The Cowboys Don't Have a Linebacker Depth Chart. They Have One Linebacker.

Last week I called this roster a three-alarm fire. I want to return to one of those blazes specifically, because the more you stare at it, the worse it looks. The linebacker position in Dallas isn't thin. It isn't a work in progress. It is, functionally, one player — Rashan Gary — standing in front of an open field.

Here is the precedent that matters: teams that enter a season with a single linebacker carrying all the meaningful snaps don't lose games because of that fact. They lose seasons. The 2017 Indianapolis Colts, the mid-cycle Chicago Bears defenses, the late rebuild-era Detroit squads — the common thread isn't a bad player at the top of the depth chart. It's the absence of anyone behind him capable of holding a formation together when the starter misses three weeks with a hamstring. One injury, one suspension, one bad scheme matchup, and the middle of the defense becomes a suggestion. Dallas is one Rashan Gary rolled ankle away from that reality right now.

The numbers from 2025 tell you exactly how this played out. The Cowboys went 4-3 in games decided by a touchdown or fewer, a 57% win rate that looks like a functional football team. But they finished 7-10, going 4-6 in their final ten games as the margin for error shrank. That gap — winning close, losing the season — is the fingerprint of a defense that couldn't sustain pressure, couldn't hold leads, couldn't make stops when the game was no longer close. Linebackers are the connective tissue of a defense. When that tissue is missing, the whole structure fails slowly and then all at once.

The situation heading into camp is compounding. Charles Snowden, listed third on the depth chart, is suspended for the first three games. DeMarvion Overshown earned some recognition as an off-ball linebacker this offseason, and he's active, which matters — but he wasn't a factor in 2025 production. Langston Patterson sits at number two on the depth chart with no meaningful snaps from last season to point to. The Cowboys are essentially asking Gary to anchor a position group whose backup options are unproven and whose third option won't be on the field to start the year.

There is a name floating around that deserves a direct answer. Bobby Wagner was mentioned this week in the context of a potential Cowboys signing. My read: at this stage of his career, Wagner isn't a long-term fix, but that's not the question. The question is whether Dallas can survive a season with one real linebacker, and the answer is almost certainly no. Wagner has played at an elite level for the better part of a decade and a half. He knows how to run a defense. If the Cowboys are serious about competing while Dak Prescott's contract situation resolves itself, adding a veteran who can actually log snaps at linebacker isn't nostalgia — it's triage.

The declaration I'll stand on: the Cowboys will not make the playoffs in 2026 if they open the season with this linebacker group unchanged. Not because Rashan Gary isn't good enough. Because one player at any position, no matter how talented, cannot cover for a structural void that spans the entire depth chart. History is consistent on this. The teams that patch it in July survive. The teams that assume it'll work itself out in September find out the hard way that it won't.