Tanking would have been the right strategy

Doomsday

Doomsday

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That is why I say signing Dalton was the worse thing the Cowboys did in the offseason.

It made them just good enough to win a few games and fall from 3rd to 10th in the draft.

Still a lot better than picking at 19 like the Skins.
 
Ranching

Ranching

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America's Cowboy said:
I've never experienced a losing season in team sports. Ever. But we all knew this team's chances of making the playoffs was cooked after the Thanksgiving game loss. Some of us told y'all this team was not going to make the playoffs since they would have needed to win out PLUS get a little help from other division opponents. I believe it had like a 4 or 6 % chance of happening, so it was not going to happen. The team at the time had like the 3rd or 4th overall draft spot. The best thing for the team at the time would have been to lose out and secure a top 3-5 spot for every round in the draft. This way the team could either choose the cream of the crop talent in every round OR trade down while picking up more draft picks because this team has lots of holes to fill both on the Oline and pretty much the whole Defense.

But NOOOOOO, it hurts too much to even think about tanking. Pride and the Cowboys name was on the line. No way should the Cowboys consider tanking!!!:facepalm:

For not tanking what did the Cowboys save/win? Their pride? Pfft...they lost their pride since way back in October/November. Instead, this team will be forced to watch 9 other teams pick better players before them in every round of the draft. Way to go! You saved your pride but lost the season and at least 5-7 spots in every round in the draft. Salute!
:facepalm:
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What would you have done to tank? I'm curious, how would you have done it without being obvious and pissing off players that were playing for their jobs?
 
JoeKing

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Ranching said:
I love football, period. I love it more when we win. One game at a time. Who the hell wants to go 1-15??? May as well not watch for a whole season and come back the next year and hope for a draft pick to win it all. How many years do you need to tank to get enough top picks to win? You'll need more than one.
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Romo ruined so many fans.
 
RonnieT24

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KB1122 said:
People talk about it never being helpful to lose on purpose, but we've been struggling to get to 8-8 every year for 15 years. If overcoming adversity to get to middling were actually such a character builder, we would have won many Super Bowls by now.

We're picking 10th. Which is OK. But we could have been picking 3rd or 4th or something in every round. So that's 40-50 spots of surrendered draft capital. And we didn't make the playoffs, so that flurry of wins at the end of the year did nothing but set us back long-term.

Also, signing a veteran backup quarterback - unless you're a serious contender, not a Jerry Jones magical-thinking contender - is a waste of resources. We got Andy Dalton. At the end of the year, our backup quarterback was better than the backup quarterbacks for other teams with injured starters. So we won a few games. It didn't help us. It hurt us. See paragraph 2.
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You're entitled to your opinion.. I just happen to disagree.. If you think the difference between the players at 10, 42 and 74 are so inferior to the players at 5, 37 and 69 you simply aren't paying attention. Aaron Donald, Tyron Smith, JJ Watt, Demarcus Ware are just a few of the guys drafted in that 9-11 range. Pick any #1 overall pick from the last decade and tell me you'd choose any of them over either of those guys.. Clowney? Garrett? Cam? Fisher? Bradford? Winston? Murray? Mayfield? Goff? MAYBE Andrew Luck but we know how that turned out long term. The key is picking the right guy and pairing him with the right coach and the right system. Do that and you could find yourself a hall of famer in any position in any round. People trippin over draft position invariably are focusing on the wrong thing. Bad drafters and coaches can screw up no matter where they draft.. and do. Likewise good drafters and good coaches can thrive no matter where they draft and do.
 
JayFord

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Why tank?

You take away the starting offensive line and starting qb you’d be lucky to go 4-12

the issue is the injuries when healthy this team wouldve won the division at 9-7 more than likely
 
Dreski

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I’d rather the Cowboys finish the season still fighting over whatever the eagles were trying to do. Giving up when the going gets tough just gets easier and easier every time
 

KB1122

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BotchedLobotomy said:
The top two stale subjects at the zone are #1. Dak is not a good QB and #2 Tanking is the Cure all
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Never said it is a cure-all. But when your starting quarterback goes down for the season in game 5, and you weren't playing that well up to that point, and your defense isn't going to win the division for you, then there's really no point in winning another game.
 
BotchedLobotomy

BotchedLobotomy

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KB1122 said:
Never said it is a cure-all. But when your starting quarterback goes down for the season in game 5, and you weren't playing that well up to that point, and your defense isn't going to win the division for you, then there's really no point in winning another game.
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Tell that to players who are programmed their entire lives to win. Tell that to coaches who’s livihood depends on winning. Ask Philly how tanking one game worked out.
 

buybuydandavis

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Aviano90 said:
I didn’t want the team to lose on purpose, I just wanted them to continue sucking like they did most of the season. Unfortunately we ran into a few teams that sucked more than we did. But, at least we choked in week 17 again. That’s becoming a Dallas Cowboys specialty.
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The way to tank and not corrupt your team is to play young guys.

Gilbert showed a little juice and we have his rights for next year.

Jaylon is done, and we should have kept him off the field to avoid any risk of his injury guarantees kicking in. Play Bernard or Gifford.

Take Crawford off the field and bring up one of the PS players. Or just play the other guys.

Play Biadasz over Looney, who might have been better by the end of the year anyway.

Another tanking option is to trade players and get picks for the future. We missed Peak Gallup. Might have been able to get a little something out of a player or two in their contract years.

Tank like Jimmy tanked; play youth. It's fun to watch young guys trying hard and improving, and it pays dividends in development for the future. But you still get your extra losses.
 
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DanA

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RonnieT24 said:
You're entitled to your opinion.. I just happen to disagree.. If you think the difference between the players at 10, 42 and 74 are so inferior to the players at 5, 37 and 69 you simply aren't paying attention. Aaron Donald, Tyron Smith, JJ Watt, Demarcus Ware are just a few of the guys drafted in that 9-11 range. Pick any #1 overall pick from the last decade and tell me you'd choose any of them over either of those guys.. Clowney? Garrett? Cam? Fisher? Bradford? Winston? Murray? Mayfield? Goff? MAYBE Andrew Luck but we know how that turned out long term. The key is picking the right guy and pairing him with the right coach and the right system. Do that and you could find yourself a hall of famer in any position in any round. People trippin over draft position invariably are focusing on the wrong thing. Bad drafters and coaches can screw up no matter where they draft.. and do. Likewise good drafters and good coaches can thrive no matter where they draft and do.
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The difference between pick 5 and 10 is 600 points. We’ve seen teams pretty consistently get the points value when trading out of early positions, especially when QB’s are in play. So if we had 5, chances are we could trade back to somewhere near 10 and have an extra 1st.

But I agree good drafting is more important, along with good contract decisions. We’ve majorly cocked things up on the contract front.

Not signing Dak long term
Franchising Dak instead of Cooper
Giving Zeke an early contract extension
Extending Jaylon
Signing Poe, Haha, Worley, McCoy, and Griffin

Really, I don’t think there’s been a good contract decision for a few years now.
 

buybuydandavis

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DanA said:
Signing Poe, Haha, Worley, McCoy, and Griffin
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Debacle.

Also, not cutting Crawford. Again. 8mil for a mediocre progress stopper. Again.

So much cap spent poorly on defense this year.

One of the untold stories are our poor evaluations on defense. McClay needs to answer for this season, *and* for the 2016-2019 drafts. Those fails were why we had next to nothing on defense this year.
 

buybuydandavis

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DanA said:
Not signing Dak long term
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All indications are that Dak has no interest in signing long term here. He probably won't sign again.

Dak wouldn't sign:
2019 - Making 2mil with 3mil prior earnings, with 3 years til free agency
2020 - Making 32mil with 5mil prior earnings, with 2 years til free agency

Now Dak is supposed to sign?
2021 - Making 38mil, with 37mil prior earnings, with 1 year til free agency
 
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