@ABQCOWBOY there is no point given him a rational discussion on the issues, as soon as someone mentions Dak he/she goes into meltdown and fails to get the most reasoning that paying Dak on a short term contract is a waste of money and development of the team.
The problem that Houston has is that he doesnt quite appreciate: 1) How bad our Defense is, 2) How restricted our CAP is for the next 2 years
I totally agree with the 5 year $35 aav.
my apologies in advance for the long response, but what you mentioned is quite loaded
on the contrary.....you could not be more wrong....
the goal is to go to the superbowl and obviously win it, the easiest path to the super bowl is through the QB, given if you lack in that area, it will take several more players playing at much higher levels specially on the defensive side to overcome the shortcoming of the offense, which always runs through the quarterback....
I understand that our defense is bad.... I have never argued that point. but the question and the problem is how do you fix it. seemingly, the dak detractor crowd, keep clinging to one notion "cap". That having a player paid highly, will handicap the team in fielding a competitive defense. That, logic and approach suggest that their goal is to build a defense through FA. to me that's the wrong approach which has never worked in the past, for anyone. show me one team that build through FA and succeeded.
if you really dug into the problem, you would notice over the past 15 years, we have perhaps drafted two impact players on defense (out of 44 selections). I am including Lawrence and Jones and neither of which are high impact players and one no longer on the team (where 99% of this very board wanted him gone). during the same period we have drafted over 9 players that are impact and high impact players in their positions on offense. Dak, Zeke, Martin, Smith, Collins, Gallup, CD, Fredrick(retired), Dez (cut) and made trades that had high impact, ala cooper. We also drafted some players that are paying high dividends and are high contributors , such as Schultz, Pollard, Murray, Free... with a lot less capital spent on those players...again looking over the past 15 years.
to further the defensive woes we have been woeful in signing FA with the likes of Hardy, Poe, McCoy, Griffin, Quinn (one year rental), etc. we have had some huge misses on the defensive side in draft with the likes of Claibourne, Taco, etc.
so why is it we can be so good drafting and building the offense and continuously miss on defense? until we address that issue even having 150M on the cap isn't going to solve the defensive problems.
To further dismiss the cap implications, this year alone we had 7 of the highest position contracts playing on the team including Smith,Martin, Zeke, Jaylon, Lawrence, Collins, Cooper. that with the Dak 32M cap hit on the books. so we had no issue having the ability to fit dak and have high priced contracts on the books. the question is how many of those do you want on the team? 10, 11, 12? show me which team has as many as ours?
Now, I have heard the argument, because of the cap issues we went on to sign craappy FA like Poe, etc...but the fact is that was not the issue. the issue was all of those players (McCoy, Poe, Griffin, Worley) were gone from the team by mid season and the defense improved. Thus the problem is that we couldn't' properly evaluate the players we had on the roster and their skills and how it fit in the scheme as opposed to not having enough money to sign impact players. instead of those players, we could instead have kept Byron Jones (whom everyone wanted gone and we saw the struggles in secondary this year)....so why is it again, we can't evaluate defensive players?
and if the notion is to let Dak walk, because of 3-5 million, as you said you are ok with 35M average, but will bulk at 38......so in your opinion 3M is the difference between the ability to build a championship team and not? really? we are willing to weaken the most important position on offense perhaps settling on the likes of Dalton or an unknown draft pick? and lets say we signed Dalton for 10M....we would have 25M on the cap, which players would we sign? give me names? what is the expected impact of those players on the team and defense? and is that improvement enough to compensate for the drop off in offensive performance (which we clearly had)? I have heard a lot of fantasy, Madden NFL answers to that one over time.
so no, I know our defense is bad....believe me I have harped on that...but I 100% disagree we can fix the defense through FA and I have advocated that we should not sign any defensive FA in 2021....instead lets find a way to better assess defensive players and find a couple of Gem's in draft even if it means to bring in outside consultants to help us do it....until we fix this problem: "defensive player evaluation", no amount of cap space is going to solve our problems.
second, I know the cap is restricted next year, which is even more reason to resign Dak even to a short term contract than Tag him. with a contract we can better maneuver the cap for 2021....and lets not make this just a dallas problem, because its not just Dallas dealing with the cap in 2021, 31 other NFL teams have to solve the problem to. its not unique to us.
I also think 2022 we should be back close to normal expected cap that was projected for 2022. the impact of the 2021 cap was mainly due to attendance issues, not TV money issues, and by next fall we should see return to normal or close to normal and thus put the NFL teams in better situation for 2022. Yes, I understand that's the unknown, but all NFL executives will be making similar plans and contingency backup back up plans, etc. which even makes it more important to sign Dak, because depending on what happens to 2022 cap, having players under contract can help maneuver under cap space and I assume if that's the case, most will be pushing money to future probably 2024 when its expected to go up by 20-25% based on TV renegotiations.
so can we give or get Dak to accept a 4 year contract? perhaps, if we have a poison pill in the contract that would allow him to become a FA, but would give us the ability to maneuver the cap.....
