The front office really botched putting together this defense. It really all starts with injury prone Sean Lee and soon to be bust Bruce Carter.
Combined with our complete disinterest with drafting defensive linemen* since Anthony Spencer.
This team has not made any real effort to transition properly from 3-4 to 4-3.
This is our 2nd year since moving to the 4-3, and how many front seven draft picks have we had in the first 3 rounds of the draft?
Just one... and it was a second round draft pick... I was and still am completely sold on the drafting of Frederick and Martin, but looking back at things (though I'm excited about both players) drafting Williams and Escobar instead of defensive players wasn't thought through. Then we drafted Devin Street with this years 5th rounder. He'll be lucky to see any significant playing time, but if he does end up playing a lot, it'll probably spell bad news for us.
For the defensive line we need to stop relying on bargain bin players to somehow contribute. I think Marinelli has been a bit overrated in terms of being able to get players to out produce their abilities. Hopefully I can eat crow for saying that. I think we were wrong to buy into the hype from guys like Romo on Crawford. This guy just isn't a dynamic player, and that is exactly why he hasn't been penciled in for any starting position on the line, despite having no solid starters at numerous spots. It's time to stop this and focus on bringing in some real talent. Hopefully we'll be able to get away with Lawrence and Melton for half the line, but we at least need to draft a quality defensive end next year early to man that left end spot.
Sean Lee isn't cost prohibitive and won't be for a long time, but at this point he shouldn't be relied on to start 16 games. Which means you need to bring in 3 linebackers still. Though maybe that won't be the case. Maybe we'll see McClain and Durant show that they can be 2 solid linebackers for us and all we need to do is bring in another linebacker, who can step up when (not if) Sean Lee is hurt again. Would have been really nice to get CJ Mosley, but I'm still glad we drafted Martin.
In the secondary we're paying Carr to be the 5th highest paid corner in the league... He isn't the 5th best corner, and unless he improves greatly this year, he needs to be gone next year. Unfortunately there is a lot of dead money associated with cutting him. If we cut Carr next year, we'll just break even, but we could open up almost 14 million dollars against the cap in 2016. We could also make him a June 1st cut next year which I believe would cost us about 5 million in 2015 and 7.5 million in 2016. That would give us an additional 7 million dollars to spend in free agency next year, and then another 6 million in 2016, followed by 12 million in 2017. Carr has easily been one of the worst signings in a long time. Largely going under the radar too.
2015 is Claiborne's last year on contract with the Cowboys. I would hope to trade him if he can put together a solid 2014 season. Trade him to a team that wants man corners.
The Patriots wanted to improve their secondary this year, they went out and got Revis and Browner... two proven corners, who fit their scheme. Claiborne and Carr should have been replaced when the Cowboys decided to go to a Tampa 2 system... again, no high draft picks on corners since the switch to the 4-3.
Basically what happened is we rested on our laurels and hoped players would just play to expectations and stay healthy when they've never proven they can. We're going to have to hope that the offense is a juggernaut this year.
Since they fired Rob Ryan without cause I would say, these are the top 3 round draft picks we've spent on defense:
JJ Wilcox
DeMarcus Lawrence
2 draft picks for a team desperate in need of help on defense...In those same two years we've drafted 4 players on the offense in the first 3 rounds.
