DeMarvion Overshown makes sense of profound pick-six in Thanksgiving prevail upon Monsters

ARLINGTON, Texas — It’s easier to list the things DeMarvian Overshon can’t do for the Dallas Cowboys on a football field than it is to try to name all the things he can. He can cover, he can stop the run, he can cannonball the opposing quarterback on a blitz to sack him, and everything in between.

On Thanksgiving, in a win over the New York Giants with a turkey-like semblance, Overshon made one of the best plays you’ll see in a game this season.

He blitzed Devin Singletary, tipped a pass from True Lock to Singletary, chased the ball down before hitting the ground, intercepted it, and then ran for his first pick-six.

“I was playing football, and it was like, man, I knew a play was coming, I’d been told all week that a play was coming,” Overshon explained. “I didn’t know when it was coming, but it was coming, and I was playing football, and I saw the ball, and I snapped it, and I was praying the whole time that it was going to be that way. ‘Man, please let my speed be fast enough to get to this ball at least once.’”

His film study told him everything he needed to know about the Giants’ thought process this week.

“When the running back released me, I felt like, ‘Some BS is happening,’” he said. “Then the quarterback threw the ball, and he said, ‘This is my play. I was able to kick in some nitrous, and we danced in the end zone.”

Simply put, Overshon is a force of nature.

“I told you from the beginning he was going to be a guy,” said multi-time All-Pro linebacker Micah Parsons. “Since his freshman year, before he got hurt, I said, ‘He’s going to be an All-Pro, Pro Bowl type of player. I’m glad he’s finally showing that. I’ve seen it from the beginning.’

Then, with a big smile, Parsons gave Overshon another big compliment.

“He reminds me of someone,” he said of the young linebacker, pointing out the obvious. “Now, he’s not No. 11 yet, but he’s Agent 0, and I think he has his own creative identity, and that’s what I like. He’s not trying to be like me. He’s his own special type. He’s going to be. I felt it on every play.

“He’s a wildcat on the field. I love playing around him.”

Under the circumstances, the things Overshon will do in 2024 should be statistically impossible — a torn ACL, missed time this year and the preseason and the first 11 games, and the entire 2023 season. In his career, he’s not just one of the best players on the Cowboys defense.

He’s one of the best players in the entire NFL.

“I’m so grateful,” Overshon said. “Last year at this time I was just waiting for the game, just before the game, to show people my testimony when I got back on the field. I’m going to show you what God really has in me. Play like I do.”

The East Texas boy, who once dreamed of playing for the Cowboys, now plays the adult version of himself for them every week in a big way, most recently on the national stage against a division rival in a Thanksgiving game.

“It doesn’t get any bigger than this,” Overshon said. “In 2007, my first year playing football, I was sitting at the Super Bowl at this time for little league, and all week I was like, ‘Think about when you were seven years old. Think about what that kid wants. Every time he steps on that field from now on.’

“It’s exciting.”

Can Overshon call himself a Pro Bowler or an All-Pro in his first season on the field?

It’s not impossible, considering he continues to tear offenses apart, that he’ll join Micah Parsons and Leighton Vander Esch as the latest linebacker in Dallas to earn those honors as a first-year player (though the latter two are technically freshmen).

At this point, the seven-year-old in him can only glow with pride.