Cowboys

Cowboys LB Jaishawn Barham enters his rookie season after being a third-round pick in this year’s draft. Barham said he’s grateful for his opportunity to play the inside linebacker role. 

“It feels good to be out there,” Barham said, via Patrik Walker of the team’s site. “It means a lot [for the coaches to trust me at middle linebacker], but I still got a lot of work to do. I’m just trying to get better every day. I’m trusting the coaches and I’m trusting my teammates.”

Barham thinks he has more qualities than just being a physical player and considers himself to be an “all-around” linebacker. 

“My hands, my height, playing low sideline-to-sideline, my coverage — I feel like all-around, but I’m not perfect,” Barham said. “I mean, of course, [the physicality is] something. That’s one thing that I showed. But, of course, there’s many things that I can use, and we’re going to see as the season goes along.”

• The Cowboys cut QB Joe Milton as they worked down to the 53-man limit. Dallas HC Brian Schottenheimer said they’d like to re-sign Milton to the practice squad, but it is the quarterback’s choice in the end: “I think Joe is going to be a terrific player in this league.” (Todd Archer)
• As for QB Sam Howell making the team ahead of Milton, Schottenheimer explained that they were more comfortable with Howell’s experience: “When we looked at the whole body of work we felt like Sam had done a little bit better of executing the offense.”  (Archer)
• According to Calvin Watkins, the Cowboys received trade interest in Milton, but it was not significant enough to make a deal.

Eagles

This time last year, the Eagles were one of the more active teams, making six trades between the early parts of camp and the start of the season. Eagles GM Howie Roseman said most of the players other teams were interested in weren’t guys they were willing to part with and didn’t feel any player-for-player trades made sense.

“I think from our perspective, a lot of conversations with every team — almost every team; there’s a couple, maybe not so much — but I think that when we were talking to these other teams, the players they were interested in, felt like we were going to hold on to,” Roseman said, via Zach Berman. “The players maybe we were interested in, maybe they felt the same way. With the way that practices went and the games went, there wasn’t an opportunity to do some of the player-for-player trades. We like to get looks at guys just because of where our numbers were. I think you guys know me well enough to know that I like the action and was trying, but it just didn’t make sense for us at the time. We would’ve just been doing it to make a move.”

• Eagles QB Jalen Hurts faced criticism for his play last season. When asked if this is a make-or-break season for Hurts, Roseman responded: “No – I do not agree with that. All the guy does is win football games.” (Ashlyn Sullivan)

Giants

Giants WR Malik Nabers said that he doesn’t want a potential Week 1 return to be based around a snap count or any kind of limitations on what he is able to do or how much he can play.

“My mind is focused on playing the regular season, playing whenever that is and playing what team it is,” Nabers said, via Pro Football Talk. “I’m going to be making sure that I’m ready to go out there and I’m healthy enough to play all four quarters. That nobody got to make sure I’m not in on every play or they have to make sure I got enough snaps or my snaps are limited. So, that’s the main focus is just trying to be out there as much as I can.”