If you did not know better, you might well think that the strategy heading into the 2025 NFL season for the Dallas Cowboys was to offend and alienate every one of the team’s best and highest paid players. Owner Jerry Jones managed to do that before training camp started by not only failing to sign Micah Parsons to a new contract, but also by throwing quarterback Dak Prescott under the bus with his comments on Prescott missing half of last season with a hamstring injury.
He also has gone after cornerback Trevon Diggs, and while that conflict has been less publicized, it is not much less important. Diggs has struggled with injuries but remains a well-liked figure in the team’s locker room. Yet, Jones chose to exercise a clause in Diggs’ contract that allowed the team to dock him $500,000 off his salary because Diggs chose to rehab his knee injury at home rather than in Dallas.
Diggs, who first tore his ACL in 2023, is required to do a bit more than 84% of his offseason program at The Star. Still, the team has the flexibility to allow veterans to rehab on their own, but the Cowboys chose not to.
“He didn’t earn it, he didn’t come,” Jones said. “That’s in his contract that he doesn’t get that unless he’s going to be here. … Those are contractual things as Stephen (Jones) said. It would be very detrimental to the team not to abide by the agreement.”
Trevon Diggs: Jones ‘Hurt My Feelings’
Diggs was gracious when asked about the approach the Cowboys took, and despite Jones’s insistence that he should have known the hit was coming, he said it was unexpected and that the decision, “hurt my feelings.”
Diggs explained his decision to stay in Miami for treatment: “They do a great job here. I just felt like it was in my best interest to go somewhere to get the full, undivided attention I needed — massages and the whole nine yards — to better and further my career, to make sure I’m good, ahead of schedule and that I can perform well. Like [when I tore] my ACL, I came back a whole two months earlier because of the work I put in during the offseason, off the field.
“My work is gonna show. What I put into it is gonna show on the field.”
Cowboys Question Leadership
What is especially interesting, though, is the footing that the Cowboys are starting off with heading into training camp. There has been a bubbling battle of words (not quite yet a war, but getting there) between Jones and Parsons, and now there’s the Diggs situation, too.
Parsons defended Diggs, saying, “At the end of the day, this is his business: his body. His body is his equity. At the end of the day, if he’s not available, what are they gonna do? Get rid of him. So he’s gotta keep his body up to par.”
Jones had also questioned Diggs’ leadership.
“We expect a player paid like Trevon to be here all the time. We expect him to be leading,” he said. “That’s not new. … It’s important. It’s important to have the right body language in every respect when you are one of those rare, rare financially paid and gifted players. You’ve got to have some leadership about you.”
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