Jets trade Quinnen Williams to Cowboys: Source

Few have suffered the perils of playing for the New York Jets over the last decade like defensive tackle Quinnen Williams has. Now, he is free of it.

The Jets agreed to trade Williams to the Dallas Cowboys on Tuesday in exchange for a 2026 second-round pick and a 2027 first-round pick, according to a league source, ending a seven-year run during which he developed into one of the NFL’s best defensive tackles. Along with the two picks, Dallas sent defensive tackle Mazi Smith to New York as part of the deal, according to a league source. Smith was a first-round pick in 2023.

Williams was one of the few first-round picks the Jets have made in the last decade that panned out — and he was also one of the few to receive an extension before the end of his rookie contract, starting a trend that continued with Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson this past offseason.

Hours before Williams was traded, the Jets also shipped out Gardner, netting two first-round picks in exchange for the All-Pro cornerback being sent to Indianapolis.

But Williams was never part of a Jets team that finished with a winning record, and all of the losing and dysfunction in the organization started to wear thin on him this season. In the offseason, Williams tweeted “another rebuild year for me I guess” after the Jets announced they were releasing Aaron Rodgers. He later spoke with head coach Aaron Glenn and apologized in comments to the media, but those feelings lingered. In recent weeks, according to multiple team and league sources, Williams had expressed his unhappiness to people close to him — he was “miserable”, a source said — as well as a desire to be traded from the organization that drafted him in 2019 out of the University of Alabama.

In response, a Jets team source told The Athletic prior to their Week 8 game against the Bengals that the Jets were “not really entertaining” the idea of trading him and that they would only consider it if the trade included multiple first-round picks.

As it turns out, the Jets actively entertained the idea of trading Williams as the trade deadline drew closer — and didn’t wind up getting multiple firsts. The deal does provide the Jets with some valuable draft capital as well as cap savings in future years. The downside: The Jets now have both a leadership void (Williams was a captain) and a talent void on defense, particularly on the defensive line.

Williams’ numbers were down this season (one sack, three QB hits, three forced fumbles), the result, at least in part, of dealing with constant double- and triple-teams on a line that lacked pass-rush talent next to him. Even if it has been a “down” season for Williams, Pro Football Focus still had him graded seventh overall among defensive tackles, and first in run defense, though he’s 80th (of 101 to play 150 snaps) in pass rushing. Williams is first among all defensive tackles in run play tackling.

Williams made three straight Pro Bowls from 2022 to 2024 and was an All-Pro in 2022 as well.

At defensive tackle, the Jets will move forward with two players general manager Darren Mougey acquired just before the season in Harrison Phillips and Jowon Briggs — the only two defensive tackles under contract for 2026. The Jets should save around $8 million in 2025 salary from this trade, and more in future years — when most of Williams’ was nonguaranteed. He was only set to be guaranteed $5 million of his $20.75 million salary in 2026, and zero is guaranteed in 2027.

What this means for Dallas

This is a huge move for the Cowboys. They’ve made it easy to criticize them for how poorly the defense has played this season, but they deserve credit for taking this type of swing.

Defensive tackle has been one of their many issues and Williams certainly upgrades the position. It’s probably too late to save this season, but this is the type of move that has impact well beyond this year. Williams is under contract for two more seasons. Pairing him with linebacker DeMarvion Overshown, defensive end Donovan Ezeiruaku and defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa provides some hope about the future up front. It’s not difficult to see how a few more offseason moves could make this a quality defense a year from now.

The Cowboys had interest in acquiring Williams when they were shopping Micah Parsons before the start of the season. The Jets weren’t interested at the time. Dallas now has a legitimate 27-year-old building block on a defense that so badly needed one. — Jon Machota, Cowboys beat writer

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