Part of why he seemed like a "better player" was the fact that people weren't fixated on his contract. He was probably going to be a better player in a lot of peoples eyes no matter what just because he accepted a pay-cut. I thought his play was improved, but not by these leaps and bounds it has turned in to.
The same thing would have happened to Ware had he stayed and took a pay-cut. He would have had equal production and it would have turned into "Ware is back!!"
His play improved to the point where we really don't need a OT in the first round. We also really don't need to move him guard which his skills are ill suited for it. Frankly, its a stupid concept which only amateurs can think of. Which kinda leads me to think that Dallas is run by amateurs.
I think Free was our most improved player last year. I think it really sunk in that he didn't initially live up to his contract so it made him play with a chip on his shoulder. I like Free at RT for the foreseeable future.
I think we should draft a guard to replace Waters but I think the oline was one of our strongest units last year and doesn't need to be adjusted save for drafting a guard.
The primary reason for Free's improvement was a slight change in the OL blocking scheme.
They had Bernadeau keep a closer than normal spacing to Free in Pass Pro. This prevented the outside pass rusher from beating Free to the inside and allowed Free to over-set to the outside which is a huge advantage. They had Fred favor blocking right to compensate for Bern compensating for Free. They were only able to do this because Leary was able to handle himself with minimal help. Basically, if you saw Leary get beat in Pass Pro, there's a good chance that Free is actually to blame.
They also designed run plays to work around Free's lack of ability to power run block. Their goal in runs to the right was to get Free's man to commit to the outside allowing Free to wall him off while they ran inside between Free and Bern or between Bern and Fred. As the season progressed Bern became very good at executing what I refer to as the pinball block. He would fire out into Free's man to help get him to the outside of Free and then bounce back to block a defender coming from the inside. It made Bern look like a pinball. The timing had to be just right to make this play successful and Bern did an excellent job of executing it. It allowed Free to be a wall-off blocker which is about all he can do in the run game.
The issue for the Cowboys going into the draft is that they have a legit backup OT in Parnell but nothing at OG unless they think OT Weems is an option there. They did sign OG Chris DeGeare, but he has not played since 2010.
