You pay them and make sure you gain talent through the draft.
The difference between the (early)Romo era and the Dak era is that the Cowboys have been better at the draft during the latter era.
That's where you get cheap talent for 4 years.
Agreed.
Luckily, the salaries of what you are paying your staff do not count against the cap. As long as we keep Will McClay around we should be able to replace some of our quality veterans with younger guys while signing other veterans to bigger long-term contracts. We will likely keep Dak, Cooper, Zeke, and Smith for the long term, while both of the Collins and Jones will be allowed to walk. We already have potential replacements in place that have been drafted this year and the year before.
The mistake we made in the 90s and during the early Romo era is that Jerry was acting as the chief scout and we drafted horribly. Even beyond the coaching aspect, if we had been able to keep Jimmy around to run the drafts in the 90s, we would have won another Super Bowl or two as he would have been able to keep drafting the young talent to go around the core that we signed to big contracts.
I think the idea that we should do it like the Patriots is misguided. If we had the best HC of all time and one of the best QBs of all time, I would be all for it, but we have a "meh" head coach and, I am a Dak-supporter, but he is obviously not in Brady's realm at this point. Heck, 2000s Brady was not at 2010's Brady level either - the 2000s Patriots had a lot of other long-term core pro-bowlers that helped Brady win. So the idea that we should just let our core veterans walk because that's how the Patriots do it does not make sense.