News: BTB: Crunching The Cowboys Cap - The Draft Angle

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We hear often about the necessity of good drafting and good cap management, but aren't they really two sides of the same coin? And if they are, which came first?

The 2008 Seattle Seahawks: a team in decline. After five straight playoff appearances, peaking with the dreaded second place finish in the 2005 Super Bowl, the team had steadily weakened. As key players like Shaun Alexander and Matt Hasselback aged and faltered while others like Steve Hutchinson left for new teams, the Seahawks bottomed out with a crash at 4-12. 2009 was not much better at 5-11, and Mike Holmgren was sent packing.

The new coach, like many others, got a slight rise out of his team and they made a brief, ineffective playoff appearance with a 7-9 season that was good enough to win what was, five years ago, the weakest division in the NFL. As an aside, there can hardly be a better example of how quickly NFL fortunes change, as the NFC West has, in the last five years, gone from terrible, to fearsome, and now likely begun to fade again as the 49ers are in disarray, the Rams remain a muddle of question marks with some immense defensive talent, and the Cards remain an all-too-recurring Carson Palmer knee injury away from disaster.

But vicissitudes of NFL fortune aside, this is where the story gets interesting. In 2010, Pete Carroll drafted four future starters, three of whom would make the Pro Bowl for their team, including three-time Pro Bowl safety Kam Chancellor in the fifth round. Carroll doubled down on this performance with six eventual starters in the 2011 draft, including another multiple Pro Bowl player in the fifth round, CB Richard Sherman. Adding four more starters in 2012, two of them eventual Pro Bowlers, one of whom was QB Russell Wilson, and clarity about just where the Seahawks finally got their Lombardi dawns with angelic choirs in attendance.

So, what does this have to do with the Dallas Cowboys and cap management?

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