J.J. Wilcox Could Step Into Starting Role

Wilcox appeared in 13 games as a rookie last year

The Dallas Cowboys have long had a question mark at the safety position opposite Barry Church in the secondary, but according to executive vice president Stephen Jones, the team believes they may might have the answer in the fold already in J.J. Wilcox.

Many experts have the Cowboys looking at highly-touted safeties Ha Ha Clinton-Dix (Alabama) and Calvin Pryor (Louisville) going into next week’s draft, but Jones seems to think Wilcox can handle the starting job full-time.

“J.J. Wilcox had an outstanding training camp, and the day his mother passed, he was actually promoted to be the starter,” Jones told 105.3-FM The Fan, per the Dallas Morning News. “Everybody deals with adversity in different ways, especially a heartfelt loss like losing your mother. No one knows how anyone’s going to respond to that, and obviously he was very close to his mother who had been sick, and had taken very wonderful care of her and was obviously just a terrible, gut-wrenching loss for him. I just think it took him a while to respond. But toward the end of the year, I think we were starting to see flashes of the J.J. that we saw in camp.”

Wilcox appeared in 13 games after being drafted in the third round last year, and started five. But he lost his short-lived role as starter to fellow rookie Jeff Heath down the stretch.

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