The Business of Football

[DBOY3141]

We the fans of the Cowboys only want the best for our football team. End result being Super Bowl Champs and bringing the 6th trophy home to Dallas, so with that tough decisions have to be made. Here is an example of one and I know there are many, but wanted some other opinions on this one.

Terrance Newman vs Asante Samuel

Both great corners who will command 80 million dollar salary's. JJ's diliema, stand pat and sign Newman next year or sign Samuel this year which means Newman plays one more year for Big D then is gone. No way we can afford both, nor should we try.

My thought: go with Samuel, he is younger and if your going to pay that much money, gets some years for your buck. Draft a corner in the 1st and groom him to relace Samuel in 5 years. So next year you have Samuel/Newman/Henry/1st round pick. 2009 you have Samuel/1st rounder as starting CB's with Henry either playing safety or still at CB.

Newman is a great player and a great team guy, but he is 30 and is not better than Samuel.

 

[THUMPER]

We the fans of the Cowboys only want the best for our football team. End result being Super Bowl Champs and bringing the 6th trophy home to Dallas, so with that tough decisions have to be made. Here is an example of one and I know there are many, but wanted some other opinions on this one.

Terrance Newman vs Asante Samuel

Both great corners who will command 80 million dollar salary's. JJ's diliema, stand pat and sign Newman next year or sign Samuel this year which means Newman plays one more year for Big D then is gone. No way we can afford both, nor should we try.

My thought: go with Samuel, he is younger and if your going to pay that much money, gets some years for your buck. Draft a corner in the 1st and groom him to relace Samuel in 5 years. So next year you have Samuel/Newman/Henry/1st round pick. 2009 you have Samuel/1st rounder as starting CB's with Henry either playing safety or still at CB.

Newman is a great player and a great team guy, but he is 30 and is not better than Samuel.

Not necessarily arguing with you but I'd like to know what you base your assessment that Samuel is the better player.

Newman is 2 years and a few months older than Samuel (Samuel just turned 27 and Newman will be 30 in September), both have played 5 seasons in the NFL so age is not much of a factor. Newman has missed 3 games in his career and Samuel has missed 5 so both are pretty durable.

Their stats are very similar as well:

Samuel - 232 tackles, 61 PD, 22 INTs.
Newman - 316 tackles, 66 PD, 16 INTs.

Newman is the better tackler by far but has fewer INTs. That could be attributable to many factors, mainly that Newman isn't a target very often as teams tend to avoid him. That said, he has more passes defensed than Samuel.

Maybe AdamJT13 has the actual numbers for how many times they were targeted, % of passes defensed & intercepted, etc. but I don't have access to that.

I just don't see a whole lot of difference between them statistically except for their tackling ability in which Newman is clearly the superior of the two.

Are you seeing something that I'm not?