So tomorrow night when you are on your 7th beer watching the Dallas OL give up its 14th sack, fear not. For next year the team will be more talented than this year but with an offseason to learn the defense.
Next year the offense gets back three Pro Bowl level players, plus Jarwin, plus Martin is back this week. The best group of WRs in the NFL returns (Lamb will be even better) and the other two OL Williams and Biadasz will each be 24 years old but solid starters by that point. The major concern is obviously the OTs returning but nothing about Collins seems to show a long term problem and plenty of elite OTs have missed seasons like Tyron Smith – with Jason Peters (currently starting at age 38) a good example.
On defense the young DL will develop (Gallimore, Hill, Gregory, Anae), Aldon Smith likely returns and the DL will finally develop some continuity in the new scheme. Diggs will be playing at a #1 CB level next year after taking his lumps this year (while showing above average athletic skills).
The rest of the secondary will be rebuilt but one draft pick can completely change the landscape. Dallas looks to have a draft pick around the 5th to 10th spot, look at the players taken there in the last four years:
Pick 9 CJ Henderson, #6 Jamal Adams, #11 Marshon Lattimore, #5 Jalen Ramsey and #11 Minkah Fitzpatrick.
There are a ton of older veteran Safeties who could be signed to fill a spot in the secondary for a cap hit of 4 – 7 Million:
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/free-agents/all/safety/
The second round pick gets you a player who can join the secondary rotation at a minimum and probably start (Diggs, Awuzie, etc).
Another free agent (like Cam Fleming) and the third round pick gets you solid depth at OT. Recent 3rd round picks at OT range from decent backups to above average starters:
Pick 74 Geron Christian, #83 Orlando Brown, # Shon Coleman.
But most of the year to year improvement comes from both lines developing cohesion in a new system and the young players developing with more reps (like Schultz and Hill did this year).
Trolls, rev your engines.
But don’t say we will blow the draft picks after we got Lamb and Diggs this year with much later picks.
And don’t say we don’t have the cap space, even at a 175 Million cap and franchise tagging Prescott we still have 15 Million left over before any restructuring moves (Aldon Smith and conceivably Sean Lee are the only players in UFA we would want to resign).