The Cowboys' 53 Is Set. The Waiver Wire Could Still Rewrite It.

Dallas got to 53 the way it usually does — right up against the deadline, with the coaching staff insisting every cut was harder than the last one. By 6 p.m. ET Sunday, the Cowboys had trimmed 39 players off their offseason roster, releasing seven vested veterans outright and waiving 28 more, to land on the group that opens the 2026 season. That group is done being 90 players. It is not done changing.

A Backfield Question Finally Has an Answer

The RB2 competition that ran all camp — Malik Davis, Jaydon Blue, and Phil Mafah fighting for one spot behind Javonte Williams — is over, and Davis won it. It's the outcome camp pointed toward for weeks: a proven, low-mistake veteran coming off a career year beat out a boom-or-bust rookie flash and an oft-injured second-year back whose case always came with a health caveat attached. Hunter Luepke sticks around too, giving Dallas a fullback-hybrid alongside Williams and Davis rather than a fourth pure runner. Blue and Mafah, for their part, aren't necessarily gone — just not on the initial 53.

Three Quarterbacks, One Unanswered Question

Dak Prescott is QB1, obviously. What's less obvious is why Dallas kept both Joe Milton and Sam Howell instead of picking one backup, an unusual roster construction by modern standards. The honest answer is that the coaching staff never fully separated them in camp — both showed enough in the preseason to make cutting either one feel premature. Carrying three quarterbacks isn't really a decision so much as a deferral: Dallas didn't choose a No. 2, it chose to let the job keep sorting itself out into the season rather than force an answer in August.

The Cuts That Actually Sting

Most of the 39 moves were routine. A few weren't. Sam Williams — a four-year veteran with 85 tackles and 9.5 career sacks — was released outright, a jarring one given his production, but explainable against a loaded edge room that already includes Rashan Gary, Donovan Ezeiruaku, Von Miller, and four others. Marquez Valdes-Scantling, a two-time Super Bowl champion in his eighth season, was let go too, a sign Dallas trusted its younger receiver room — CeeDee Lamb, George Pickens, Ryan Flournoy, KaVontae Turpin, Jonathan Mingo, Camden Brown — over adding another veteran body. The real gut-punch belonged to center Nick Leverett, who by most outside projections had done enough to make the team and didn't. That's the nature of final cuts: somebody who looked safe in every preseason preview ends up on the wrong side of the number anyway.

Two Roster Spots Dallas Effectively Banked

Not everyone who's off the active 53 is actually gone. Linebacker Marist Liufau fractured his forearm in Friday's preseason finale against New Orleans and is expected to have surgery and land on injured reserve with a designation to return — head coach Brian Schottenheimer said he'll miss "some weeks," not the season. Cornerback Devin Moore, dealing with a hip injury, heads to IR as well, an easier call given a five-deep corner room already anchored by DaRon Bland and Cobie Durant. Both are roster spots Dallas can activate later rather than ones it lost for good, which matters for everything that comes next.

Where Dallas Sits on the Waiver Wire

Here's the part that actually determines how the roster looks in two weeks. The 28 players Dallas waived didn't become free agents the moment they were cut — they went through a waiver period that closed at 1 p.m. ET today, Monday, August 31. Claim priority in that window is set by the 2026 draft order (effectively last year's final standings), not by anything that's happened since, and it puts the Cowboys 12th among the 32 teams. That order only matters when multiple teams claim the same player; otherwise it's just a formality on the way to the open market. It also holds for the season's first three weeks before flipping to reverse current standings. The seven vested veterans Dallas released outright — Williams, Valdes-Scantling, Leverett, Derion Kendrick, Denzel Mims, Tyler Johnson, and Curtis Robinson — skipped waivers entirely. They were free agents the instant they were cut, meaning they could already be fielding calls from other teams, or from Dallas itself, right now.

What Actually Changes From Here

This is where the 53 stops being a finished product and starts being a starting point. Practice squad construction begins in earnest this week, and given how tight the backfield battle was, both Blue and Mafah look like obvious recall candidates if Dallas wants to keep that competition alive off the active roster. Liufau's and Moore's injured reserve stints mean two roster spots are already earmarked to reopen once they're healthy, which typically means a street free agent or waiver claim fills the gap in the meantime. And every team, Dallas included, spends the next two weeks picking through the other 31 rosters for anyone who got squeezed out somewhere else — a tight end who slipped through a deeper room, a corner cut by a team that just doesn't have the space, an offensive lineman good enough to start elsewhere but buried behind a nine-deep group like Dallas already has up front. Tight end is the position that looks thinnest on paper right now, with only three on the roster and rookie D.J. Rogers already down with an injury of his own — if Dallas makes one move off the wire in the next two weeks, that's the room to watch.

None of this means Dallas got the roster wrong on Sunday. It means Sunday was never going to be the final word. The 53 that takes the field in Week 1 almost never matches the 53 that was announced on cutdown day — some years by one or two players, some years by a lot more — and this year's mix of a deferred quarterback decision, two banked IR spots, and a thin tight end room all but guarantees Dallas will still be working the phones deep into September.

The Roundtable: Our Writers on What Happens Next

A roster this unsettled deserves more than one opinion, so we put the same question to Theo Marsh, Jesse Worrell, and Marty Gaines: how does this 53 actually look by the time Dallas kicks off the regular season?

Theo Marsh: “I covered the RB2 competition all camp, and I don't think Dallas is done with it just because Sunday came and went. Malik Davis earned the spot — that part's not in question — but Phil Mafah's whole problem has been health, not talent, and Jaydon Blue's tape against Arizona was too good to just disappear. I'd bet on at least one of them getting a practice squad call in the first two weeks, and if there's a soft-tissue injury anywhere on this roster in September, I'd bet on Blue getting activated before anyone outside the building. Tight end worries me more, honestly. Three healthy bodies with D.J. Rogers banged up isn't a real NFL room, and I don't think Dallas is comfortable staying there into Week 1.”

Jesse Worrell: “What stands out to me is what the vested-veteran cuts say about how this front office is thinking. Letting go of Sam Williams and Marquez Valdes-Scantling — two players with real production and championship pedigree — isn't a cap move, it's a philosophy. They're betting younger across the board and daring the roster to prove it out in real games instead of practice. I don't love it reflexively, because there's a reason veterans like that stick around the league, but I understand it. My prediction is Dallas doesn't chase a name off the wire the way people expect. If they add anything in the next couple weeks, it's a low-profile offensive lineman for depth behind that group of nine, not a splash. Nick Leverett getting cut after a strong camp is the one that'll bother me longest — that's the corner clanging into the crossbar on your way to first place.”

Marty Gaines: “I'll be the contrarian here — I think the three-quarterback thing is the story everyone's underrating. Keeping Joe Milton and Sam Howell instead of picking one isn't patience, it's Dallas admitting the backup job isn't settled, and that's a problem you usually want solved before Week 1, not during it. Give me a definitive answer over two guys competing into the regular season any day. As for the wire, I think Dallas makes a move that raises eyebrows. This front office has shown it's not afraid to add a name — look at the Von Miller signing this summer — and I don't think ‘stand pat’ is really in their DNA right now. I'll go on record: somebody gets a call from Dallas in the next ten days that nobody's expecting, and it won't be at tight end. Write that down.”

Three writers, three different roads to the same conclusion: whatever the 53 looks like on Sunday, don't expect it to hold still for long.