Jake Ferguson Camp Update — August 31: Four Tight Ends Cut Below Him
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Dallas cut four tight ends at the cutdown — Michael Trigg, Zack Kuntz, Mitch Van Vooren, and DJ Rogers waived injured — and Trigg came back on the practice squad. Ferguson himself went unmentioned all week, a reporting gap in a starter-rest week rather than news.
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Cut day ran straight through the tight end room — everywhere except the top of it. Michael Trigg, the club's highest-paid undrafted rookie, was waived along with Zack Kuntz and Mitch Van Vooren, and DJ Rogers was waived injured, per the team's own move accounting from Nick Eatman at DallasCowboys.com. Trigg cleared and re-signed to the practice squad Monday, per Jerry Trotta at The Landry Hat. Jake Ferguson's name appears in none of it — no transaction, and also no quote, snap count or role note anywhere in the week's reporting.
The one tight end who caught a touchdown Friday was Van Vooren — a 21-yard score from Sam Howell on the game-tying drive of a 27 to 24 loss to New Orleans, per Kurt Daniels at the team's website — and he was waived two days later. That is a finale fact about a cut player, not September evidence about this room.
Last week's watch line asked whether the Prescott-to-Ferguson connection would get a live series in the finale, and whether the goal-line-first-read framing would show up in a charted situational period. Both answers are no. Prescott finished the preseason without a snap, no accessed account places Ferguson on the field Friday, and no charted goal-line period exists anywhere in the window — the framing ends August exactly where it stood a week ago, a designed pitch in a joint practice and the beat's read, nothing since. Something else lapsed too: through three weeks of Oxnard, every practice report had Ferguson's name somewhere in the first team's good plays, and this week has no Ferguson mention at all. That is the reporting stopping with the practices, not a role change — the practices ended and the starters rested.
The argument since June: 82 catches — more than all but two tight ends — are the durable half of last season's line, because tight end target volume is among football's stickiest stats, while the eight touchdowns are the fragile half. A cutdown that removed four tight ends below him changes neither number, and the reporting we accessed does not say who backs him up on the 53. Real usage starts soon — we'll take this up again when the games give us something to chart.
_Data via nflverse._
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