Bill Barnwell: Jerry's Broken Toy

[Miller]

Interesting read. I'll let others either say they agree or call Barnwell names. The usual...I thought it was a very well done article with facts, figures and a good amount of knowledge on the issues, showing the good and bad. Footnotes he has help.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9876519/bill-barnwell-jerry-jones-cowboys

Last weekend was everything good and bad about the Dallas Cowboys. The team on the field was exhibiting an impressive, high-variance performance: Despite holding star linebacker DeMarcus Ware out with an injury for the first time since Dallas drafted him in 2005, the much-maligned Cowboys defense delivered an elite performance by limiting one of the league's best offenses, Philadelphia, to a lone field goal in a 17-3 victory.1

Off the field last weekend, the Cowboys were asserting their own shortcomings through the media. One report noted that the Cowboys were unhappy with injured running back DeMarco Murray, a player who fell to their third-round pick of the 2011 draft specifically because he had so many injury issues at Oklahoma. The report suggested that the Cowboys wanted to replace Murray and upgrade at running back " … possibly in a big way," implying that the Cowboys would be looking to acquire a big-ticket running back who is being paid a premium salary. Hours later, Adam Schefter tweeted that theCowboys are expected to be $31 million over the salary cap next year, with an NFL executive decrying their financial situation as "a train wreck."

The Cowboys have moments when they look like the best team in football and moments when they look entirely incompetent, occasionally during the same contest. They have terrible drafts and great drafts. They do something good teams do — lock up their own young talent — and somehow make more mistakes doing it than anybody else. If insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results, nobody is crazier than Jerry Jones, personnel man.

 

[DogFace]

I don't like it

 

[Zordon]

hopefully jerry finally wakes up from his brain dead state after this ratliff fiasco. but yeah that's a pretty damning article. it all starts with the draft. you don't draft well then you're forced to overpay for vets.

 

[SWG9]

"(Jerry) pays top dollar for premium talent, and sees the guys on the bottom of its roster blow plays that cost it playoff chances"


Now ain't that the truth.

 

[movaughn88]

He's a giants fan and I think this article is pretty biased. He certainly gets some facts right and nails Jerry's bad contracts, but I think this article could be written about a lot of teams.

I stopped taking him seriously when he basically said since 2003 we have had a running back problem because we've "run through" a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rounder and have had 4 starting backs in the last 10 years. Um, are there other teams that have had one back that whole time and used no picks or money? Running backs don't last long in the league, and other than Barber (yes, bad contract) there haven't been any large financial commitments there but he says we want to devote "more money" to the running back position. I don't understand his logic here at all and think he sounds a bit silly. Am a alone here on this one?

 

[Idgit]

Yeah, a bit unfair to ding the organization for an unsourced, unsubstantiated rumor that we were looking to trade for a running back. Jerry says enough dumb things into a microphone that can get him dinged directly.

 

[Nova]

Well thought out article, but I just don’t see the doom and gloom it tries to portray with the ‘impending cap armageddon’.


That same impending cap Armageddon has been coming for a long time and never has really surfaced.


And if we over pay to keep our own players, wouldn’t a ‘cap Armageddon’ be a blessing in disguise?


Lastly, with regard to bad extensions… We all know about Jerry overpaying, but how long has it been since that has happened? Did we overpay Spencer? I feel like it’s been a few years since the team has tried to keep players past their prime. This team has been more about drafting well and churning the roster the last few years.


To me, this article is a little late.

 

[Nova]

He's a giants fan and I think this article is pretty biased. He certainly gets some facts right and nails Jerry's bad contracts, but I think this article could be written about a lot of teams.

I stopped taking him seriously when he basically said since 2003 we have had a running back problem because we've "run through" a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rounder and have had 4 starting backs in the last 10 years. Um, are there other teams that have had one back that whole time and used no picks or money? Running backs don't last long in the league, and other than Barber (yes, bad contract) there haven't been any large financial commitments there but he says we want to devote "more money" to the running back position. I don't understand his logic here at all and think he sounds a bit silly. Am a alone here on this one?

I also think the guy totally whiffs on the RB situation, completely dismissing factors surrounding the situation and embellishing the ‘resources’ we’ve poured into the position and lost. We didn’t simply get tired of our RBs, they stopped producing.

Since 2004, we’ve had 5 starters at RB… Julius, Felix, Marion, DeMarco (and Eddie George if you want to count him like the author has). I would think that’s pretty normal for that span.

In fact, my go-to comparison, New England in that same span?

Correy Dillion, Laurence Maroney, Sammy Morris, Benjarvus Green-Ellis, Stevan Ridley.

And in a lot of those years, they were running back by committee with guys like Fred Taylor and Kevin Faulk being on the team.

 

[perrykemp]

This is the part of the article that I think best encapsulates the biggest problem with the front-office:

"Instead, the Cowboys have to create cap space by perpetually restructuring contracts and turning large base salaries into signing bonuses that they can then spread over the length of the deal. Take Witten, who has four years left on his deal and a base salary of $5 million next year with $3.4 million in bonuses, for a cap hit of $8.4 million. The Cowboys need Witten, but they also need to field a team and create cap space. What they usually do is renegotiate the contract by turning most of that base salary — let's say $4 million — into a guaranteed signing bonus. Witten gets his money up front, but the Cowboys get to spread that $4 million over the four remaining years of the deal at $1 million per year. Now, the Cowboys' theoretical cap for 2014 has Witten with a base salary of $1 million and assorted bonuses totaling $4.4 million; that's a total of just $5.4 million, meaning the Cowboys now have $3 million more to throw around. It's a painless transaction … until Witten (or one of the guys from that table) is no longer playable. That's when all the bonuses you've been throwing into the back of the deal for years come due, and you're paying millions in dead money."

 

[movaughn88]

If he is saying the problem is that we are gambling on Witten being our most dependable and consistent player for 4 more years at a decent salary and restructuring his deal around that projection, then there is no right answer, because I'm not sure you could name many players in the league you would rather pick to rely on.

 

[Nova]

This is the part of the article that I think best encapsulates the biggest problem with the front-office:

"Instead, the Cowboys have to create cap space by perpetually restructuring contracts and turning large base salaries into signing bonuses that they can then spread over the length of the deal. Take Witten, who has four years left on his deal and a base salary of $5 million next year with $3.4 million in bonuses, for a cap hit of $8.4 million. The Cowboys need Witten, but they also need to field a team and create cap space. What they usually do is renegotiate the contract by turning most of that base salary — let's say $4 million — into a guaranteed signing bonus. Witten gets his money up front, but the Cowboys get to spread that $4 million over the four remaining years of the deal at $1 million per year. Now, the Cowboys' theoretical cap for 2014 has Witten with a base salary of $1 million and assorted bonuses totaling $4.4 million; that's a total of just $5.4 million, meaning the Cowboys now have $3 million more to throw around. It's a painless transaction … until Witten (or one of the guys from that table) is no longer playable. That's when all the bonuses you've been throwing into the back of the deal for years come due, and you're paying millions in dead money."

I tend to disagree with the doom and gloom aspect of restructuring contracts. Either you lose money now, or lose money later, either way if you’re not ‘hitting’ on a player, you’re losing money.

 

[Idgit]

This is the part of the article that I think best encapsulates the biggest problem with the front-office:

"Instead, the Cowboys have to create cap space by perpetually restructuring contracts and turning large base salaries into signing bonuses that they can then spread over the length of the deal. Take Witten, who has four years left on his deal and a base salary of $5 million next year with $3.4 million in bonuses, for a cap hit of $8.4 million. The Cowboys need Witten, but they also need to field a team and create cap space. What they usually do is renegotiate the contract by turning most of that base salary — let's say $4 million — into a guaranteed signing bonus. Witten gets his money up front, but the Cowboys get to spread that $4 million over the four remaining years of the deal at $1 million per year. Now, the Cowboys' theoretical cap for 2014 has Witten with a base salary of $1 million and assorted bonuses totaling $4.4 million; that's a total of just $5.4 million, meaning the Cowboys now have $3 million more to throw around. It's a painless transaction … until Witten (or one of the guys from that table) is no longer playable. That's when all the bonuses you've been throwing into the back of the deal for years come due, and you're paying millions in dead money."

This would definitely be a competitive disadvantage if most of the league used the entirety of the cap, but the reality is most teams don't, so at least some amount of cap space is available each year to be used for this sort of personnel management. At some point it's an obvious disadvantage, but I haven't ever seen enough cap data to make it clear where we are relative to the rest of the league in this regard. There are just too many factors that go into cap management for a top-line accounting like this to give a useful picture of what's really going on.

 

[JD_KaPow]

The article is generally pretty fair, and the problem the Cowboys face is real (no, not "everybody does it" to the extent that the Cowboys do), and he highlights Jerry's greatest weakness: he falls in love with his players. But there are problems.

1. The whole RB discussion really muddles his point. Except for MBIII, the RB story is one of NOT giving guys extensions, letting them move on, all of which seem like the right decision in retrospect. We won't sign Murray to an extension either: good. The fact that we spent some high-round picks on RBs that didn't turn into long-term solutions? That IS something that everybody does. The draft is a crapshoot and nobody hits consistently on high-round picks.
2. The Claiborne pick criticism is 20-20 hindsight. At the time, everyone agreed that Claiborne was a top-5 guy and that we paid a below-market price for him. Yeah, a lot of people here would have preferred we go a different way with those picks, but this was not a crazy Jerry move. The fact is that Jerry hasn't made one of those crazy awful deals since the Roy Williams trade, and I like to think he's learned his lesson on that. (If he does end up trading for an RB of all things, I'll take that back). Barnwell's just reaching on this one.

 

[Common Sense]

I tend to disagree with the doom and gloom aspect of restructuring contracts. Either you lose money now, or lose money later, either way if you’re not ‘hitting’ on a player, you’re losing money.

The fallacy is thinking that losing money now is no different than losing money later.

 

[Nova]

The fallacy is thinking that losing money now is no different than losing money later.

Please, explain.

Edit: Cynicism aside. I'm truly curious.

 

[Nova]

Why is Scandrick's contract listed as a 'bad extension'?

Scandrick has been a lights out slot corner and will be 29 when the extension is up.

 

[big dog cowboy]

Bill Barnwell: Jerry's Broken Toy

I gotta admit that title made me a little nervous.

 

[Miller]

He's a giants fan and I think this article is pretty biased. He certainly gets some facts right and nails Jerry's bad contracts, but I think this article could be written about a lot of teams.

I stopped taking him seriously when he basically said since 2003 we have had a running back problem because we've "run through" a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rounder and have had 4 starting backs in the last 10 years. Um, are there other teams that have had one back that whole time and used no picks or money? Running backs don't last long in the league, and other than Barber (yes, bad contract) there haven't been any large financial commitments there but he says we want to devote "more money" to the running back position. I don't understand his logic here at all and think he sounds a bit silly. Am a alone here on this one?

I don't think it is the fact that we have had 4 RBs in 10 years...though I look at many teams and there are more long termers than I expected. I think it is how they are managed a) tire of the guy before b) throw mad money at the new guy, who used to be part time c) run the new flavor of the year into the ground to the point where they breakdown and d) rinse and repeat. It seems the system works best when back are sharing time and can use their strengths vs..needing a bell cow who makes a lot of cash on a 4 year deal.

I don't see him as biased at all. The guy laid out a ton of facts to support the cap view. My only issue is that he spent 90% of the article laying out a well thought out premise and then ended it by a few throw away generalizations.

As for the cap stuff. Whether you lose money now or later, the issue is Jerry is in a cycle that at some point will need to stop by either drafting better, him being smarter with extensions or a tank of a year where guys are just cut and we take the hit.

 

[Common Sense]

Please, explain.

Edit: Cynicism aside. I'm truly curious.

Because it's impossible to precisely control how money lost gets stacked on top of each other in later seasons. I don't think the team intended to eat all of Ratliff's contract next year, for example, which means that something else will unintentionally get pushed back into the future, and who's to say that money doesn't have another unintended consequence, and so on? 2015 or 2016 may be the year that it all finally adds up, but it has to happen at some point.

Also, consider this:

The team created about $28 million in cap space this year by "borrowing" $7 million from 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 each. They still have to account for the missing $7 million next season on top of about $24 million in either dead money or commitments. They'll cut some players, for sure, but they'll still likely have to "borrow" another $30-40 million just to field a competitive team and stay cap compliant. So they'll borrow it from 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. Let's say that adds an extra $9 million per season to the cap for those years.

Now we're looking at $16 million a season for 2015, 2016, and 2017, and that's not counting dead money from releases or trades. 2015 looks like another cap nightmare, especially with new contracts for Dez and Tyron. They will probably need to "borrow" more money from future caps that year as well (2016-2019). Let's split the difference between the previous two loan amounts and just say $8 million per season. Now you're dealing with $24 million in added commitments for 2016 and 2017 ($7 + $9 + $8 million), $17 million in 2018 ($9 + $8 million), and that last $8 million for 2018. Somewhere in these years you're also going to have to deal with the dead money that will come from all of the back-end bonuses in the contracts of players like Romo, Ware, and Carr. This could easily turn into an Aikman-like situation.

I know that there are plenty of factors that could come into play here -- a big boost to the cap in 2015 could give the team some breathing room, but the point is there doesn't seem to be an end in sight to these restructures until the team pays the piper in regards to the current core of highly paid players. And it's going to be really, really ugly.

 

[lurkercowboy]

Claiborne is an "unmitigated disaster?" Wow, I just don't see it.