Pickens or Defense help, can't have both?

[Jkyle]

I guess the Cowboys will have to decide/determine whether they want to resign Pickens or use that money to sign some Defensive Help after this season.
It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.
Signing Pickens would mean the Cowboys would have to rely on the Draft or mid-level talent to address the Defense.
The problem with that is it would take 2-3 years to have them become good players meaning they won't be able to take advantage of Dak, Pickens, Lamb peak years.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

I guess the Cowboys will have to decide/determine whether they want to resign Pickens or use that money to sign some Defensive Help after this season.
It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.
Signing Pickens would mean the Cowboys would have to rely on the Draft or mid-level talent to address the Defense.
The problem with that is it would take 2-3 years to have them become good players meaning they won't be able to take advantage of Dak, Pickens, Lamb peak years.

Cowboys have draft dependent on adding talent. They use the draft. So I don’t want to hear them now use the excuse they can’t pay Pickens because they want to add defensive talent….

 

[SpaceCowboy99]

If they want to win now, they just need to do some deadline deals to Marginally improve their defense. They don't need to go for big names and try and turn around the defense 180.

Trade away some draft capital next 2 years but not your #1s, in exchange for:

Pass rusher
1-2 LBs
1 DB

Just good enough talent to get your defense to 15-20 rank. If the offense keeps balling out, that would be enough to put them in contention.

 

[Tabascocat]

A competent GM could have both and not use the cap as an excuse.

 

[Reality]

On offense, one special player can impact a game considerably every week whether that's quarterback, receiver or running back.

On defense, it takes a group of players to do that, at least consistently every week.

Of course a superstar rusher, cornerback, linebacker, etc. can have an impact on games, but an offense can gameplan around that superstar (such as what they do to Micah with constant double and chip blocks).

On defense, having 11 solid players is much better than having 2 superstars and 9 below average players on the field.

Because of that, you need to spread money around on the defense rather than overpay for any single players regardless of how great they are.

You can still pay more for the better players, but $30+ million per year contracts on defensive players is a receipe for a bad defense unless 1) your defense is already great beforehand, or 2) your defensive draft picks pan out at a very high rate over several years.

 

[Redsfan_83]

Easy choice, Pickens. We have young guys, hopefully coming back to health on D, and can use our picks in the next 2 drafts to build the rest. Of course, assuming Jerry doesn't trade them away....

 

[Chuck 54]

I guess the Cowboys will have to decide/determine whether they want to resign Pickens or use that money to sign some Defensive Help after this season.
It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.
Signing Pickens would mean the Cowboys would have to rely on the Draft or mid-level talent to address the Defense.
The problem with that is it would take 2-3 years to have them become good players meaning they won't be able to take advantage of Dak, Pickens, Lamb peak years.

We’ve seen what this offense can be with 2 playmakers at WR. Does anyone want to go back to watching Lamb doubled and hoping scrubs will separate? Not me. Resign Pickens asap. If he and his agent make it impossible, then franchise tag him and try to get a quality draft pick for him.

You can improve the defense through the draft, trades, and moderately priced free agents. We don’t need a top defense; we just need a defense that at least has average NFL players at all positions.

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

I guess the Cowboys will have to decide/determine whether they want to resign Pickens or use that money to sign some Defensive Help after this season.
It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.
Signing Pickens would mean the Cowboys would have to rely on the Draft or mid-level talent to address the Defense.
The problem with that is it would take 2-3 years to have them become good players meaning they won't be able to take advantage of Dak, Pickens, Lamb peak years.

we can....there is plenty of cap room to manuever and get both. although there aren't much help in defensive FA. however we have 4 picks in the first three rounds, two in the first round. focus on picking defense and I would actually over draft someone who is going to be good, rather than worry about value at the pick....or if they feel so strongly, then trade down. but add good defensive players. right now we don't have them and we can't just worry about drafting elite defenders..... just make sure we don't pick a Mazi smith.

and if we resign Pickens, and we have turpin and Flourney, then we can keep the offense going as the OL is pretty young. we don't need elite defense. we need a decent to good defense and if the offense continues like this, then it makes it difficult for the opponents.

 

[big dog cowboy]

It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.

In the draft. It's what they do. They have the draft capital to do it too.

 

[DUO_CORE]

They need a defense that keeps teams under 21, not 41.

 

[Proof]

I guess the Cowboys will have to decide/determine whether they want to resign Pickens or use that money to sign some Defensive Help after this season.
It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.
Signing Pickens would mean the Cowboys would have to rely on the Draft or mid-level talent to address the Defense.
The problem with that is it would take 2-3 years to have them become good players meaning they won't be able to take advantage of Dak, Pickens, Lamb peak years.

would also have to account for players on the roster now improving in their 2-3 yr windows (hypothetically) so the baseline would be better

 

[Carson]

You can have both. Easily.

Releasing Steele, Hooker, Diggs will create plenty of cap space.

Pickens cap hit would be low year 1-2. Daks deal ends in two seasons, so you can extend him and add extra years to limit the hits.

 

[shabazz]

I guess the Cowboys will have to decide/determine whether they want to resign Pickens or use that money to sign some Defensive Help after this season.
It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.
Signing Pickens would mean the Cowboys would have to rely on the Draft or mid-level talent to address the Defense.
The problem with that is it would take 2-3 years to have them become good players meaning they won't be able to take advantage of Dak, Pickens, Lamb peak years.

Ive seen a couple guys here saying we can sign Pickens, take on Maxx Crosbys contract, re-sign our own guys for 26 AND buy high quality free agents for the defense.

 

[Carson]

Ive seen a couple guys here saying we can sign Pickens, take on Maxx Crosbys contract, re-sign our own guys for 26 AND buy high quality free agents for the defense.

They are rolling over $31 million to next season.

You release Diggs, Steele, Hooker should net you close to $30 million in space. That's $61million before you even touch Dak or CeeDee

 

[thunderpimp91]

They are rolling over $31 million to next season.

You release Diggs, Steele, Hooker should net you close to $30 million in space. That's $61million before you even touch Dak or CeeDee

We play this same cap savings game every single year, and every offseason Jerry/Stephen give us the middle finger and try to find ways to make excuses for not spending.

 

[darthseinfeld]

You can have both. Easily.

Releasing Steele, Hooker, Diggs will create plenty of cap space.

Pickens cap hit would be low year 1-2. Daks deal ends in two seasons, so you can extend him and add extra years to limit the hits.

I dont know why people think its one of the other. We could have easily extended Pickens if we extended Parsons. Jerry threw that out after the trade for copium

 

[conner01]

I guess the Cowboys will have to decide/determine whether they want to resign Pickens or use that money to sign some Defensive Help after this season.
It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.
Signing Pickens would mean the Cowboys would have to rely on the Draft or mid-level talent to address the Defense.
The problem with that is it would take 2-3 years to have them become good players meaning they won't be able to take advantage of Dak, Pickens, Lamb peak years.

We have 4 picks in the first 3 rnds. That could help immediately if draft fell right. But Jerry might trade for a guy but he’s not buying enough FA to make anymore impact than two first rnd picks could

 

[Zman5]

Pickens. We know what we got with him and you can win with him and an average defense. Without him we need a much better defense and we suck at evaluating and drafting defensive players. Even with Parsons, we sort of lucked into getting him because the two CB' we were targeting were off the board. Even after getting him, we lucked into finding out how good he was as a pass rusher due to injuries to DLaw and Gregory.

 

[Carson]

We play this same cap savings game every single year, and every offseason Jerry/Stephen give us the middle finger and try to find ways to make excuses for not spending.

No doubt. But just saying it's not one way or the other.

But we do know it's one way. The Jerry way!

 

[DC Cowboy]

I guess the Cowboys will have to decide/determine whether they want to resign Pickens or use that money to sign some Defensive Help after this season.
It's hard to see how the team would be able to pay Pickens $30+ mill a year and still acquire defensive help.
Signing Pickens would mean the Cowboys would have to rely on the Draft or mid-level talent to address the Defense.
The problem with that is it would take 2-3 years to have them become good players meaning they won't be able to take advantage of Dak, Pickens, Lamb peak years.

while I agree with you, kinda, but I think we keep Pickens and "try" to draft defensive help. It is very possible to draft a stud DT that can help as a rookie.