Veteran starts over highly touted rookie on Cowboys’ 53-man roster

As we enter the third installment of the way-too-early 53-man roster projection series, tough decisions needed to be made.

As it turns out, this once four-part series will actually end up as a five part series for your reading pleasure.

If you missed the first two parts of the series, use the following links to get yourself caught up.

For quarterback, running back, and wide receiver projections, click here. For tight end and offensive line projections, click here. The first two installments of the series were dedicated to the offense.

As we now move to the defensive side of the ball, it was immediately apparent that deciding who didn’t make the roster wasn’t going to be as cut and dry as the offensive side.

Defensive Coordinator Dan Quinn has proven to utilize traits to get the absolute best out of his players, so finding enough faults in any individual player to merit being left off of the roster proved to be a challenge.

Today we will discuss the defensive line, and how position flex has the line between positions blurred on several players.