I strongly believe the Cowboys should have sold high on Prescott last year.
When Romo was healthy and able to return last year, he should have been reinserted into the starting position and I believe we would have gone further in the playoffs as a result. More importantly though, this team that was built around Romo should have sold Prescott to the highest bidder while they could. You probably could have gotten two first round draft picks or a first and a second for Prescott last year.
That would have gone a long way towards infusing talent into the defense.
Instead, we ended up getting nothing for Romo except his dead money against the salary cap. Regardless of how you felt about Romo and Prescott, this was the worst possible outcome. The team went all in on Romo (drafting a running back 4th overall is going all in) and then decided to deviate because of some success Prescott had early in his career. Financially, that was a huge gamble, and while this story has yet to be written, I'm convinced it won't pay off.
I don't want to belabor this argument, we've discussed this ad nauseam, but you now have an offensive crisis where we're saying our receivers and offensive line aren't any good. The same units who in 2014 were among the best in the league and improving.
The offense is extremely cap heavy and isn't nearly as productive as it needs to be (14th in the NFL). Many people will blame the suspension and injury to Smith. So, we're now wholly reliant on two players being healthy and available in order for this team to operate (Elliott and Smith).
Elliott is a running back and is not likely to stay healthy for the duration of his time with the Cowboys. Smith and his back will ONLY get worse. Now we're in a position where we're going to have to re-sign Zach Martin and the offense will become even more salary cap heavy...
Is Prescott going to turn into Brees overnight? If your answer is no, you have to realize this front office needs to make some hard decisions and quickly. Even with improvement, if he can't carry an offense minus a few star players, you can't expect to build around him and have a stout defense.
I think this defense has a lot of potential, but the timing hasn't exactly been perfect. Rather than putting all of our eggs in one basket with Lawrence and Irving, I think it would be prudent to instead focus on rebuilding the defensive line through the draft, similar to what we did with the secondary. Money should be spent on highly reliable free agents. The front seven should be the primary focus on this draft.
Depending on what it would cost to trade for and sign Earl Thomas, I would take a serious look at getting him and moving Jones back to corner. Under Richards, our secondary could become a legitimate unit in the NFL.
