Teams structure their rosters so that they're rolling through replacements in position groups gradually. At the time we let Newman and Jenkins walk in relatively quick succession, and we were caught unprepared (and we shouldn't have been) and had to pay the premium for Brandon Carr. It was a mistake to get into that position.
The DL was another matter. They took a reasonable risk with the Ware extension, but the bottom fell out of that contract faster than we'd ever expected it to. Coupled with Rat having his tantrum and we had a lot of money tied up at that position group with not enough to show for it on the field. That's where the trading away of picks and the overall poor drafting of the Wade Phillips era really bit us hard.
At that point, we had glaring holes in both the secondary and the OL, and we had overextended contracts for players like Ware and Ratliff and that last year of coverage for Hatcher. The smart thing to do was just what we did: address CB and build and patch the OL first, and then address the DL behind that. We did a pretty good job of it, actually, considering we had no extra picks and zero salary cap room on top of the new CBA and the cap penalty for the Austin contract. It was a confluence of too few quality draft picks, poor drafting and player development, an aging roster, and aggressive cap management that took too many big bets on aging players.
We've been doing a lot better job with all of those things since 2010 under Garrett.
Dallas has had a consistent problem, mostly due to poor drafting and GM mismanagement historically speaking, to fail to gradually replace position groups and instead allow them to grow old with bloated contracts and poor play as you succinctly state.
It should come as no surprise that since the drafts have improved, so has the team.
Further, you can tell the influence of Garrett, S. Jones and Will McClay or some confluence of them all have shifted the management style and direction of the team for the better.
Garrett mentioned today in the presser, what we all know, the offensive line was overpaid with bloated contracts and was simply old. Even he stated emphatically, you need to build the trenches to win.
The team suffered after they released the three veterans in one season because they failed to replace these players gradually through sound drafting and proper team management.
They realized they needed to make the OL a priority in terms of rebuilding the trenches and drafted well. The result of this type of priority and proper drafting has left us with one of the best offensive lines in the game.
Now, it is the time to rebuild the defensive line the same way. They allowed the defense to grow old with over bloated contracts especially Ware and Ratliff and the defections hurt the team.
They failed to draft properly and gradually replace the DL while players like Ware were still effective.
They mismanaged cap dollars by overpaying old players and failed to properly address the gradual talent influx with reference to the draft and defensive line.
Since, we have been cap poor, not only due to poor contracts but also because most of the cap allocation has been on offense.
Thus, they have been forced to rely on the bargain bin for defensive line help and it has showed the last two seasons.
They simply need to address the defensive line in the same way, Crawford and Lawrence are a start but they need to rebuild the defensive trenches this week.
Plus, drafting talent helps with cap management as well.
The secondary has been a series of management mistakes, failure to gradually replace properly via the draft, poor drafting and poor decision making.
Further, Mo has not performed regardless of the DL and Carr has also not lived up to the billing either especially for what you expected you were getting in the market.
To be fair, the total decimation of the defensive front has made these poor acquisitions even worse but they still have underperformed regardless in my view.
If we properly address the defensive line via the draft while adding some secondary help, this defense will see significant improvement and hopefully in so doing, the team will continue to figure out how to properly draft and manage this team in the salary cap era, finally!
