IRVING, Texas – Third-year safety Matt Johnson headlined 13 roster cuts by the Cowboys on Tuesday afternoon, as they trimmed their roster to 75 players ahead of Thursday's preseason finale.
Johnson is one of four players to be waived/injured, which means he reverts to the Cowboys' injured reserve if he clears waivers. The more likely scenario is the team will part ways with the 2012 draft pick, who has yet to play a regular season game, once the sides come to an injury settlement.
The team made four other injury designations with tight end Jordan Najvar, who tore his Achilles last weekend against Miami, defensive backs Johnny Thomas and Justin Green and linebacker DeVonte Holloman.
Holloman's release comes after the announcement last week that the second-year player would be finishing his playing career as a result of a neck injury.
Seven of the Cowboys' 13 roster moves on Tuesday were outright releases. The team opted to part ways with Caleb Hanie, Chris Boyd, Adewale Ojomo, Tom Hornsey, Wayne Tribue, and Casey Kreiter. Martez Wilson and J.C. Copeland were released earlier in the week, giving the Cowboys 15 roster moves in total.
Two other players, Ben Gardner and Amobi Okoye, were moved off the active roster and onto injury lists. Gardner, a seventh-round draft pick in the spring, was placed on injured reserve for the season after undergoing surgery to repair torn ligaments in his shoulder.
Okoye will be placed on the Non-Football Injury list – an offshoot of the Physically Unable to Perform list, for players who sustained injuries away from football. Okoye was just recently cleared to practice, as he continues to recover from anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis – a brain disease that put him in a medically-induced coma for three months last year.
The NFI designation means Okoye, a first-round pick in the 2007 NFL Draft, has to miss at least the first six games of the season – the same time period for a player placed on the PUP.
The Cowboys will play their final preseason game on Thursday against Denver with 75 players. Final cuts, which reduce the roster to 53 players for the regular season, are due to the league at 3 p.m. on Saturday.
