If our intent was to truly to retain Murray we had other options even with Cap implications, his injury history and Dez contract looming which we also bundled.
The Dez contract had an impact on the decision as well . We were convinced Dez was a talent tougher to replace and apparently more critical to our offense which is another argument I'm not going to get into here .
But basically if we were determined to sign Dez we should have done so before the Murray confrontation not even bothering to Franchise Dez which turned in to be a wasted effort . We were totally out played by Dez for reasons I mentioned earlier.
With our concerns that 2014 was contributed to the OL, his additional carries along with his injury history issues ,it would have been more sensible assuming we were really interested in retaing him, to franchise Murray instead of Dez. But IMO we became too arrogant of our OL .
We even had fans claiming it was all our OL after Murray was under utilized by Eagles. Typical media driven lazy analysis by many. We even had fans bashing DeMarco for signing with the Eagles. Really sad childish behavior by some fans. Murray truly wanted to stay here.
Anyway..Then we could put the long term decision off at least one more year while locking Dez up. Instead we rolled the dice disrupting the chemistry, success and momentum we built in 2014 not to mention it placed additional pressure on Romo in 2015 without the security of that proven running game with Murray.
I'd even suggest that even before Romo's injury in 2015 that we didn't look the same without Murray which was a huge concern for me going in and that it did place more pressure on Romo to move the offense . Then you take Dez out with his injury then all of a sudden we are missing two of our Tripletts. The rest is history.
I'd even suggest that this was a factor which led to Romo's career coming to an end early with placing him in jeopardy with more opportunity for additional injuries. With Romo's injury history and how critical he was to our offense and success already nearing 35 at the time I would have made every effort to retain the core of that offense and Tripletts in 2014.
That running game was a major contributor in Romo's most effective season bringing us to the brink of a championship game while protecting Romo. Little did we know that would be Romo's last chance.
Let's assume Murray is injured in 2015 or less productive , Romo is still hurt and the season ends similarly then you don't feel as strong of sense to offer that long term contract or his worth is lessened greatly especially if we're looking in another direction at QB or he's easier to sign with his worth drastically reduced.
The other scenario is he has another great season and or we go deeper in the playoffs with Romo staying healthy and we Franchise him one more time. Maybe if we win a championship we might even have to let him go because his worth is so high we truly cant afford him. A Cap move we certainly are more able or willing to accept with our 6th ring.
I'm not blaming Romo's injury on losing Murray which often was a knee reaction to my proposal but only suggesting it could have been a contributor in placing him in a more vulnerable situation. I'd also argue our 2014 team was better than 2016 and would have made a greater effort to keep it in place.
With the selection of Elliott it's obvious we saw what we were missing and made it our highest priority in 2016.
