Clark Down, Snowden Suspended, Houston Questionable: Dallas's Defensive Depth Problem Just Got Worse

Safety Alijah Clark was helped off the field during Tuesday's session in Oxnard, the latest in a string of defensive setbacks that are hitting a unit that had no margin to absorb them. Clark's injury follows Charles Snowden's three-game suspension — which removes a pass rusher before the season even starts — and James Houston's questionable designation, which leaves the linebacker depth chart looking genuinely threadbare heading into the back half of camp.

The linebacker situation is the part worth watching most closely. As I noted earlier this week, Dallas enters 2026 with only one linebacker who logged meaningful snaps in 2025. The plan was always to lean on DeMarvion Overshown, who is active and practicing, to carry more of that load. Houston was supposed to be part of the answer behind him. With Houston now questionable, the position is down to its last real option before you're into players who haven't proven they can stay on the field in a regular-season game.

The safety picture compounds it. Jalen Thompson is also listed as questionable, meaning two of the three safeties with any established presence in this defense are dealing with something right now. The Cowboys finished 7-10 last year in large part because the defense couldn't hold leads — they went 4-6 over the final ten games, and the back end was a recurring problem. Losing bodies at safety and linebacker in August, before a single preseason snap, is not the direction this needed to go.

There's still time to sort some of this out, and camp injuries don't always translate to regular-season absences. But the window for Dallas to get its defensive depth sorted — through the roster, through free agency, through whatever they decide to do — is narrowing. The paperwork questions around extensions were always going to be the offseason's headline. Right now the injury report is making a louder noise.