News: BTB: Cowboys 2016 Free Agents: Dallas Tenders Ron Leary A Second-Round Grade

NewsBot

New Member
Messages
111,281
Reaction score
2,947
usa-today-9049050.0.jpg

The Cowboys look to keep depth on their offensive line.

The Dallas Cowboys have finally made some kind of move in free agency, even though it's a minor one. They have assigned a second-round tender to restricted free agent Ron Leary. That means any team signing him would have to surrender a second-round pick unless the other team and the Cowboys worked out some other kind of deal. By placing that tender on Leary, they will owe him $2.533 million in 2016. That's a pretty hefty price for a backup lineman but the Cowboys know what they have in Leary and he would solve and backup guard issues. The problem is, to date, he doesn't act as an emergency center, but the Cowboys could always slide Zack Marin over there if anything happened to Travis Frederick and Leary could step in as the guard.

Leary definitely could have generated some interest on the free agent market if the Cowboys had assigned the lower tender price and not force another suitor to give up compensation. Being an undrafted free agent, Dallas had to go with this level of tender to force compensation from another team. Leary has starter talent in the NFL as evidenced by the couple of years he was the starting left guard, especially the considerable success that Demarco Murray had in 2015.

The Cowboys also tendered safety and special-teamer Jeff Heath at the lowest level, and because he was also an undrafted free agent they would receive no compensation if he received another offer. His tender was for $1.67 million.

(H/T Todd Archer for some of the details on this article.)

Continue reading...
 
Top