With George Pickens' contract expiration looming, Cowboys' defensive coordinator interviews offered surprising data point

MOBILE, Ala. — As the Dallas Cowboys scoured defensive coaches to replace coordinator Matt Eberflus, they expected to glean a plan for defensive improvement from candidates.

The Cowboys knew they wanted to employ more five-man fronts next season to capitalize on their trio of talented defensive tackles.

They knew they wanted to shore up their coverage in the secondary, tamping down on the explosive plays they allowed in 2025.

What the Cowboys anticipated less, but nonetheless learned more about while interviewing defensive coordinators: the value of receiver George Pickens.

“Talking to these defensive guys we brought in, we were a pain for them,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones told Yahoo Sports from Senior Bowl practices. “They start talking about, ‘Oh my gosh, when we had to play you guys, that was a problem.’ They have to decide, ‘Hey, put your best cornerback on one and double the other,’ or do a lot of moving parts how they did it …

“[Candidates] said: ‘Your offense caused a lot of problems.’”

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The Cowboys dealt the Pittsburgh Steelers a 2026 third-round draft pick (and swapped a 2027 fifth for sixth) to acquire Pickens in May despite already having a No. 1 receiver in four-time Pro Bowler CeeDee Lamb. In the season that followed, Lamb still had 1,077 receiving yards and three touchdowns in 14 games. But Pickens posted a career-best 1,429 receiving yards and nine touchdowns in 17 contests.

With that duo, quarterback Dak Prescott led the league with 404 pass completions, ranking second with 600 attempts and third with 4,552 passing yards. The Cowboys ranked second in overall offensive production and seventh in scoring.

The Cowboys knew when they traded for Pickens that just one year remained on the contract of the talented but mercurial player. A trial season, to determine whether Pickens thrived in head coach Brian Schottenheimer’s offense and to determine whether he would stay out of trouble, ensued. Pickens was benched to start the Las Vegas Raiders game after he missed curfew on the road trip following a series of late arrivals to meetings.

He returned to play 45 of 67 offensive snaps and caught nine of 11 targets for 144 yards and a touchdown.

The Cowboys must decide now how much they value Pickens and how to act on that value. If Dallas wants to retain Pickens in 2026 but doesn’t yet feel confident enough to offer a long-term deal, the club could place the franchise tag on him. A franchise tag could also buy time from March to July to negotiate a multiyear deal.

Executives and talent evaluators from several teams at Senior Bowl practices this week told Yahoo Sports they would keep Pickens if they were the Cowboys, though they disagreed on how they would approach that continued union. Some preferred a multiyear deal to a franchise tag projected to cost $28 million, per Over The Cap, all of which would hit the cap in 2026. Others preferred to see Pickens’ off-field behavior another season before a long-term commitment, one NFC executive saying the “cost of certainty” on the difference in average annual value would be worth it. Another NFC executive wondered if Pickens’ cost would make Lamb a trade candidate in 2026 or 2027, the executive projecting Pickens to command a price range similar to Lamb’s $34 million per year average annual value.

Jones wasn’t looking to negotiate publicly, but he did voice confidence they would keep Pickens past the looming expiration of his current contract.

“That’s just something we’ll have to work through,” Jones told Yahoo Sports from Senior Bowl practice. “Obviously, we think George is going to be back and we can effectuate that. But at the same time, we want to be open-minded to anything.”

George Pickens is looking at a hefty raise after one season with the Cowboys. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images)

(Cooper Neill via Getty Images)

Why Cowboys believe Christian Parker can save their defense

Fronting the third-worst defense in yards allowed, the Cowboys finished 7-9-1 in Schottenheimer’s first season as head coach. Dallas hopes and anticipates hiring 34-year-old Eagles defensive backs coach and pass game coordinator Christian Parker to coordinate their defense will change that.

In 13 seasons coaching, including seven in the NFL, Parker has learned defense from some of the league’s best coordinators in Vic Fangio and Vance Joseph. Parker communicated in interviews a philosophy reflecting each of their influences but also some of his own twists, Jones said. The Cowboys valued Parker’s vision for individual players like edge rusher DeMarvion Overshown, cornerback Shavon Revel Jr. and cornerback DaRon Bland as well as his plans to employ five-man fronts.

“The bigger thing, which is we started to do some but we didn’t get to do it much in camp so it was kind of on the fly, but a lot of five-man fronts,” Jones said. “When we ran those five-man fronts, [it] creates a lot of one-on-ones for our better players going the three big guys plus [Donovan] Ezeiruaku and whether it’s a [Jadeveon Clowney] or someone like that.

“The things you can do with the exotic pressures … we obviously have a lot of interest in. We felt like we could have done a better job last year of getting more pressure and then obviously we need to cover better.”

Trading three-time All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers one week before kickoff challenged the Cowboys’ defense this season. A slow acclimation to Eberflus’ principles, including his zone coverage assignments, further left Dallas defenders often misaligned. Some improvement followed the trade-deadline acquisition of defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, bolstering an interior defensive front that already featured Osa Odighizuwa and Kenny Clark. But the growth wasn’t linear.

The Cowboys own two first-round picks, 12th and 20th overall, in April. Edge rusher and cornerback are their top needs and targets, though they don’t believe in passing up a far more talented player for a position of need as they showed when selecting Lamb in 2020.

With Parker in house, the Cowboys are optimistic about their ability to develop players. The Philadelphia Eagles selected cornerback Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean in 2024, needing quick acclimation from each after salary-cap resources tilted heavily toward offense.

Parker didn’t just help the young defensive backs improve their technique in areas they’d already worked in college, former colleagues say. He helped DeJean master the spatial awareness and route feel to become a first-team All-Pro slot cornerback in his second year despite playing outside cornerback in college. And Parker helped Mitchell pick up the nuances of press coverage, improving his footwork, transition skills and physicality at the point of attack.

Colleagues from past stops rave about Parker’s schematic and emotional intelligence.

“He’s a genius,” one former colleague told Yahoo Sports. “Talking about somebody who has a true understanding of the game, big picture conceptually, he understands the whys behind things and he is able to teach them. It’s extremely relatable. And he’s able to teach those whys.

“He has principles that he stands on, but he’s also reasonable. So let’s say they get a veteran player who’s used to being taught one thing one way. He’s not so stubborn that he’s going to be like, ‘No, you have to do it.’

“If it’s reasonable to him, he’ll be amicable.”

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