BIG changes are coming for the Cowboys...

Big changes are coming for the Dallas Cowboys, as last week in Indianapolis, third-round draft pick Jayshon Barham played just three defensive snaps in the Cowboys' win against the Colts. Three days later, he was at practice, but he was lined up in a different place, the outside linebackers group. A rookie who has barely seen the field as of late is potentially getting a new job by this upcoming Sunday. The trade deadline passed, of course, a day earlier, and that morning, Jerry Jones said that he didn't look for a significant trade, and, well, it didn't happen. The best pass rusher on this team in sacks plays defensive tackle. Dallas is 4-5, and the 27-23 win over the Colts is one Jerry Jones calls bittersweet, and the defense continues to be problematic. So Dallas didn't buy a pass rusher, but it may be building one out of a rookie who has played in just three snaps in the most recent game. Now, is that a plan or is it a patch? Practice is where it first showed up. Barham has been an inside linebacker, and Tommy Yarish's note was that the media only got to see a portion of this session. Now, it's a narrow window, and he was with the outside linebackers for it. Two weeks ago, his job looked clear. Christian Parker said the staff rotates Barham with Demarvion Overshown and Samar James. And Parker called him a significant player in the run game. Then without Demarvion Overshown, he played in just three snaps in Indianapolis, which is a long way from significant. Now Dallas won the game, 27-23, but Indianapolis scored 16 points in the second half. Dak Prescott had a great game. He threw for 335 yards and two touchdowns. And Jerry Jones still said there has to be, you know, a lot of help to get the wins. He added that overall, we're not playing very good. And over the last four games, the defense has allowed 25 points a game. That is the backdrop when a rookie's practice group changes on a Wednesday. Now, as of right now, the depth chart that we have still has him as a weak side linebacker, with Rashan Gary listed right alongside him. And, of course, that second edge rushing spot technically empty because of the Cowboys running that outside linebacker formation. The positions on the charts now are already blurry, which is how a linebacker ends up in a pass rush group. And this isn't the first time this has been floated around. On October 15th, Clarence Hill Jr. reported that he worked with the edge rushers in pass rush drills. Dallas has been looking at this for almost a month, and the deadline took the other option away, and a guy who played edge in college seems like a perfect fit to take over now. Now, to see how thin this is, look at what the Cowboys' pass rush used to be. Since 1999, a Cowboy has hit 10 sacks in a season 17 times. DeMarcus Ware had 20 in 2008 and 19.5 in 2011. Micah Parsons had 13 in 2021, 13.5 in 2022, and 14 in 2023. Parsons, of course, is in Green Bay now, and the leader for Dallas this season has five sacks. And that leader is Quinnen Williams, who is a defensive tackle, and he also has 14 TFLs to go alongside him. Now, those 14 tackles for loss are the seventh best on the 39 Cowboys seasons with at least eight. The middle of the defensive line is fine. The edges are where it really thins out. Donovan Azaraku has two and a half sacks, and Rashan Gary has two. First-round pick Malachi Lawrence and Elijah Garcia, the first edge on the chart, each have one, and Lawrence is just now being placed on the IR last week. Gary does lead the team with nine quarterback hits, and Dallas got him from Green Bay this all-season for a 2027 fourth-round pick. Now, he is getting to the quarterback and not finishing, what tells you the rush needs another body, not a new scheme. And Jerry Jones saw this coming. On October 28th, he said adding an outside defender was unlikely, then said, if it's there, I'll do it. That was after Dallas fell to 3-4, and the rush struggled to win in Philadelphia. A week later, Arizona beat Dallas 33-30 at home, and Arizona is where the one name floated for Dallas players. That one name was of course Josh Sweat, who is 29 and signed for four years at $76.4 million. Now, he had two sacks and 12 pressures in seven games, and an NFC executive said a move made a lot of sense for him. No reports that Dallas actually called. It was just a name floated, and of course, nothing more. A trade would have also cost real picks. Dallas has no 2027 first or third round picks. The first went to the Jets in the Quinnen Williams trade, and the third went to Pittsburgh in the Broderick Jones trade. Dallas still holds its 2027 second and fourth round picks, so the picks were there for a smaller move. What was missing was the will to spend them, and Jerry said on November 3rd he wasn't interested in Dallas being a seller at the deadline. The same day, he said of Parker's defense that they are seeing good evidence it can work, and that it just hasn't been consistent. Dax said it plainly the day before the deadline. If you can always add, go do it. Brian Schottenheimer's answer after a pass was that it shows that they're confident in the roster they have. Now, when the quarterback asks for help, the owner says the defense hasn't been consistent, and a coach is saying the room is confident. That probably means the room has to find its own help. Dallas hasn't said bar him is the plan, and nobody has tied these together out loud. But with no trade, a thin pass rush, and a rookie with an outside linebacker experience, it all landed all in the same week, so it kind of puts you in one direction. Right now, the Cowboys are facing a tough task this Sunday as they'll take on the San Francisco 49ers this week. And right now, the Cowboys are at 34% to beat the 49ers on Sunday. Kalshi is today's sponsor on Kalshi, trading directly against other users, not the house like a traditional sportsbook. You're buying yes or no contracts on the outcome of events across sports, politics, or even the weather. For example, I'm trading on Javante Williams to score a touchdown against the Niners on Sunday, and an $80 trade pays out $121.92. If you're interested in trying out Kalshi, we'll use the link in the description or in the pinned comment. And when new users sign up with the code DIGESTNFL and trade $25, you're going to get an extra $55 instantly. Thank you to Kalshi for sponsoring today's show. So who is the answer to that? Well, here is what he did the last time he played edge in college. In 2025 at Michigan, he started 11 of 12 games and seven of those starts came at the edge. It was his first season on the edge after three years playing inside. The same player went from four tackles for loss inside in 2024 to 10 on the edge in 2025. The sacks jumped, too. It went from one to four, which is four times, of course, as many in one move. His total tackles went the other way, though, from 66 in 2024 to 32 in 2025. But that is what moving to edge does. Fewer plays in space and more in the backfield. Across four college seasons, he had 12 sacks, 23 and a half tackles for loss, and eight of those sacks came in just two seasons. Now, those were in 2022 at Maryland and 2025 on the edge with four each. Dallas took him in round three with the 92nd pick this year, a pick they got from San Francisco in the Osa-Diggs trade. San Francisco, well, guess what? That's the team they face on Sunday. Through week seven, he had 34 tackles and one forced fumble in the NFL with no sacks. Not everyone bought the edge rush version of him. The Ringer called him a tweener type player who lacks the prototypical size to play the edge. Other scouting reports said his pass rush plan was underdeveloped and that he wins on traits. Now, Dallas has listed him as a big guy, 240 pounds, and said in July he would start at linebacker. Now, the July note called him a linebacker with some pass rush versatility, which is still what the depth chart says. Now, he cost Dallas a cap hit of $1.24 million a season, which makes him the cheapest fix Dallas could have tried. The schedule will not wait for Barham to learn the new position. After San Francisco on November 15th, they play Tennessee on November 22nd. Then four days later, they'll play against Philadelphia on Thanksgiving. Philadelphia is the team Dallas beat 38-21 on October 27th in the game where the pass rush was reportedly to have struggled. Then Dallas travels to Seattle on December 8th and Los Angeles on December 20th. Very big games there. That is five games between November 15th and December 20th, and every one of them asks the same question of the pass rush. A rookie who is only learning a spot at practice has about one week of work before the Thanksgiving game. At 4-5, Dallas cannot give games away while it figures this out. Now that is why a practice report matters more than a three-snap game. It's the first sign of what they plan to do in those five. If the move is real, you should see Barham's name at the new spot on the depth chart before you see it in a box score. Which makes Sunday against the 49ers the first real look, and Couchy has San Francisco at 66%. If Barham is on the field for three snaps again, the rush Dallas has is the rush Dallas will end up keeping. If he plays 20, then they may have changed the defense a little bit. Let's look at where he lines up because the linebacker standing up wide of the tackles, well, that's going to be an edge rusher. But Gary and Azuraku are the players that move because a new edge body pushes them to the spots that the depth charts already list them at. Now, here's the case for him and the case against one to breach. Now, the big thing is that he's a bet, not a fix. Dallas didn't trade for a rusher, so the roster has to find one. Four sacks and 10 tackles for loss in his one-edge year seems like a pretty good fit. But let me know in the comments section, yes or no. Does Jay Sean Barham play 10 or more defensive snaps against the 49ers on Sunday? I think that three snaps in Indianapolis at 240 pounds and the tweener label is interesting. But of course, we'll have to see what happens on Sunday and if those 10 snaps come to fruition. Now, if you want the rest of the Cowboys week and all the updates throughout it, right here on the channel, you can come down and hit that subscribe button and watch the next video here on your screen. We appreciate you watching. Peace out.