Jerry Jones puts Cowboys on notice with $30 million trade warning

The Dallas Cowboys spent months rebuilding a defense that gave them plenty of reasons to do so. Apparently, Jerry Jones still isn't ready to put away his checkbook.

Dallas enters the season with more than $30 million in available cap space, and Jones made it clear Tuesday that some of that money could disappear quickly if the right trade presents itself. More telling was where he expects the Cowboys to look.

Jerry Jones leaves door open for another Cowboys trade

During his weekly appearance on 105.3 The Fan, Jones was asked whether Dallas remained involved in trade discussions around the league.

"The best way for me to answer that is not timing wise, right on something this morning or this week, but if you look at it generally speaking, we're in play," Jones said. "And that's the best way to describe it."

That alone would have been enough to stir up the usual Cowboys trade speculation. Jones went further.

"You could look for it to be defensively," Jones said. "You could more than likely see depth on defense. Defense would be the place."

That's quite a message to send before the rebuilt unit has played a regular-season snap.

The Cowboys didn't exactly ignore their defense during the offseason. They added veterans, invested five of their seven draft picks on that side of the ball and continued reshaping a group that desperately needed it after last season.

Yet Jones is already leaving the door cracked for another addition.

Dallas recently created roughly $19 million in additional cap room by restructuring the contracts of Kenny Clark, DaRon Bland and Jake Ferguson. That pushed its available space beyond $30 million.

Jones isn't pretending the timing is a coincidence.

"The timing is conspicuously obvious," Jones said. "But yeah, we could use it for this year's team."