I think more than that they were handing out big contracts to guys who were no longer in their prime and when released from the team we had a lot of dead money that hit the team in the face.
That was definitely one shift. We were having a bunch of older players miss time because of injury, which is why we let DeMarcus Ware go a little too early. Overall, I agree with the policy not to pay age, although I think there are always exceptions while the front office seems to deal more in absolutes.
Frankly, everything should be case by case. I agreed, for example, with not paying DeMarco Murray as much as Philly did because of the injury history with the player, not so much age although the shelf life of a running back is generally not long. I didn't agree with our plan for replacing him.
Dead money is ultimately just a part of having a salary cap, even though a lot of fans don't seem to be willing to accept that reality. The difficult thing is to figure out with each player how to manipulate where and when you take the dead money hit, how much you are willing to take and the probability of the player staying viable until you reach that point. Most of the time the objective is to reach a point in the contract where the savings outweigh the player's production and cost.