Could the Dallas Cowboys add a versatile and elusive wide receiver in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft? Dallas drafts Oregon transfer receiver Evan Stewart with the No. 26-pick in the latest mock from ESPN.

Talk about a homecoming! Stewart is a Frisco, Texas-native, which is where the Dallas Cowboys headquarters is located. 

Could Stewart be a Dallas star alongside receiver CeeDee Lamb? Currently the Cowboys room is highlighted by Lamb, Brandin Cooks, Jalen Tolbert, Kavontae Turpin.

“I want to show that I am a jack of all trades,” said Stewart during Oregon practices. “…I can go up and get it like a big receiver, I can move like a little receiver. I’ve got great hands, I’m very quick, very fast.”

Stewart transferred from Texas A&M, totaling 1,163 receiving yards and six touchdowns in two seasons in college station, despite an early season ankle injury in 2013 that resulted in diminished production. Stewart’s undeniable talent and experience was highly sought after in the portal, ranking as a top-5 overall athlete in the portal. 

Stewart’s goal for the Oregon 2024 football season is clear. 

“That ball, man. I’m trying to get those passes,” Stewart said during Oregon’s spring practices. “(Oregon suited everything that I was looking for. I wanted to be in a great program that had a lot of order and construction. Everything is so much better here, honestly, I’m happy with my decision.”

Stewart already turned heads in a Duck uniform during spring football practices. Possibly the biggest get for the Ducks in the transfer portal this year by coach Dan Lanning. Oregon enters their inaugural season in the Big Ten Conference as one of the favorites to win the Big Ten Title, with much thanks to additions like Stewart. 

Dallas’ rookie mini camp is May 10-11. It’ll be a first-look at the Cowboys’ first-round 2024 NFL Draft selection Tyler Guyton. The hope is that Guyton, a former Oklahoma offensive tackle, can help reinforce the Cowboys offensive line quickly. 

FC Dallas picked up another much-needed win on Tuesday night, a US Open Cup Round of 32 win over USL Championship side Memphis 901.

This morning, as I am sitting at a pub in the Pittsburgh Airport, I thought I would take a few minutes to discuss the comments made by head coach Nico Estevez and the game’s goal scorer, Logan Farrington, after last night’s win. I’m also going to take a quick look back at a game that FC Dallas had control over…for the most part.

This won’t be our normal breakdown of the game since we do need to quickly turn our attention to Saturday’s game with Austin FC.

For a coach who needed to go for it in a Cup tournament game at home against a lower-division team, Estevez really didn’t push things all that much with his lineup choice. He stuck it out once more with the 3-4-3, as he reintroduced Jesus Ferreira and Asier Illarramendi back into the lineup after the two weren’t ‘fully fit’ enough, Nico’s words there to do so in Toronto last week.

We had hoped that the Dallas City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on General Investigating & Ethics would get to the bottom of how city permitting workers were moved into an unpermitted building. What council committee members received from city staff was obfuscation, incomplete timelines and conflicting explanations. Quite properly, committee members have asked the city auditor to investigate.

Inexplicably, city officials didn’t obtain final occupancy approval for Dallas’ new permitting office along Stemmons Freeway before workers moved into the 11-story tower late last year. Employees were ordered back to their old office in Oak Cliff months later, and the new building was closed after fire and safety violations were revealed.

But last week, Assistant City Manager Majed Al-Ghafry provided a different reason to the council committee, one that fails the smell test. Al-Ghafry said he decided to close the building and return staff to their former offices after a few employees wandered from their floor to other unfinished floors. He said the building had a valid temporary certificate of occupancy and that the employees weren’t in an unsafe building. “In full transparency and confidence, there wasn’t any life and safety issues that caused me to do this,” Al-Ghafry told the committee.

Well sort of. Only the fifth floor where the permitting employees were located had a temporary occupancy permit, but final approvals from the fire department and other inspectors weren’t obtained before employees moved in. Al-Ghafry previously said employees were warned not to roam beyond the first and fifth floors. However, Development Services Department Director Andrew Espinoza said employees had been working on the second and third floors between January and March. Espinoza also said no employees were disciplined for being on other floors.

Consider this revisionist history. Development Services employees began moving into the building in December. In January, an employee’s spouse filed a complaint with the state fire marshal’s office alleging a series of safety issues with the facility. In February and early April, city fire safety inspection reports discovered fire code violations. Al-Ghafry said employees started moving out of the building on April 9 after it was determined that the fire alarm didn’t sound on all floors.

Al-Ghafry, however, didn’t mention roaming employees in his email to the mayor and council on April 9. Instead, he wrote that “this move [from the new building] is the result of additional facility improvements recently identified at their current location.” He specifically cited additional work needed on the fire suppression system, IT equipment, connectivity, elevators, and other improvements.

It is embarrassingly ironic that the city’s permitting unit, long criticized for failing to deliver construction permits in a timely manner, failed to properly obtain permits for its own building before moving employees into it. More distressing is that grossly inadequate, misleading responses continue to keep us all in the dark about what happened and why, an all too common pattern at City Hall when mismanagement occurs.

Accountability is necessary. The city auditor must unravel the truth and do it quickly.

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com