After largely avoiding big-named free agents in 2024, opting to instead upgrade the roster on the margins in the lead-up to one of their worst seasons in recent memory, the Dallas Cowboys have some tough decisions to make heading into 2025.
Will they extend some of their homegrown stars? Will they look for veteran help from outside the team? Or will they go silent once more, hoping to build in the draft instead?
Well, while only time will tell, one player new head coach Brian Schottenheimer would like to bring back is Osa Odighizuwa, the former UCLA defensive tackle who just finished his fourth season in Dallas.
“Obviously Osa has done a terrific job for us,” Schottenheimer said via Pro Football Talk. “He’s a terrific young player. He does everything right and as those communications keep going, it’s never done until it’s done. But he’d be a guy we’d love to have back.”
“We’re always going to start with our guys, We know them, right? We’ve got history with them. We’ve developed those guys. We understand their strengths, their weaknesses, what they bring to the table from a culture standpoint,” Schottenheimer said. “It all depends on how things go. It’s a very competitive business. It’s a very competitive time of year. There’s incredible dialogue going on all day every day here in Indianapolis. I’ve learned that. And so I think that’s the exciting part about this time of year is you really are competing with these other teams that want to come in and acquire your players, and we’re going to make it very tough to let those guys leave.”
Would the Cowboys love to bring back Odighizuwa and build an even stronger presence on the interior for new defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus? Sure, but want and will are two very different things, especially when the UCLA defensive tackle is about to get paid in free agency by one team or another.
PFF expects Cowboys DT Osa Odighizuwa to get paid
On their free agency rankings, Pro Football Focus currently has Odighizuwa as their 15th-ranked player set to hit the open market this year. While PFF admits that he hasn’t quite become a reliable sacker, his upside should still garner a contract worth as much as $85 million with $50 guaranteed.
Odighizuwa is another interior pass-rusher with very strong underlying metrics that haven’t quite translated to major sack production through nearly four seasons. While the Dallas Cowboys’season fell off the rails as injuries piled up, Odighizuwa stayed the course and played some of the best ball of his career over the second half of the campaign. The 2021 third-round pick is quietly one of the more underrated defenders across the NFL.
Is $85 million a ton of money to spend on a player who has never recorded five sacks in a season, let alone ten? Oh yeah, in a major way, but if the Cowboys want to keep him around, they might just have to offer up a deal worth over $20 million a year, as that appears to be the going rate for interior pass rushers in 2025.
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