That reads as if the Cowboys are altogether avoiding stopgap solutions, thus somehow building the right way. I think the issue most people have is the quality of the stopgap. It's a tough sell to convince people that Jeremy Mincey -- a 30 year old backup DE who played in grand total of 10 total games last year -- is anything more than a stopgap. Especially when we could have had the player that played ahead of Mincey in the rotation for most of last season -- Robert Ayers -- for near identical money. When you combine this with the realization that Ayers is 2 years younger than Mincey and has performed better in recent memory then this becomes even more frustrating.
Even if the Cowboys felt Mincey was the superior player, there was no need to sign him as early as we did in free agency. They signed a 3rd or 4th tier free agent in the first wave of free agency. It's very likely he would still be on his couch right now had we not caught eager beaver syndrome. Shaun Phillips is a for more accomplished player with similar size and age concerns, and he just signed with a team last week.
The Cowboys obviously researched players in the off-season and targeted Mincey and McClain for a reason considering that they signed them immediately. Marinelli might not the be miracle worker that some make him out to be, but I'm sure that he spent significant time watching film of free agents. The fact that they signed them immediately indicates that he probably really liked them as opposed to player that the might have signed later just because they are cheap.
The basic idea this season should be to have enough veterans to have a reasonable lineup, but not to have too many stopgaps taking up roster spots or having a highly paid older player that they are not going to want to bench if some of the younger players step up. Selive and Mincey have shown to be legitimate NFL players, just not Stars. No body is going to have any issue if they are replaced as starters by a young player; whereas, if they had kept Ware, there would have been an expectation for him to start and play as majority of the snaps as the Weak Side DE.
People wonder why the Cowboys continue to go 8-8, but then are resistant when they make moves to get out of that rut. Keeping Ware or adding Mincey AND Shaun Phillips or Ayers would just be moves that most likely result in 8-8 and actually take away from the quality of the roster that they can field in 2015. By this time next year, they will have given more young players a chance to develop AND have much more cap space available than they would if they had kept Ware or made similar moves.
I'm seeing so many fans that hate Jerry, but then want to repeat the same things that he's done in the past. It's the "we must have these players" mentality. The Cowboys just had to have Spencer last year and franchised him which also forced them to restructure Ratliff''s contract in the spring which basically guaranteed it.
