A Dose of Reality

[jobberone]

oh come on. It has happened many times over the years where coaches pets get special treatment. Just look at Hayden. And Parnell clearly had more upside and was younger then Free so frankly it was not a great decision. I think though that the boys really wanted someone a lot younger - so they decided to hang with free for a year or two more while drafting his replacement.

I don't agree about those players. It's difficult for fans to know what goes on in team meetings, on and off the field things, the film room, practice or for many here the All 22. Even with film if you don't know the assignments or the options for say the DBs or OL to react to a play then you still don't know much.

You have people in the game for many years most as players and coaches who know so much more than the average fan. Although I'm not surprised I'm still amazed people think they know more than the coaches and FO do.

 

[burmafrd]

Concept thinking is foreign to you, huh?

How's this. You make the argument that Murray will decline. Because it happened to others.

No team EVER won a Superbowl in a year their tailback won the season rushing title.

Until Emmitt did it three times.

So what someone else does or doesn't do has no bearing on the next event that is similar. It's called chaos theory.

are you really this dense? 90%+ of running backs over the last 20 years that have had the carries Murray did last year were NEVER the same again. NEVER came close to producing like that again. AND somehow to you that means nothing? here is little hint:

when 25 people in a row tell you that you are drunk its time to borrow a quarter and lay down in the gutter.

 

[ConstantReboot]

People forget the fact that Murray was always a productive back. Murray averaged like 5 yards per. carry during his career even without this oline.

I still wish we could have signed him. But not the price that Eagles were giving him.

I'm also still not sold on the MacFadden/Randle combo. Just worried that McFadden can hold up the entire year and I don't think Randle can handle the workload if McFadden is injured. Thus I still hope they bring someone in who is more like a workhorse rather than a homerun hitter.

 

[ActualCowboysFan]

Last four leading rushers have dropped an average of 673 yards in the following season. None of them had nearly the amount of touches Murray had. None of them changed teams either and the only team that saw any success was the Vikings.

 

[5Stars]

People forget the fact that Murray was always a productive back. Murray averaged like 5 yards per. carry during his career even without this oline.

I still wish we could have signed him. But not the price that Eagles were giving him.

I'm also still not sold on the MacFadden/Randle combo. Just worried that McFadden can hold up the entire year and I don't think Randle can handle the workload if McFadden is injured. Thus I still hope they bring someone in who is more like a workhorse rather than a homerun hitter.

Well, once cut downs start to happen maybe the Cowboys will find someone else. It seems that the FO is good at churning the roster.

 

[jobberone]

Let's watch the personal attacks which include people's intelligence, please.

 

[Nightman]

Not if there is no cap. Then it doesn't matter. Since 94 and the cap advent then there are consequences.

I just can't buy the cap argument when we are 10m under this year and didn't max out with Carr and Wittten.

We are 40m+ under next year with a couple simple moves and have to sign Hardy, TCrawford, Leary?, Carr? and Free?

The fear mongering over the cap may cost us a Super Bowl.

Dallas didn't mismanage the cap as much as they signed a few bad contracts under an artificially flat cap.

 

[lwehlers]

How long will Romo play?

Is the window now or later?

So while we all have our opinions, the clock on Romo's is the arbiter of what is and what isn't. Because this franchise will not pull a top flight QB out of a hat like a magician if and when Romo is done. And what we have seen in the past is a QB in Aikman who went down hill so rapidly it was shocking. Irvin is another player - albeit not a QB - who dropped off the NFL map with one play.

I do agree with your premise on cap and all that. Yet it takes one moment in time for this team to have solid support players and no leader.

Hence the concern with the now and not the later for some of us.

Because this Dallas Cowboy solar system rotates around the sun named Romo.

There have been a lot of discussions and concern about the loss of several players from last year, just like there was the year before when we lost other players like Ware, Ratliff, Hatcher, etc. Unfortunately, that is the consequence of having a salary cap. It sometimes means you have to let players go while they can still help your team, but it also helps keep teams from holding on to players too long. It's a normalization process that is tough to deal with as fans, especially when it comes to the extreme ends of that spectrum.

When players' rookie contracts are up, you have to weigh their importance to the team beyond the first season after that. Would Murray be worthy 8 million this year? Absolutely, but would he be worth 8 million next year or the year after that? Not sure about that. Would Parnell be worth $5-6 million this year? What about next year or the year after that? What about Harris? or Carter?

The point is that everyone complaining or concerned about players that we should have resigned for a lot of money this year are only thinking about this season. A lot of the fans who are complaining or pointing out the loss of players as potential season-killing moves would also be the same ones complaining in 2016, 2017, etc. about how Jerry and Co. have poorly managed the salary cap by giving out horrible contracts to backup or declining players. This scenario would be amplified if the Cowboys were to have overpaid for Murray, Harris, Parnell, Spencer, Carter, etc. and then failed to make it to the Super Bowl this or next season.

Am I concerned about finding replacements for the players we lost? Absolutely! Will at the end of the season I look back and blame a non-great year on the loss of those players? Not at all. Why? Because it's not like the Cowboys season was doomed by the loss of those players. Instead, it would mean they did a poor job of replacing them when you consider they had players already on the roster that they had inside knowledge of in their ability to replace the players not resigned and beyond that, they had free agency, the draft and the upcoming post-training camp cuts that will include a lot of veterans that could be signed to reasonable or overpaid (if desperate enough) one or two year contracts rather than long-term cap-harmful contracts.

In the past, the Cowboys front office tried year after year to win by retaining as many of their players as possible which led to salary cap hell year after year filled with overpaid contracts and millions in dead money. They finally started to think beyond the current season like most of the other successful teams. What this does though is put the success or failure of each season more on the front office and coaching staff rather than the players. The best teams trust in their front office and coaching staffs to weather the loss of players without hampering the team's success. Basically, it's time for the Cowboys front office and coaching staff to prove themselves and so far, with this new strategy the last couple of seasons, I think there is obvious reason to be optimistic for a change.

I agree. the defensive players that were let go and parnell I am ok with not resigning but I still believe that murray should have been resigned. romo only has two really good years in him and the front office should have made sure that he had the right players around him. last night I saw randle get run over and led to romo being sacked. murray would not have let that happened. also murray is entering his prime years and we will not get to use those years. sorry for the rant. everything else I think your are totally right about. we could have structured murrays contract to avoid a big cap hit down the road. just my opinion.

 

[jobberone]

I just can't buy the cap argument when we are 10m under this year and didn't max out with Carr and Wittten.

We are 40m+ under next year with a couple simple moves and have to sign Hardy, TCrawford, Leary?, Carr? and Free?

The fear mongering over the cap may cost us a Super Bowl.

Dallas didn't mismanage the cap as much as they signed a few bad contracts under an artificially flat cap.

I was answering another member who brought up E Smith in 93. There was no cap that year so what his salary was in not relevant then.

There is no fear mongering. We are doing the same as other successful teams in avoiding paying for players not playing on a par with their contracts be it year one or later. Nor are we overpaying for players.

You forget that players you are counting on get injured or suspended etc. And other players get an opportunity and outplay who they replace. So signing Murray and somewhat hamstringing yourself now and later may net you a player who is on IR or dinged up enough to miss a lot of games or play more poorly for it.

You are saying we may lose a chance at a SB because we are worried about a non-existent problem. And most here disagree with you.

 

[Plankton]

I was answering another member who brought up E Smith in 93. There was no cap that year so what his salary was in not relevant then.

There is no fear mongering. We are doing the same as other successful teams in avoiding paying for players not playing on a par with their contracts be it year one or later. Nor are we overpaying for players.

You forget that players you are counting on get injured or suspended etc. And other players get an opportunity and outplay who they replace. So signing Murray and somewhat hamstringing yourself now and later may net you a player who is on IR or dinged up enough to miss a lot of games or play more poorly for it.

You are saying we may lose a chance at a SB because we are worried about a non-existent problem. And most here disagree with you.

Actually, the contract with Smith did matter.

In 1993, it was known that there was going to be a salary cap in 1994. It was a direct result of the Freeman McNeil case - the league and the players association agreed to the rules on free agency and the cap was a part of it.

Any long term contract signed in 1993 was going to be negotiated and signed with a cap in mind. The holdout was as contentious and as long as it was for that very reason. That, and the fact that Jones and Smith's agent, Richard Howell, hated each others guts.

 

[Nightman]

I was answering another member who brought up E Smith in 93. There was no cap that year so what his salary was in not relevant then.

There is no fear mongering. We are doing the same as other successful teams in avoiding paying for players not playing on a par with their contracts be it year one or later. Nor are we overpaying for players.

You forget that players you are counting on get injured or suspended etc. And other players get an opportunity and outplay who they replace. So signing Murray and somewhat hamstringing yourself now and later may net you a player who is on IR or dinged up enough to miss a lot of games or play more poorly for it.

You are saying we may lose a chance at a SB because we are worried about a non-existent problem. And most here disagree with you.

You can't just brush aside being 40-50m under the cap.

That is practically carte blanche. Most fans are not aware how much space is easily available.

It kind of throttles any arguments for austerity.

 

[Luther]

Let's watch the personal attacks which include people's intelligence, please.

I'm really stupid, and even I can see that Murray's production this year will almost certainly be a lot less than last year.

(does that cross the "personal attack" line)

 

[jobberone]

Smith got 7M upfront and 6.5M over the life of the contract. The cap was 34.6M

Here is the cap up to 2009:

http://i471.***BLOCKED***/albums/rr75/jobberone/Screen%20Shot%202015-08-30%20at%2011.40.24%20PM_zpsuhufetdv.png

The Cowboys' Emmitt Smith, made $13.6 million over four years, and the Bills' Thurman Thomas ($13.5 million):

.. .. .. .. .. Smith .. .. .. .. .. Thomas

'93 bonus .. .. $4 mil. . .. .. .. .. None (I had 7M up front)

'93 salary .. ..$3 mil. .. .. .. .. ..$4 mil.

'94 salary .. ..$2.2 mil. .. .. .. .. $2.8 mil.

'95 salary .. ..$2.4 mil. .. .. .. .. $2.8 mil.

'96 salary .. ..$2 mil. .. .. .. .. ..$3.9 mil.

Without knowing the salaries of all the players it's hard to say a lot. I can only fine back to 2011. If someone has that data then I'd like to see it.

So I don't know how Smith's salary affected the cap but it doesn't appear terrible for someone who played all but 7 games from 1990-2002 gaining 18K yards on 4400 carries. Not a bad deal.

So I don't see how E Smith is relevant to the conversation concerning Murray other than to make Murray look average.

I didn't look at salary ratios because without knowing the league average and the two team's salary cap I don't know what to say.

 

[jobberone]

You can't just brush aside being 40-50m under the cap.

That is practically carte blanche. Most fans are not aware how much space is easily available.

It kind of throttles any arguments for austerity.

You keep saying that but you're talking about borrowing money on tomorrow's cap from todays. It's why they are being more fiscally sound. Sure you can make it fit under the cap but only by kicking the can down the road.

Have a nice nite.

 

[jobberone]

I'm really stupid, and even I can see that Murray's production this year will almost certainly be a lot less than last year.

(does that cross the "personal attack" line)

Nope. Calling yourself stupid doesn't count esp when its not true.

 

[Nightman]

You keep saying that but you're talking about borrowing money on tomorrow's cap from todays. It's why they are being more fiscally sound. Sure you can make it fit under the cap but only by kicking the can down the road.

Have a nice nite.

Interest free loans with cash back bonuses. Simple math.