Roster update: Cowboys sign Adolphus Washington to practice squad, release Aziz Shittu

Tuesday has been a busy day for the Cowboys. While they’re coming off of their first win they clearly aren’t totally satisfied from what they saw, even from the game’s most impressive effort.

Dallas is officially bringing in defensive tackle Adolphus Washington to their practice squad and releasing Aziz Shittu. He’s the newest member of the Hot Boyz.

Washington was drafted by the Bills in the third round of the 2016 draft and failed to latch on with new coach Sean McDermott. He’s someone who the Cowboys also had a third-round grade on, although they did have Maliek Collins graded higher. Additionally the Cowboys coaching staff coached Adolphus Washington at the 2016 Senior Bowl. SB Nation did a write-up on him recently.

Even though he isn’t one of those humongous defensive tackles that just eats up space, Washington is still strong at the point of attack and hard to move. In new defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier’s 4-3 scheme, the nose tackle lines up in the A gap with no tilt, and they play the run with more of a read and react style rather than trying to penetrate and get upfield. Washington did a good job of fighting to stay in his gap against the run, and he improved as a pass rusher from the A gap as the year went on. By the end of the season he’d racked up 33 tackles, a sack and two passes defensed.

It didn’t take long for the Cowboys to get going with Adolphus either. DeMarcus Lawrence shared a photo of the Hot Boyz on Tuesday and you can see Adolphus in the back so he was definitely part of some things that they did.

As Adolphus is a defensive tackle his presence on the team raises questions about the ones that the Cowboys currently employ. Is Maliek Collins perhaps more hurt than they thought? Are things still on track with David Irving’s return in Week 5?

We’ll have to wait and see.