Stephen A. Smith implores Jerry Jones to make trade to improve Dallas Cowboys' defense

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith implored Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to make a trade in order to bolster the defense. He said Jones wouldn’t want to waste the Cowboys’ potent offense.

While the latter is true and Dak Prescott is playing high level football right now, Dallas was humbled against the Denver Broncos’ defense Sunday. Perhaps Dallas needs more than just defensive help at the moment.

“You just turned 83 my man, your better days are behind you, not in front of you,” Smith said to Jones, at least metaphorically, on First Take. “You know that you understand. You talked about your own mortality, all right? You don’t know how much longer you have. You have to value every day … The point is, what really, really happened is that you had a defense that, yet again, gave up 40-plus that yet again, for the fourth time, at least this year, they’ve given up over 400 yards of offense. This is who you are, if you’re the Dallas Cowboys defensively right now …

“So when you look at it from that standpoint, defensively, you have to make a move. When you have an offense this prolific, you just messed up negotiations with Micah Parsons. We don’t know if you’re not going to mess up negotiations with George Pickens, who’s represented by the same dude that Micahl Parsons is represented by … You got two first round picks. You got 31 and a half million dollars in cap space, which is second most in the league, behind in the way of the Patriots. Okay, you have an opportunity to go out there and get it.”

Ironically, Jones was skeptical that he could fix the Cowboys’ defense with one trade. He said as much Sunday. 

“If I saw a proposition for us to help this team, no matter what this score was today, then I would look at it on the merits of helping the team,” Jerry Jones said. “I would completely look at the merits for both next week or the weeks after [and the longer term]. No, today would not affect a decision on trading for a player.”

Injuries have also taken their toll on Dallas, particularly its secondary. In the loss to Denver, the Cowboys were without three key members of the secondary. Safeties Juanyeh Thomas and Donovan Wilson were both inactive. Then, cornerback Trevon Diggs was placed on injured reserve. Alijah Clark would then be lost in the second half of the game.

“I don’t see lack of effort,” Jones said. “I see guys that could be surer, more firm in their execution.”