News: BTB: How ESPN Would Fix Dallas Cowboys In Five Easy Steps

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Free agency is just around the corner and ESPN has five moves the Cowboys should make in free agency to kick off their offseason in a positive fashion.

In a series of posts for ESPN, Bill Barnwell, whom we hold in high esteem here at BTB, offers up a division by division look at "Five moves each team should make." Today, his NFC East article hit the interwebs, so we'll take a look at the five moves Barnwell suggests for the Cowboys

With free agency and the draft dominating the agenda for the next few months, the five moves are of course linked to those events. Many Cowboys fans have their own very specific ideas of what moves the Cowboys should make (hire a GM, fire the coach, retire the assistant coaches, require all rookies to watch films starring John Wayne to make sure they have an appropriate background in toughness, etc.), but these frequently are outside the scope of Barnwell's suggestions, which for the Cowboys are focused entirely on free agency.

In no particular order, here are Barnwell's five moves for the 2016 Cowboys:

1. Cut Brandon Carr as a post-June 1 release

2. Don't answer when the Eagles call about DeMarco Murray.

3. Sign Alfred Morris instead.

4. Sign a backup quarterback who isn't Johnny Manziel.

5. Add pass rush help.
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Barnwell provides a detailed rationale for each point which you can read in the original article.

What's interesting about these moves is that they largely eschew some of the more popular names that have been bandied about in Cowboys nation over the past few months.

At running back, Barnwell specifically advises against Murray (for cost reasons) but there's also no mention anywhere in the article of guys like Lamar Miller, Frank Gore, or Chris Ivory. Instead, Barnwell makes a strong case for Alfred Morris.

At backup QB, Johnny Manziel, Robert Griffin, and to a lesser extent Colt McCoy, have been dominating Cowboys headlines, but the suggestion here is to go after somebody like Drew Stanton or Tarvaris Jackson.

More pass rush help and reducing Carr's impact on the cap are both solid moves, and taken together, the five moves make a lot of sense, especially because they fit the way the Cowboys have approached free agency recently.

If you were managing the Cowboys (and not playing franchise mode on Madden), what moves would you make in free agency to fix the team?

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