AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys - Source: Unsplash
Which Former UFL Stars are Shining in NFL Preseason Training Camps?
Go back to Week 9 of last season, and the Cowboys locker room did not feel like a team headed for the fringe of Super Bowl contention. It felt like a team paying for having traded away its best defender. Dallas had shipped Micah Parsons to Green Bay a week before the opener, and the defense left to answer for it was historically bad — 30.1 points allowed per game, worst in the NFL, second-worst mark in the franchise's 66 seasons. A loss to Arizona on Monday night dropped Dallas to 3-5-1 at the bye.
Aubrey and Turpin Light Up Jerry World
Through it all, two products of the same UFL pipeline this story is about kept the season from being a total loss: Brandon Aubrey, automatic from anywhere inside 65 yards, and KaVontae Turpin, a live wire who could flip field position on one punt return. Both ended the year as second-team All-Pro. The defense around them looked unsalvageable.
Then Jerry Jones did what Jerry Jones does. At the trade deadline, with Dallas the league's second-worst scoring defense, he flipped draft capital from the Parsons deal into All-Pro tackle Quinnen Williams from the Jets, pairing him next to Kenny Clark up front. The turnaround wasn't gradual. Dallas beat the Raiders, rallied from 21 down to stun defending champion Philadelphia 24-21, then four days later beat Kansas City 31-28 on Thanksgiving — the same two teams that had just played each other for the Lombardi Trophy the previous year.
Beating both Super Bowl participants inside a single week changes how a locker room sees itself, and it reshaped the franchise's offseason: Christian Parker in as defensive coordinator, Caleb Downs and Malachi Lawrence added in the draft, Rashan Gary acquired via trade, Jalen Thompson signed. A punchline defense in September became, by the following August, the foundation of a team online betting sites are talking about as a fringe Super Bowl contender.
The latest Lucky Rebel NFL Team Odds make the Cowboys a +2200 shot to go all the way in 2026, by no means a favorite, but level with the likes of Joe Burrow's Cincinnati Bengals and last season's AFC No. 1 seed Denver Broncos. Much of their rebirth wouldn't have been possible without Aubrey and Turpin, two of the UFL's greatest ever exports. And this summer, three men are attempting to follow in their footsteps.
Hakeem Butler (WR, Denver Broncos)
Picture a 30-year-old man lacing up for a padded practice he knows might be his last real shot — his sixth team, with exactly two NFL regular-season games played since Arizona drafted him 103rd overall out of Iowa State in 2019. That's Hakeem Butler's summer.
The talent was never the question — 60 catches, a school-record 1,318 yards, and nine touchdowns as an Iowa State junior in 2018, a nation-leading 22.0 yards per catch. It's why he's the UFL's all-time leading receiver and a two-time Offensive Player of the Year. Denver made him its first UFL signing of the offseason, and for two padded practices in a row, he looked like the best receiver on the field, capping it with a 70-yard touchdown he had to rip away from undrafted rookie corner Ahmari Harvey.
Then camp turned. He got beaten badly by the smaller, 5-foot-11 undrafted corner Brent Austin on a contested ball. Rookie linebacker Red Murdock forced a fumble on him. In the preseason opener, he was targeted twice and caught nothing, including a drop he should have made. That's not tape a bubble receiver can afford.
Butler's fighting for a sixth or seventh spot behind a room Denver considers mostly set, courtesy of names such as Courtland Sutton and new arrival Jaylen Waddle. If he sticks, he's a size mismatch in the red zone. If he doesn't, this is likely the last chapter.
Keshawn Banks (DE, Atlanta Falcons)
Keshawn Banks has lived the practice-squad shuffle three times over — Green Bay, where he made his lone NFL appearance in a January 2024 playoff game before getting cut; New England, three special-teams-only games before release that December; Arizona, where he never saw the field. That's the résumé of a guy who piles up 139 tackles and 42 tackles for loss across five seasons at San Diego State, goes undrafted anyway, and spends three years getting told no.
Orlando's expansion Storm gave him a real role this spring, and he made the most of it — a league-leading 11.0 tackles for loss and five sacks. Atlanta signed him in the first wave of UFL free agency, and in the preseason opener, he did something none of the other names here matched: graded out as Atlanta's best defensive player, period, a 90.2 PFF grade on just 24 snaps. The problem is that Atlanta's edge room got considerably more crowded over the summer with the additions of Azeez Ojulari, Samson Ebukam, and Cam Thomas, and Banks's path now runs almost entirely through special teams.
Sean Fresch Jr. (CB/PR, Denver Broncos)
At 5-foot-8 and 173 pounds, Sean Fresch ran a 4.40 forty at his pro day and still went undrafted out of Rice, where he racked up 152 tackles, 30 pass breakups, three interceptions, and 847 combined return yards across five seasons. He landed with San Antonio, then St. Louis in the January UFL draft, and turned in an All-UFL season, leading the league with 32 punt returns for 333 yards.
Denver signed him in June alongside Battlehawks teammate Butler, which meant a reunion with Broncos corner Jahdae Barron — a childhood friend from Austin who attended the same private school growing up. In Denver's preseason opener, Fresch quietly did what Butler couldn't: a tackle and a pass breakup on twelve defensive snaps, good for an 86.3 PFF grade, outproducing a two-time UFL Offensive Player of the Year on the same field.
His size makes a clean roster spot a long shot. But the return game, much like Dallas' Turpin, gives him a lane nobody else here has.