The Cowboys have spent this week picking through the wreckage of a bad loss to the Arizona Cardinals, and the fallout has touched just about everything in Dallas. Ownership, Brian Schottenheimer’s job, the roster, the trade market - nothing has escaped the spotlight.
Amid all that mess, Shemar James has quietly become one of the few encouraging stories.
Dallas spent the offseason looking for help at linebacker, and James has forced his way back into the conversation in Dee Winters’ absence. That matters even more now because Winters has struggled badly enough to make the Cowboys’ decision look shaky in hindsight. What was supposed to be a fix has turned into another question.
James has taken the chance and run with it over the last three games, piling up 20 total tackles, two pressures, 11 stops and an interception. He has looked sharper in coverage, too, even if the performance hasn’t been spotless.
His biggest moment came against Arizona. Rashan Gary’s pressure helped force an errant Jacoby Brissett throw, and after the ball was deflected, James came down with the interception and returned it to the Cardinals’ 5-yard line to set up a Cowboys score. It was the kind of play that puts a linebacker on the map, even if the ball found him rather than the other way around.
But James has done more than just be in the right place once. He stuffed Jeremiyah Love for short gains, closed fast on a Brissett scramble, and chased down Michael Wilson on an end around that might have gone all the way if James hadn’t tracked him down.
In coverage, the numbers have been encouraging. He allowed four catches for 23 yards on six targets and posted a 34.0 passer rating when targeted. He has now been below an average NFL passer rating in five of seven games, and that kind of steady improvement is hard to ignore.
There’s more. James still hasn’t allowed a touchdown in coverage over 181 snaps.
Last season, he gave up three, and opposing quarterbacks finished with a 131.1 passer rating against him. His 11 run stops over the last three games already match up with 18 from last year.
The gap between the old version of James and the one Dallas is seeing now is obvious.
That’s what makes the Winters trade look so rough. Dallas sent a 2026 fifth-round pick to the San Francisco 49ers for Winters, a move that made sense at the time with DeMarvion Overshown’s injury questions and the lack of depth at linebacker. But Winters hasn’t delivered.
He does offer some flexibility between WILL and MIKE, which has helped in a linebacker room that keeps changing shape. Still, he hasn’t been particularly good at either spot next to Overshown or Jaishawn Barham.
In five full games, Winters gave up 16 catches on 19 targets for 174 yards, including 101 yards after the catch. He also missed six tackles in those five games, with at least one miss in every contest, and has whiffed on 14.6 percent of his attempts this year.
James hasn’t been perfect either. He has missed 16.1 percent of his tackles and allowed 125 yards in coverage this season. The difference is that Dallas gave up a pick for Winters, and that pick could have gone somewhere else.
After changing hands multiple times, the No. 152 overall pick the Cowboys sent away ended up becoming tight end Justin Joly. Other players available in that range included safety Michael Taaffe, running back Emmett Johnson, cornerback Keith Abney and cornerback Zeke Masses.
Dallas could argue those were all needs at the time. But with James now looking like the better linebacker anyway, the Cowboys are left wondering whether they would have been better off keeping the pick and giving their own young player more time to grow.
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