Report: Cowboys called New York Jets about Leonard Williams before trading for Michael Bennett

The Dallas Cowboys are on bye this week, bu that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been busy. The team traded for defensive end Michael Bennett earlier in the week, a move that will hopefully give them some more depth over the second half of the season.

There have been a handful of trades across the NFL, deadlines make deals after all, and so the Cowboys likely had options when shopping for a defensive lineman. It was a year ago that they traded for Amari Cooper and it seems as if they had eyes for another former first-round pick from the 2015 NFL Draft.

According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Cowboys called the New York Jets about Leonard Williams before they made the Michael Bennett move.

It’s extremely likely that Williams would have cost the Cowboys more than a seventh-round pick (which will likely become a sixth). Not to mention that Williams is on the fifth-year option of his rookie contract just like Amari Cooper, so the Cowboys would have had to make a contractual decision on him after this season. Michael Bennett’s current deal runs through 2020.

Leonard Williams has been a fine player for the Jets over the last four seasons and change, and he’s obviously got more left in the tank than Bennett does; however, it seems as if the Bennett deal was the one that made more sense for the Cowboys in the end.