its all about the draft. with the new salaries, specially at QB, its all about the draft and taking advantage of your talent in the first 4 or 5 years. unfortunately our past two drafts have been dismal. thus we ended up dipping into FA market. it puts us a couple of years behind since we have not been able to fill a few holes and now due to impending FAs of our own, will have more holes to fill. its the mess Jerry has created.
Being that Jerry has relinquish more control over to his son Stephen Jones and the club counts so heavily on Wil McClay with the player personnel talent, it’s really more on the later two than Jerry himself nowadays.
it should be about BOTH the draft and Free agency. But Stephen jones seems to have a long standing and firm philosophy of how he prefers the Cowboys to operate in FA.
I can understand (and agree) on a couple of those philosophies in
- not being committed to "average " players getting big dollar contracts.
- not being too committed to too 'many " declining, aging 30 players to the roster
- ?? (it was one more but I'll recall it later ..lol)
And what I like this team to much become better at addressing is ... not waiting for that
Brick Wall disaster hits before they final decide to make more of an effort to address:
- Sean lee is showing that he cannot stay healthy and we cant operate without him – so how long di it take for us to finally get LVE in as a replacement ?
- Romo is showing us the nagging nick and back issues are affecting him and causing his decline
– how long did it take for us to decide on a true capable RB in Pollard ,,.rather than the likes of Rod Smith ?
and while there's been gret breaks and manuevers such as Cooper and Quinn trades . there's been some hiccups that have proven crippling...
- The Taco pick over TJ Watt - ouch ,,that’s a 1st rounder who was actually cut before his rookie contract was even expired., while Watt is among top defensive players in NFL. .
- Hopefully Trysten Hill turns that potential bad pick around and not end up being like Taco.
- Aside from Dlaw, what other enforcers do we have up front… if we lose Quinn ?
In Free Agency, what outside vet, has been our impact player ? No earl Thomas,.. no Calasis Campbell,.. no Stephen Gilmore, etc, etc. we just do the fillers, decent depth guys ( Hyder, Covington, etc.)
we just don't pursue the big impact guys.like we should
the last was reportedly WR Sammy Watkins., and how would that have worked out with him as a lead WR?
But not establishing a middle ground of adding that impact vet FA player- that’s an area that I think Stephen’s ways are/have crippled this team’s chances.
But it goes beyond the front office’s managing decisions – the past coaching and their own decisions has proven just as crippling,