Jacksonville, Cisco to Detroit) happened somewhere else.
FRISCO — The phones, by the Cowboys' own account, are not ringing. Executive vice president Stephen Jones appeared on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas on Monday and poured the same cold water his father poured on Sunday: with the NFL trade deadline at 4 p.m. Eastern (3 p.m. Central) on Tuesday, Dallas does not sound like a team closing on anything. "If you're really getting close to something, especially something really major, it's (usually) heating up (right now)," Jones said, as posted by Jon Machota of The Athletic. "It's close to the deadline, it's time." Asked whether other teams have called about Cowboys players, Jones was blunter: "We haven't. We really haven't. It's been pretty quiet on our end. We're certainly making all the calls. We're touching base with all 31 other teams... Right now it's pretty quiet on our front."
That tracks Sunday's word from Jerry Jones, who told Kristy Scales on the pregame show that the week's injury wave — George Pickens, DeMarvion Overshown and Joey Porter Jr. — does not change his deadline thinking: "No... But for now, I don't see it." The owner's standing position is that last month's trade for Porter, the Pittsburgh cornerback acquired for a 2027 sixth-round pick and a 2028 second-rounder, should be viewed as this year's big deadline acquisition — the move he made at last year's deadline (Quinnen Williams) and the year before (Jonathan Mingo) having set the expectation that Dallas always does something. Jones has left his usual crack in the door — "It's important to think big, and this is over in that big thought area about what we can do to help our defense" — but a crack is all it is, 24 hours out.
The market around Dallas is not quiet, which is what makes the local silence the story. League trackers logged two more deals Monday afternoon — defensive tackle Davon Godchaux to Jacksonville for a conditional sixth-rounder at 2:55 p.m. Eastern, and Jets safety Andre Cisco to Detroit a minute later — on top of the morning's headline move, Jessie Bates III to the Jaguars, and a nine-deal in-season total tracked by ESPN. The rumor lists still carry Dallas names in both directions — Pickens, Ryan Flournoy and Otito Ogbonnia as conceivable departures; linebacker Jordyn Brooks and edge rushers Tuli Tuipulotu and Will McDonald IV as conceivable targets — but those are tracker speculation, and this desk reports them as exactly that: as of Stephen Jones's Monday appearance, there are no reported talks. The deadline is 3 p.m. Central Tuesday; the desk's tracker file follows it to the wire.
