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The Cowboys applied the franchise tag to superstar wide receiver Dez Bryant, per the team's official site. Doing so, they secure his services for 2015 at a healthy, but below-market, rate of $12.8 million.
By locking down the best receiver in the NFL, the No. 5 scoring offense of 2014 should be mostly intact for 2015. Tailback DeMarco Murray might be the only missing piece; Cowboys vice president Stephen Jones told Mark Lane of Fox Sports Southwest Murray would be allowed to "see what's out in the market."
This is wise. Murray just answered a career-long series of questions about his ball security and durability with a 380-carry season. However, as Football Outsiders has repeatedly found, backs who pound out 370 or more carries in a season commonly suffer injury or regression the next year.
Jones, from the moment he bought the Cowboys, has been the NFL's big-spending whale. Flashing fat bankrolls and raking chips, he's gleefully gone all in on players, coaches, marketing deals and the most ostentatious stadium in North America.
By hedging his bets on the mercurial wideout, realizing he's not likely to ever get a better season out of Murray than he just got and betting the offensive line he built can make any good runner into a great one, Jerry Jones has finally become the NFL's smart money.
About this time two years ago, the notorious owner/general manager admitted his post-Jimmy Johnson decision-making hadn't always panned out, per Bleacher Report's Clarence Hill, writing for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
"I would grant you the decisions that have been made over the years have not produced a Super Bowl," Jones told Hill, "The only thing I am going to do there is keep trying and then make sure I get the credit when we do get that one. Y’all are going to give it to me, aren’t you?”
Since that quote, Jones and the Cowboys have played the last two offseasons like a fiddle.
He drafted center Travis Frederick and guard Zack Martin with back-to-back first-round picks—resisting the temptation to take Johnny Manziel. He signed left tackle Tyron Smith to an eight-year, $97.6 million extension, giving the Cowboys an up-front foundation they haven't had since their Johnson-led glory days. He locked up quarterback Tony Romo to a six-year, $108 million deal, too.
The Cowboys added coaches Scott Linehan and Rod Marinelli—who took some of the X's and O's duties away from head coach Jason Garrett, offensive coordinator Bill Callahan and defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin—and ran with them, helping get the most out of talented frustrations like Murray and cornerback Orlando Scandrick. They even got quality play out of enigma Rolando McCLain, the talented linebacker who'd twice retired out of frustration.
Most of all, they unlocked the tremendous potential of Bryant. His 88 catches, 1,320 receiving yards and NFL-best 16 receiving touchdowns not only helped Romo have a career year, it earned Bryant a spot on the Associated Press' first-team All-Pro roster.
So why won't the Cowboys commit to Bryant?
"Jerry loves to be right," Shan Shariff of 105.3 The Fan in Dallas told Bleacher Report radio on March 1. Under normal circumstances, a former Jones first-rounder who got an All-Pro nod would be swimming in cash.
But these aren't normal circumstances.
As Bleacher Report's Mike Freeman detailed, the recent media feeding frenzy over an incriminating video that may or may not exist could be the reason. Bryant's camp, per Bleacher Report's Jason Cole, believes the frenzy might have been kicked off by the Cowboys in an effort to lower Bryant's open-market value.
"What do I actually know?" NFL Network reporter Ian Rapoport rhetorically asked Freeman. "I know police were called to speak with Bryant or show up at his house seven times, I know the Cowboys don't trust him off the field, and I know what their best contract offer was."
That offer, per ESPNDallas.com's Jean-Jacques Taylor, was a lowball deal with only $20 million in guarantees—enough that the Cowboys could truthfully claim they'd made an offer but not so high they feared Bryant would take it and tie up a huge chunk of their cap for years to come.
Even if the video surfaced tomorrow, and it showed Bryant gallantly escorting the woman in question to her car, there are enough red flags around Bryant, his friends and his handlers to make a judicious organization hesitate to give him the keys to its vault.
Judicious? The Cowboys? Yes, this is the brave new world in which we live. Jerry Jones has either become a general manager with a keen eye for talent and an uncanny sense of which players to invest in, or he's surrounded himself with smart advisers to whom he listens.
Either way, this is a far different Jones—and a far different organization—than NFL media have known and chuckled at since the days of Dave Campo and Quincy Carter. Tagging Bryant, and letting Murray test the market, proves this is one of the savviest teams in the NFL, and that Super Bowl may be coming soon.
Ty Schalter is a National NFL Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. Quotes were obtained firsthand except where noted.
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