It's been a good while since I've been this proud of my Cowboys. Jerry is earning a reprieve from me, albeit etched in sand, not stone.
Do you sense the calm? Isn't it refreshing for a change?
Reason, temperance, patience, and resolve. These are certainly not the qualities we associate with the back channels at Valley Ranch. We've grown accustomed - behind the landscaped mansion's pretentious façade - to the daily scurried undoings and machinations of Jed, Granny, Jethro, and Elly May. Our sitcom Cowboys are showing signs of refinement.
Lack of dough has had its role certainly, but so has the callouses of multiple run-ins with failed promises and propagandized expectations. There's no more shades of Maybelline to paint this pig's lips with. Time for a new farm animal.
I expect some sweaty palms watched Ware and Hatcher walk away to trumpets in foreign ports, and a few bottles of scotch weathered that ESPN scroll continuously NOT mentioning the Cowboys. Plan or not, that doesn't suit Jerry's fanciful ways, nor does it sell jerseys to the casual Cowboys sheep.
But it does make good football sense, and Jerry seems like he's tuned in, blasphemous and distasteful as it must feel to him. He, Will McClay, and Jason Garrett are executing a plan, of some sort, and that alone is encouraging just to write with a serious face.
Mincey and McClain make football sense. Brandon Weeden makes TONS of sense. Dallas just landed a first-round QB pick as a backup for pocket lint in return. THAT is a good football move right there, regardless of the regurgitations of the non-thinking dregs in the sports media.
And lest you didn't notice, Dallas is suddenly among the teams that HAVE money to spend now, while so many pools have since dried up. The early over-spending spree for flawed players with flawed histories and flawed bodies will not help those teams. Just watch. Those franchises will rue those signings, and their giddy fan bases will soon claim they were against it all along.
Patience very well may land Dallas some productive veteran players at bargain prices. Or, maybe not so much. It matters not, for the answers to what ills lies in the May draft. This is a young man's game, and a quarterback's game, so go get the former to help your latter. Opportunism in the meantime is fine, but don't stray from the youth movement too much.
And then there's Jason Garrett.
Love or hate him, he has looked Jerry straight in the eye without flinching, and done what needed to be done. The culture has changed. The roster has turned, with only four starters remaining from that dysfunctional mess he inherited.
Just watch this draft and the remainder of this free agency. And watch the cap pressure diminish, as this transformation continues. Through the fog, you can actually see a blueprint taking form.
Tough decisions are tense, and needed changes are always uncomfortable. Big pictures are often boring and hard to adhere to, and Christmas never gets here fast enough.
This is what sound business looks like. Nice to see a semblance of it, for once in a very, very long while, even if it doesn't guarantee success in the end. The other way certainly wasn't working.
