In two NFL seasons, Cowboys linebacker DeMarvion Overshown has averaged 6.2 tackles per game. Two knee surgeries have limited him to 19 games.
Now fully healthy and playing the middle linebacker position, Overshown is confident he can average 10 tackles a game.
“Now most of my plays will happen inside the box,” Overshown said Thursday. “I get right back up and call the plays and do it again. It’s one of those things — I’m looking at averaging 10 tackles a game just by being at Mike, without doing all the extracurricular, so I’m excited about that.”
The Cowboys haven’t officially given Overshown the middle linebacker spot; he’s been in a rotation with Curtis Robinson, Justin Barron and Shemar James at the position.
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NBC 5’s Pat Doney sat down with Overshown at training camp.
“I feel like every time I go out there, it hits me in a different way. Because I look at it as like, it’s a dream, and the dream is just, and I tell them all the time, like bro, we’re doing it. The dream is literally unfolding right in front of us,” Overshown said.
Overshown is living his dream with the Cowboys and wants everyone who’s watching him to know it.
“I feel like I’m the energy guy, like I want to be that guy where people can look at me third, fourth quarter dancing and stuff and they rejuvenate just like that, like oh this guy, he out here enjoying it, he having fun,” Overshown said.
Overshown is a cowboy in every sense of the word; the star linebacker now lives out his other dream on a cattle ranch in his small hometown of Arp, Texas.
“I’m a real cowboy, not just a Dallas cowboy, but I got a chance to live my dream in the state that I grew up in,” Overshown said.
The vision of ‘Agent Zero Ranch’ began long ago with his childhood best friend.
“Something that we always talked about as kids, playing on the farm, working cows, fixing fence, stuff like that. You know, I always talked about wanting our own ranch one day, and it’s been a blessing, I guess, really, to be able to make it real, make it happen,” Dakota Shores said.
Shores was more like a brother to young DeMarvion.
“It’s just that relationship, that bond; he was a groomsman at my wedding. His kids are my nephews and nieces. I mean, blood wouldn’t make us closer at this point, and I’m forever grateful for him. And he’s actually made this process. The Agent O Ranch wouldn’t be able to run without him,” Overshown said.
“I mean, for me, he’s always been D. I guess we grew up together, going out places and seeing everybody want to take pictures with him and wanting autographs and everything. I guess it was always something I felt was really in his element,” Shores said.
Overshown in his element while Shores leaned into his, on the ranch with the cattle. Now with Demarion learning more than he ever realized he needed to.
“I had to learn some stuff. Yeah, growing up around it, you just know, hey, I gotta feed the cows, I gotta keep them inside the fence, and I gotta basically just keep them happy. But as you learn and actually get into the business, you realize it’s a little bit more to it than that,” Overshown said,
More to the business for a player who means more to his community than most athletes, consistently giving back to students in Arp in creative ways, like a back-to-school backpack drive.
“This is where I come from. I used to play at the same park. It was actually a basketball goal right there that me and my cousins used to come and play at like I am Arp Texas,” Overshown said. “So y’all know what type of community this is.”
And more than just a name for his business, now newly displayed on the property.
“It’s a dream unfolding for us, man,” Overshown said.
Agent Zero Ranch, after the Cowboys allowed him to become the first player in franchise history to wear the number zero, and with the logo tying back to many of the most important parts of Demarvion’s life.
“So we got an O, which is also like a circle, which is so family, keeping the circle. But the O, last name, and then we got like another zero on the outside, if you look kind of like two zeros from my football number. And then, you know, you got the longhorn. You think Texas, think horns. You see them horns, you think cattle, you think ranch,” Overshown said.
A logo combining Overshown’s passions, and a business thriving in the small town of Arp that has meant so much to him on his journey to NFL stardom. Entering the prime of his career, Overshown is the definition of a cowboy, blessed to be living out his dream in a way even he sometimes believes is too good to be true.
“It sounds like a movie almost, like, it don’t sound real, but like I say, I’m blessed. You think of stuff to pass on, like a legacy when you leave that’s gonna be bigger than football; it’s gonna be bigger than all the other accolades that I get doing this. I get to leave something to my family,” Overshown said.
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