I am talking about the move in and of itself. You at no point deny that the move was awful. You just want to talk around the issue.
Generally speaking making moves like that is awful. For example, we gave up much less for Claiborne and that was widely regarded as one of the worst transactions the team has made the past few decades.
In the context of today by no means whatsoever should the Cowboys trade up for a 1T.
is your goal a post mortem analysis of what happened? if that's the case, then fine. but I don't much care for that.
what should we do now? should we do trades and for whom? which player should we select and why? who do we sign in FA and why? how do they mesh in the over all plan? what is the over all plan? and how do new players fit into the plan and what's their purpose.
so you said don't draft a 1T...well, on the other hand we were 28th in run defense, giving up average of 4.8 YPC....sounds like we need somebody to stop the runs....but also how does he fit into the rest of the defensive game plan? now you look at good run defense teams and 11 of the top 12 teams were in the playoffs only one of the other 20 were in the playoffs....so a 1T as unsexy as it sounds, maybe what we need. just looking at increasing the odds for success. but it has to be as close to sure as possible understanding there is never 100%.....its about risks you take.... you can try and swing for the fences, yes you will hit a home run sometimes, but you will also strike out a lot.
so if you can answer above questions now, and then we come back and evaluate in 3 years, 5 years or 10 years.....that would be fantastic. would be a nice post mortem analysis.
and again, at the time, I am going to repeat this again, at the time with facts and knowledge known then...not 30 years later....there was a lot of risk with a lot of the players, there were lots of unknowns. so do you like to gamble? and why? what's your ultimate goal and why gamble?
he could have picked the other players, but some as we now know didn't work out, some did....at the time all you had was the scouting report.
Johnson felt the cowboys were close. he had a plan and he wanted a KNOWN quantity than a gamble. he didn't want a home run hitter. he wanted somebody that can get on base consistently because he had the rest of the team to get him home (sorry baseball analogy here, as a different way of looking at it). why? because he felt confident that in his plan, he could make it to the superbowl and be champions....so why gamble if your ultimate goal was superbowls and not HOF players on your team. because he could more easily manage that. why take unnecessary risks? when you have a sure thing that you know its going to work and you can use for specific purpose that fits your plan. I mentioned this in another comment, Johnson even spoke to those points on why he went for maryland....
subsequently, as you have done post mortem analysis, I will do the same, my post mortem analysis is that he was right. he didn't gamble. he may have paid a little extra to get the player he wanted, to fill a cog in his team and end results speaks volumes more than we should have taken X player instead because 30 years later I am doing analysis and we have 1000000 of facts to come to a certain conlcusion, none of which were available then.
great post mortem analysis. not sure how it fits in what we should do moving forward. and perhaps its good for a chapter, or article in NFL history books.
