How productive was Lee during those 3-4 years? Didn’t it take a lot out of him physically
What 3 to 4 years?
LVE has been on the team 2 years.
Regardless, I'm referring to the plans for Lee going in to the 2019 season. They were going to play him at SLB & they only use a Strong Side LB on less than 30% of the snaps (Damian Wilson in 2018).
Bring back Witten for 2019 would have been OK if Garrett was NOT the Head Coach. We all knew Garrett would play Witten on too many snaps, but on a more limited basis Witten would have been really good.
The issue with Witten as compared to Lee is that they prefer to just carry 3 TEs on the roster vs 7 LBs (They carried 7 the majority of the seasons under Marinelli with his 4-3).
The 2nd TE generally needs to be a blocking TE but neither Witten (in 2019) or Jarwin were good blocking TEs (As compared to blocking TEs). Kellen Moore wanted to use Jarwin more but as always Garrett insisted on playing Witten too many snaps. That resulted in all all snaps going to Witten & Jarwin with the "blocking" TE barely playing. Schultz had become a good blocking TE by the end of the 2018 season (Swaim only played the first half of that season).
Even if they carried 4 TEs in 2020, it still wouldn't solve the issue with getting more snaps for the blocking TE unless Witten was relegated to just being the backup to Jarwin but NOT the "2nd TE". The 2nd TE would be a blocking TE.
Either way, the Cowboys need to draft a TE with a premium pick.