Blog

Demarcus Lawrence. He left for the Seattle Seahawks and is celebrating a Super Bowl triumph.

Micah Parsons was traded away. He’s with the Green Bay Packers, unfortunately recovering from a serious knee injury.

Interior pass rusher Osa Odighizuwa was traded, too. He’s with the San Francisco 49ers. And Jadeveon Clowney remains a free agent.

As the Cowboys enter the 2026 season aiming to turn around a sputtering defense, they will tackle that effort sans a bona fide standout pass rusher, for all intents and purposes. That’s OK by head coach Brian Schottenheimer.

“Some of the best pass-rushing teams I know we’ve faced don’t have necessarily one guy,” Schottenheimer said recently, via ESPN. “It’s easier to shut one guy down. One elite guy, you can pay a lot of attention to.”

Clowney led the Cowboys with 8.5 sacks last season, one in which Dallas tied for 24th with just 35 team sacks.

Over the previous four seasons, Parsons produced at least 12 sacks per season and led the Cowboys in sacks in each campaign. In 2020, Lawrence was the team’s sack leader.

In 2026, a cast likely to be led by edges Rashan Gary, Donovan Ezeiruaku, rookie first-rounder Malachi Lawrence, James Houston and Sam Williams is aiming to improve upon those numbers while employing an it-takes-a-village approach.

“I really do think it’s more of the unit,” Schottenheimer said. “And that’s what we’re excited about with the depth that we feel that we have.”

On paper, Gary would be the hopeful leader. He was a 2024 Pro Bowler with the Green Bay Packers and is a 2019 first-round pick acquired via trade this offseason. However, he’s never reached double-digit sacks in a season, and his individual performance last year with the Packers was oddly emblematic of the Cowboys’ team performance.

Gary had 7.5 sacks in 2025, but none after Week 8. That, obviously, includes the final three games of the season, which were after Parsons’ injury. Thus, he struggled aplenty sans Parsons, just like Dallas did.

Malachi Lawrence was a surprising selection at No. 23 overall. Houston, who had eight sacks as a rookie with the Detroit Lions in 2022, hasn’t had that many total in his three seasons since, though he did provide 5.5 last year for the ‘Boys. Williams had just one sack last season in 17 games after missing all of 2024 with an injury. And Ezeiruaku, a 2025 second-rounder, mustered only a pair of sacks in 17 games’ worth of action as a rookie.

The potential is plentiful, but production is lacking and a star is absent.

With Christian Parker joining the fray as defensive coordinator, though, pass rush by committee is offered up with a proven track record. Over the past two seasons, Parker was a defensive assistant for the archrival Philadelphia Eagles, who won back-to-back NFC East titles and Super Bowl LIX in that span. Philly achieved that success by, in part, using a defense in which pass rushers came from all over. Neither of the last two Eagles squads had a pass rusher with more than eight sacks, but pressure was had and so too were wins.

The end result for Dallas in 2026 was a 7-9-1 record with much of the blame laid upon the feet of a defense that was 31st in points allowed.

Remedying those lackluster numbers will be a team effort, including from the pass rush.

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, who has not played since Week 7 of the 2024 season and is on the team’s reserve/left squad list, spoke for the first time since he was placed on the list Dec. 13.

Aiyuk posted a video message roughly 90 seconds long Sunday morning on Instagram, captioned, “IF YOU SCARED JUST SAY DAT [sic]!!”

The 49ers have been opening to trading Aiyuk, but 49ers general manager John Lynch said in April following the 2026 NFL Draft that that the team had no plans to release him “anytime soon.” According to Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan in January, Aiyuk’s relationship with the club broke down after the receiver stopped coming to the team facility and disengaged in communicating with them.

Aiyuk did not provide any details on what’s caused the disharmony, but left a lengthy message in which he didn’t shy away from disparaging the team.

In his full video statement, Aiyuk, 28, said:

“We dealing with, ya know like them kids when they don’t get picked for the basketball game at the court, but they the ones that brought the ball, so they like, ‘Alright, you all don’t want to pick me, I’m taking my ball, I’m going home.’ Ass boys. Little-ass boys.

“Or like when your kid, he got this one toy, but he don’t really know how to use it correctly, so somebody else about to pick it up and play with it. And they like, ‘Oh yeah, this s— litty.’ And they like, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, that’s my toy. Ass boy. Little-ass boy.

“Man, stop running from the bill. The bill coming. You scared. They scared. Truth is, they scared. They know how I get. They gonna say, ‘Oh yeah, BA, BA, BA did this, BA did that. BA did, you know that s—, allegedly. Allegedly. But what they not gonna say is, ‘BA suck at football,’ cause they know how I get. And they running from that bill that’s on the way.

“It’s inevitable. It’s coming. Stop running. Stop being a female dog. Stop being a little cat. Stop running from the bill.”

Aiyuk’s message comes days after an arrest warrant was issued for him by the Santa Clara County (California) District Attorney’s Office for a misdemeanor traffic violation. The warrant, issued for exhibition of speed, stems from another video Aiyuk posted in December when a clip showed him driving and reaching speeds of more than 100 mph on Santa Clara roads, including near the 49ers’ homefield, Levi’s Stadium.

Aiyuk apologized after he posted that December video, writing, “My car content won’t come with speeding anymore!”

The court lists the status of the traffic violation case, which was filed on Jan. 30, 2026, as open.

The 49ers selected Aiyuk 25th overall in the 2020 NFL Draft. In parts of five seasons from 2020-2024, Aiyuk played 69 games, recording 294 catches for 4,305 yards and 25 touchdown receptions.

In 2024, Aiyuk requested a trade and was a hold-in during training camp before he signed a four-year, $120 million extension. Aiyuk tore his ACL during the ensuing season and in the 2025 offseason it was reported the 49ers were open to trading him. Shanahan expressed optimism that Aiyuk could return to the playing field for the team around Week 6 of the ’25 season, but that never materialized. In December, the team placed him on the reserve/left squad list and roughly a month later, Lynch conveyed it was “safe to say” Aiyuk would not play for the 49ers again.

San Francisco voided the guaranteed money owed to Aiyuk in 2026 but would have incurred $29.6 million in dead money for the upcoming season by trading him before June 1. In a post-June 1 trade, the 49ers would only take on $8.3 million of dead money, but finding a suitor has not happened so far. Cutting Aiyuk, per Over the Cap, would save the team $6.3 million on the salary cap and bring about a $7.36 million dead money hit.

The 49ers were scheduled to start mandatory minicamp on Tuesday, but Shanahan canceled the situation after the team had perfect attendance at organized team activities last week.

As a former walk-on at UCLA, Greg Dulcich knows about biding his time, making the most of his chances when he gets them and believing in himself regardless of the situation.

His time at UCLA equated to a third-round selection with the Denver Broncos in 2022, but the going’s hardly been easy since Dulcich joined the NFL ranks.

Perhaps a similar road is winding in front of him, as he’s dealt with injuries, an array of uniforms and might well have found himself finally able to fulfill his potential as a top target tight end.

“You got to know the player that you are,” Dulcich said, via team transcript, this past week, comparing his time as a walk-on with the Bruins particularly to his time spent last year as a member of the Dolphins practice squad. “You got to keep that confidence, and when you get your opportunities, you just got to take them. So been very fortunate and certainly grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had.”

Over his last two seasons at UCLA from 2020-2021, Dulcich racked up 68 receptions for 1,242 yards, 10 touchdowns and averaged 18.3 yards per catch. The latter statistic is no doubt the one that jumps out most. The long-locked Southern California native’s big-play potential is among the best in the NFL at the tight end position.

The looming question is can he fulfill that potential on a consistent basis if he gets the playing time and targets.

Over his first two seasons with Denver, Dulcich played in a combined 12 games. He made his way to the New York Giants in during the 2024 season, but played in just nine total games for the Broncos and Big Blue in that campaign.

Eventually heading south to Miami in 2025, Dulcich didn’t play his first game of the season until Week 8 and didn’t see a target until the following week. Over the final nine games of the season, Dulcich tallied 26 catches for 335 yards and a score while averaging 12.9 yards per catch. His sustained production down the stretch resulted in him getting re-signed to a rebuilding Dolphins squad under a new regime.

One of the leaders of the new regime, general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan, is on the record that he views Dulcich as a breakout candidate.

Though Dulcich’s time last year was spent catching balls from Tua Tagovailoa and Quinn Ewers, it’s his quick chemistry with Malik Willis that’s carried the offseason buzz through organized team activities.

The two are 2020 draftmates, with Dulcich taken 80^th overall and Willis falling to the Tennessee Titans six picks later in the third round. Previoulsy, had shared the same field at the Senior Bowl, Dulcich easily growing to appreciate the strong arm flexed by his quarterback.

“We played at the Senior Bowl together. We had that little connection which was cool, and when you got a great quarterback like Malik, he does a good job of learning everyone’s tendencies really quickly,” Dulcich said. “He knows how you’re going to run a route just because he’s got great football IQ and he’s a great player.”

It’s not arduous to draw parallels between Willis, 27, and Dulcich, 26.

Taken within six picks of each other in the third round of the 2022 draft, Liberty product Willis and UCLA alum Dulcich are each on their third NFL teams, both having showcased enough impressive play in limited opportunities last season to garner larger opportunities with the Dolphins in 2026.

“He could always rip it, so that’s similar,” Dulcich said of how Willis at the Senior Bowl compares to Willis in Miami. “Yeah, that’s the same sort of stuff, and he’s always had that confidence and swagger so yeah, it’s cool.”

In two seasons under Matt LaFleur with the Green Bay Packers, Willis resurrected his career when called on to fill in for Jordan Love.

He signed a three-year, $67.5 million deal to join the Dolphins and captain them through the rough waters ahead, a product of taking on a tidal wave of dead money after releasing Tagovailoa.

Second – or third chances – aren’t foreign for this Dolphins roster, which is facing low expectations from outside the building for the season ahead. That’s fine by Dulcich, the former walk-on looking to walk tall and make the most of his and Willis’ opportunity.

“We got some pieces, man,” Dulcich said. “I’m excited about it. We got guys that can go. I alluded to it earlier, everyone’s hungry and just excited to go out there and fly around and make plays.”

Miami kicks off the 2026 season Sept. 13 at the Las Vegas Raiders.