The Cowboys made a trade out of absolutely nowhere!
The Dallas Cowboys injected some optimism into fans on Friday when head coach Mike McCarthy, owner and de facto general manager Jerry Jones, executive vice president Stepehen Jones and vice president of player personnel Will McClay were all absent for he start of practice.
Cowboys fans immediately thought that a CeeDee Lamb contract was being finalized. It would make sense for Jerry Jones to reach an agreement less than 24 hours after he torched social media by saying he doesn’t have a sense of urgency to get Lamb signed before the end of training camp.
As it turns out, the Cowboys’ front office was in the process of orchestrating a trade. Per NFL Media’s Tom Peliserro, Dallas has traded cornerback Nahshon Wright to the Minnesota Vikings in a straight swap for cornerback Andrew Booth.
Cowboys trade CB Nahshon Wright to Vikings for CB Andrew Booth
As random as it is, this is a good trade for the Cowboys. Wright had clearly been surpassed on the depth chart by rookie fifth-round pick Caelen Carson, who’s been intercepting and breaking up passes left and right in training camp.
While Wright is a serviceable boundary corner, his skillset isn’t a good fit with new defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer. A third-round pick in 2021, Wright struggled when he has to follow receivers across the field. Zimmer will likely ask a lot of that from his cornerbacks.
With Carson asserting himself as the third perimeter corner behind Trevon Diggs and DaRon Bland, the Cowboys probably wanted to get deeper in the nickel. A second-round pick by the Vikings in 2022, Booth is a much better fit in Zimmer scheme with more upside than Wright to boot.
Booth had injury concerns coming out of Clemson two years ago. He had two hernia sugeries spanning a year before the 2022 draft, which saw him fall to the second round. He played just two games as a rookie but bounced back to play all 17 games last season.
The 23-year-old only saw 151 snaps, but the results were promising. He forced two incompletions over eight targets and allowed a 59.6 passer rating, per Pro Football Focus (subscription required).
With this deal, the Cowboys have now traded away their second- and third-round picks from the 2021 draft. They traded Kelvin Joseph to the Dolphins last preseason. Their track record on day two of the draft continues to be baffling for a team that has largely excelled at drafting.
