Jerry, Stephen Jones address Cowboys’ looming 53-man roster cut

In one week’s time, the Dallas Cowboys will have to narrow down the player roster from 90 to just 53 men for the 2023 season. Even as they make cuts and reduce the roster to the 53-man roster, the personnel office will continue to evaluate the talent inside – and outside – the building until Week 1 games kick off.

The NFL changed the deadlines for this season, eliminating the additional cut dates leading up to the reduction to 53 players. With all the decisions coming at one time this year, executive vice president of player personnel Stephen Jones told reporters that it could be the most difficult preseason cut process in recent memory.

“It feels that way right now,” Jones said, via DallasCowboys.com. “Maybe as hard as we’ve ever had, so it’ll be interesting to see how this works out. We still got three weeks of preseason football left to play.”

Jerry Jones’ biggest fear from the Aug. 29 deadline is cutting a player that they’ll regret later on.

“The tough cuts to me are if you might be looking at somebody a year or three years from now you shouldn’t have cut,” the elder Jones said. “Cutting somebody you shouldn’t have cut. You gotta watch it.”

Unlike some teams, Dallas hasn’t made many roster moves since cutting kicker Tristan Vizcaino on Aug. 7. Despite the lull, Stephen Jones expects movement up until the first game and through the trade deadline in October. On Aug. 30, the Cowboys can establish a practice roster with 16 players.

“We’re not done yet,” Jones said. “We acquire football players throughout the year. These guys that are on this roster are not only competing against one another, but they’re competing against other players around the league.”

NFL approves emergency third quarterback for 2023

The NFL owners approved a rule change that will make Cowboys quarterback Will Grier a legitimate asset on gameday, should the need arise. The third-stringer told reporters that he “loves” the move, unsurprisingly.

“I mean, I love it,” Grier said. “I think it’s smart. Quarterback is a different position. A guy can’t just jump in and play quarterback. In this league, I think you need three guys that can play.

“I think the rule is smart and everybody agrees after what we saw last year that you need that. Whether that guy is on the practice squad or on the roster with this rule enacted, that guy has to be ready to play.”

The NFL owners approved a rule change at spring meetings that allows teams an emergency third quarterback that they can activate from the inactive list during the game if the two available quarterbacks are injured or ejected.

As a part of the rule change, if either of the first two quarterbacks is cleared to return to action by the medical team, the emergency third quarterback must leave the game.

Another stipulation to the rule is that if a team has three active quarterbacks at the start of the game, it wouldn’t be able to activate an emergency third quarterback.

The designation of who is the emergency quarterback must be made when the team decides their active and inactive lists 90 minutes before kickoff.

On3’s Peter Warren contributed to this report.