DMN: Cowboys T Darrion Weems says he did ‘all right’ in first game in almost two years

[Zimmy Lives]

It has already been proven. Bob Sturm did a detailed review of the OL's performance last season.

Free was held out of the preseason game because he is still having problems with his foot/ankle. He has had 2 foot/ankle surgeries in the past 18 months and is now 31.

The probability is that Free's performance will decline and it was never great at his peak.

xwalker, because I agree with you, for the most part, on opinions concerning the Cowboys, I refrain from arguing your point. However, allow me to play devils' advocate.

What if Free is being held out for purely precautionary reasons? The staff knows what he can do so why expose him, especially when this part of pre-season is designed to evaluate new talent at it's rawest level.

Parnell may prove his critics wrong by playing at a Pro Bowl level this season. If that happens, I will take your future words as gospel and never doubt you again. Until then, I will distance myself from any posts concerning Parnell and Free.

 

[Kaiser]

If they had kept Parnell as the starter when Free came back from his injury last season, then they could have signed Parnell to a reasonable contact during the season; however, Parnell was not going to sign a contract if they were still forcing him to be the backup at that point. I'm certain at that point Parnell would have taken the contract that they ended up giving to Free if they had offered it then. I'm convinced that Garrett's emotional attachment to Free heavily influenced the decision.

I don't see it that way, if I was Parnell's agent and had seen him play well down the stretch and in the playoffs I would take him to FA. If Dallas wanted to resign him I would ask for a lot more than 6MM guaranteed.

The key thing to me is that there are fewer starting caliber RTs than there are spots in the NFL, so both Parnell and Free were going to get paid because of that - and paid a lot.

 

[Bluefin]

What if Free is being held out for purely precautionary reasons? The staff knows what he can do so why expose him, especially when this part of pre-season is designed to evaluate new talent at it's rawest level.

It wasn't precautionary.

Doug Free missed the entire weeks of practices preceding the Chargers' game.

It's not unexpected, Free missed the entire off-season rehabbing his latest ankle surgery.

Free was expected to do the individual portion of practice today, but Jason Garrett was unsure about using the veteran RT in the team portion, though he should continue doing more as the days progress.

Free is an experienced player, but he didn't practice at all during the off-season.

He needs reps.

 

[Bullflop]

Something tells me if Green doesn't recover sufficiently, RT might be one of our draft targets next year. Hip surgeries and be tricky things. In the meantime, let's just pray Weems improves.