The Dallas Cowboys' linebacker room will look vastly different in 2024 than it did last year.
There are new faces in the room as Eric Kendricks joins the team to command Mike Zimmer's defense and a bigger version of DeMarvion Overshown is set to return from injury to make his NFL debut while rookie Marist Liufau awaits his own.
Meanwhile, Markquese Bell is expected to go back to his original role as a safety after essentially switching positions to play inside linebacker for Dallas in 2023, where he excelled in pass coverage but struggled to make an impact as a run defender mostly because of his being undersized for the position.
For the 2024 season, Kendricks is expected to be the middle linebacker and green dot defender considering his experience with Zimmer and his versatile playing style. Additionally, Overshown and Damone Clark are expected to take on a significant amount of the snaps but it remains unclear who will perform which role.
In a recent media availability session prior to the start of OTAs, Cowboys linebacker coach Scott McCurley was asked about Clark's specific role but he declined to provide a specific answer.
"Right now, once the competition settles down, we'll see how it goes," McCurley told reporters before pivoting from the question. "The one thing I feel really good about with Damone is his versatility. He can play anywhere, he knows it, and he understands it. What's best for him—time will tell how he fits into this thing and where we go with it. But he's got a lot of upside to him, and he's off to a good spring too."
That's more than a fair response from the coach given where we're at in the offseason. But while he tried to play the secrecy card, Overshown laid out the specific roles in a recent interview himself.
"(I'm) the WILL," Overshown told reporters at Cowboys OTAs, which means he'll play as the weakside linebacker. "(Damone Clark) is playing SAM."
It was a quick comment from the second-year linebacker and it's still only OTAs, meaning plans can still change, but Overshown was firm in his response, even correcting a reporter who asked if he'd be playing SAM.
Sidebar: SAM and WILL refer to strongside linebacker and weakside linebacker, respectively. The SAM lines up to the strong side of the offense's formation (where the TE is set), which means he theoretically has to deal with more traffic when defending the run while the WILL plays to the weakside, and is usually considered more important in pass coverage. The truth is in today's NFL, all linebackers have to do a little bit of everything and there's usually only two of them on the field at the same time as defenses play more and more nickel.
It's an interesting comment from Overshown considering McCurley had just declined to comment on specific roles but what will really be intriguing come training camp is who earns the LB2 role to play alongside Kendricks when the Cowboys play nickel and there's only two LBs on the field instead of three.
