This is spot-on analysis. I would like to expand upon what you said about FA moves and trades. I would say:
- A team should build primarily through the draft, and then turn to FA moves and trades to plug any remaining holes.
This team has dramatically improved how well it drafts. If you compare the last 8 years or so with the late 90s, you can see a world of difference. That's a good thing. During those late 90s, the team also mostly got burned via their FA acquisitions and trades, and so I think it turned to the notion "you build through the draft," which is true ... partially. The thing is, FA moves/trades can very easily be done poorly in a way that hozes your team. See: Joey Galloway and Roy Williams (WR) trades. I suspect those misadventures made this front office gun shy. They got it in their heads "just draft well."
I like your idea of bringing in some kind of strategic advisor to help in this area. Where you find such a person is a big question mark, but it could be done. I would also like to point out that there are different types of FA moves, primarily two:
- Signing a basic player to fill a hole, often short-term
- Signing a major talent, someone highly coveted
This team has done better in that first category, but it's also the lower stakes category. For example, the signing of Andy Dalton was totally reasonable. Back then we didn't know how capable Cooper Rush was, and Dalton was an experienced vet whom you had a chance to win with if Dak went down (if you you can protect him, which the team really didn't). For signing free agents for depth, you're usually not throwing big piles of money at the player, and you can do things like incentive-based contracts. If you have a miss, you haven't trashed your salary cap.
The other area where this front office needs help in:
This area is highly related to the problem of not being able to sign highly coveted free agents. You can't sign them if you don't have the money under the cap to do so. Today we watched an average to slightly above average quarterback who cannot carry a team on his shoulders in crunch time, has an interception problem -- and he's our 40 million dollar guy! After our best running back left the game hurt, we put in an okay running back who could do well in short yardage situations, but is light years from being elite, and he's massively paid. We grossly overpaid these two players to the point where the salary cap forced us to trade an excellent receiver for basically peanuts. And we couldn't go after the high-priced free agents.
Other teams have managed the cap better to be able to make perfect hole-fills for their team's needs. And this is HARD! There's a reason why the average fan couldn't just join an NFL's office and do that job. There's never any guarantee that the free agent you either sign or trade for will fill that need as well as you think. That's why those who do this job well are good at taking calculated risks. Jerry Jones probably thought he was taking an intelligent, calculated risk when he burned through two number one draft picks to get Joey Galloway. But a lot of people could see a mile away that he was going to get the team torched via that, and he did.
In short, the front office has gotten its act together for the most part for drafting, and it's done okay signing low-end, stop-gap free agents. It's the high-end free agents that it struggles with, and those struggles are interwoven with its salary cap struggles. Again, it is not easy, and it's not a job just any person could do. Jones needed to draw a line in the sand with both Dak and Zeke, and risk letting them walk, especially with Zeke given that it's not anywhere near as hard to replace a running back as it is a quarterback. But, even with a quarterback, you have to know who you've got and where to draw the line. Jones approached the negotiations as if Dak were a top-5 quarterback. He's not. You can win a championship with a decent, non-elite quarterback (see Trent Dilfer, see Doug Williams), but the team around him must be outstanding.
Has the front office gotten better? Sure, they have. They draft better. Of late, they've spared us any atrocious Galloway trades, but mainly by being gun shy. They've done some decent low-end FA signings.
Will Jones have the "ah-hah" moment and sign a strategic advisor as bobhaze suggests? Maybe, but it's doubtful.
