What was the alternative? (in your opinion)

[arglebargle]

Nevermind that Dez and Austin went down
Nevermind that Murray was gimp
Nevermind that the oline could sit down up front and leaked on the edges
Nevermind that Ware was gimp
Nevermind that Ware and Elam couldn't figure out how to play the option
Nevermind that Poppinga, Frampton, Peprah et al had no business playing
Nevermind that Lissemore was getting dominated at the nose
Nevermind that Spears was eating turf
Nevermind that Romo had overcome all of that 5 times and won games in the preceding weeks

Let's just dumb it down and pin it on the one guy. It's easy after all.

And we all know that the 49ers would still have gone to the Superbowl if they'd lost Bowman, Willis, Sapoaga, and Goldson.

Because their QBs would have willed it! Right.....

 

[Red Dragon]

And we all know that the 49ers would still have gone to the Superbowl if they'd lost Bowman, Willis, Sapoaga, and Goldson.

Because their QBs would have willed it! Right.....

Reminds me of a post where someone once commented to the effect that the reason the Cowboys lost 37-34 to the Giants on a blocked field goal was because Romo failed to display "leadership" - implying, I suppose, that if Romo were a leader, he would, by standing from the sidelines, somehow have prevented that football from being blocked.....

 

[gimmesix]

Okay the dust has started to settle, numerous people have voiced their frustration with Jerry and the boys so I thought it would be interesting to get some opinions/ideas from some of the experts here.

So Romo just got paid and most here have been worked up. My question is, if you were in charge and you could go back to the day our season ended with that loss against Washington, what exactly would you do to prepare for next season?

I went back to that day because i don't want to hear anything about any previous drafts, or taking back trades. i just want to know specifically what you would do in this offseason that would put the Cowboys in the best position as possible.

Get as crazy with it as you like, if you truly believe it would make us better.
For the record, i'm cool with the Romo signing and I don't spend a lot of time focusing on salary cap numbers so this isn't some sort of trick question. i just want to know what some of you guys would do.

According to those who don't care for the signing, we could have started Orton or traded for McCoy or Flynn, then drafted our surefire franchise QB with the 18th pick this year.

Or tank the season with Orton, McCoy or Flynn and draft our surefire franchise QB next year ... because obviously there is no way we could miss if we drafted one in the top five.

 

[TwoDeep3]

There are two schools of thought for me here.

1. I would have been making moves earlier rather than now. Tried to beat the 100 million dollar contracts that were sure to come along. Maybe gone back and redone his contract a year and a half ago and try to manage it then.

Spilled milk, to be sure, but I also believe this team has been making cap mistakes for a while now. They are gambling they hit lightning in a bottle and the cap won't matter because of the results.

But it is evident that there are two distinct problems with this team. Offensive line and defensive line.

It is evident someone who will remain nameless thinks Romo can wiggle out of trouble enough so the team can save a few bucks on the offensive line.

This will come back and bite the team on the butt this season.

So I would have been looking to tear up his current contract and redo it with a big bonus 18 months ago and extend him out so far that you can manage the cap.

2. Play out his contract and let him walk. The top 10 argument doesn't matter if you are crippling the team cap wise. Because this is like crack for the management. They will have to go back and buy more, extending him further out, until one day they have to pay for all this.

Then the team will be 3-13, with a huge possibility they never achieved squat for the money they spent.

That is not Romo's fault. But he cannot stand behind one of the poorest lines and play and succeed.

Stats mean nothing in this game we're playing here. Pretty stats don't deliver play-offs.

And there is a huge chance that hiring a bunch of older coaches won't change that either since the offensive line will again be manned by other team's cast-offs.

To recap:

re-up him 18 months ago when the market was smaller

or.

allow him to walk after next year and understand you did this to yourself since you screwed the cap eight ways to Sunday by giving players too much money and not building the core of the team.

 

[KB1122]

WEll, the real answer to this question is that the Cowboys should have lost out when they werre 1-7 two years ago and done whatever was necessary for Andrew Luck. The next answer was the team should have traded up last year for Robert Griffin and then traded Romo after the 2012 season to partially compensate for the trade-up price.

In this offseason, the alternative would pretty clearly be to trade Romo and use the trade value to move up in the 2014 draft for Bridgewater or Manziel. I would probably have moved Orton, too, and played a terrible journeyman so we could have lost as many as possible.

Would that be a risk? Yes. But we're stuck at 8-8 the way we are.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

There are two schools of thought for me here.

1. I would have been making moves earlier rather than now. Tried to beat the 100 million dollar contracts that were sure to come along. Maybe gone back and redone his contract a year and a half ago and try to manage it then.

Spilled milk, to be sure, but I also believe this team has been making cap mistakes for a while now. They are gambling they hit lightning in a bottle and the cap won't matter because of the results.

But it is evident that there are two distinct problems with this team. Offensive line and defensive line.

It is evident someone who will remain nameless thinks Romo can wiggle out of trouble enough so the team can save a few bucks on the offensive line.

This will come back and bite the team on the butt this season.

So I would have been looking to tear up his current contract and redo it with a big bonus 18 months ago and extend him out so far that you can manage the cap.

2. Play out his contract and let him walk. The top 10 argument doesn't matter if you are crippling the team cap wise. Because this is like crack for the management. They will have to go back and buy more, extending him further out, until one day they have to pay for all this.

Then the team will be 3-13, with a huge possibility they never achieved squat for the money they spent.

That is not Romo's fault. But he cannot stand behind one of the poorest lines and play and succeed.

Stats mean nothing in this game we're playing here. Pretty stats don't deliver play-offs.

And there is a huge chance that hiring a bunch of older coaches won't change that either since the offensive line will again be manned by other team's cast-offs.

To recap:

re-up him 18 months ago when the market was smaller

or.

allow him to walk after next year and understand you did this to yourself since you screwed the cap eight ways to Sunday by giving players too much money and not building the core of the team.

I'm still waiting for the cap hell accounting so I can stop disregarding it as fearmongering with no empirical basis.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

WEll, the real answer to this question is that the Cowboys should have lost out when they werre 1-7 two years ago and done whatever was necessary for Andrew Luck. The next answer was the team should have traded up last year for Robert Griffin and then traded Romo after the 2012 season to partially compensate for the trade-up price.

In this offseason, the alternative would pretty clearly be to trade Romo and use the trade value to move up in the 2014 draft for Bridgewater or Manziel. I would probably have moved Orton, too, and played a terrible journeyman so we could have lost as many as possible.

Would that be a risk? Yes. But we're stuck at 8-8 the way we are.

Planning to lose is planning to lose. I cannot get behind that.

 

[TwoDeep3]

I'm still waiting for the cap hell accounting so I can stop disregarding it as fearmongering with no empirical basis.

I am still waiting for you to explain how each year you ignore the empirical evidence that this management does not know how to build a winner, which contradicts the fire you hold everyone's feet to.

Next year he will cost 25 million. They, of course, will redo his contract and continue until he cannot play any longer and then the piper will be paid.

Stop being obtuse.

 

[TwoDeep3]

Planning to lose is planning to lose. I cannot get behind that.

Planning to win and continuing to lose, how's that working out for you?

Sometimes taking a step or two back means you can take three or four forward.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I am still waiting for you to explain how each year you ignore the empirical evidence that this management does not know how to build a winner, which contradicts the fire you hold everyone's feet to.

Next year he will cost 25 million. They, of course, will redo his contract and continue until he cannot play any longer and then the piper will be paid.

Stop being obtuse.

I never said the management could or could not. I don't get into top down guessing like you guys are wont to do. It's the difference between psychology where predicting is more like guessing and physics where particle behavior can be describe with precision of planck lengths.

I would not mind the wholistic approach if not for the fact that the users of said approach speak as if what they claim is a certainty. It's an interesting theory I suppose even if it makes a mockery of deductive analysis. If it is easier for you to pretend like you understand things by using that method then you go for it. I find it a waste of time.

The $25m cap figure is a $17m salary and $8m SB proration. You know that the $17m will be restructured and brought down to less than half of that. The piper being paid so to speak implies that Romo will be gone. The $16m salary will most likely not be replaced by another one seeing cost controls and draft picks being as they are.

My wonder is why do you grandstand on the big number when you very well know the process. You call me intentionally obtuse?

Really at the end of the day we both know that you can do no accounting to justify your claim else you would have. Instead you wave your hands at big numbers and play stupid as to how business is done in the NFL.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Planning to win and continuing to lose, how's that working out for you?

Sometimes taking a step or two back means you can take three or four forward.

Whoever said I planned for anything? Keep trying. I don't think under your paradigm. By now I would think you would have gotten that.

 

[WPBCowboysFan]

What was the alternative?

None, absolutely none, unless Jerry and Red had been reading CZ and then they would have known that signing Romo was a HUGE mistake. They could have found all the answers to the alternative here!

 

[Afigueroa22]

And we all know that the 49ers would still have gone to the Superbowl if they'd lost Bowman, Willis, Sapoaga, and Goldson.

Because their QBs would have willed it! Right.....

Hm?

Let's take away from the 9ers what we lost or were left with...

Banged up Ware- Aldon Smith

Ratliff- Justin Smith

Lee/Carter- Willis/ Bowman

Church- Goldson

Austin and at times Dez- Vernon Davis (I know he's their TE but he's their best receiver)

Murray- Gore

Missing anyone?

 

[Lodeus]

Nevermind that Dez and Austin went down
Nevermind that Murray was gimp
Nevermind that the oline could sit down up front and leaked on the edges
Nevermind that Ware was gimp
Nevermind that Ware and Elam couldn't figure out how to play the option
Nevermind that Poppinga, Frampton, Peprah et al had no business playing
Nevermind that Lissemore was getting dominated at the nose
Nevermind that Spears was eating turf
Nevermind that Romo had overcome all of that 5 times and won games in the preceding weeks

Let's just dumb it down and pin it on the one guy. It's easy after all.

Also should add that the defense was allergic to the ball.

 

[TwoDeep3]

Whoever said I planned for anything? Keep trying. I don't think under your paradigm. By now I would think you would have gotten that.

Of course you don't. You have mastered a style of trolling the people wwho worry with your paradigm and empirical commentary.

The facts are what they are. This is a .500 team since 1997.

You cannot deny that.

There is one constant in that time frame, and that is the management.

You cannot deny that.

You suggest you don't equate one to the other, but you deny empirical evidence every day you do this dance about prove it

It has been proven beyond a reasonable man's opinion.

You elect to be obtuse about it for some personal reason. No problem, but your dancing above doesn't change the facts of the case.

 

[TwentyOne]

Okay the dust has started to settle, numerous people have voiced their frustration with Jerry and the boys so I thought it would be interesting to get some opinions/ideas from some of the experts here.

So Romo just got paid and most here have been worked up. My question is, if you were in charge and you could go back to the day our season ended with that loss against Washington, what exactly would you do to prepare for next season?

I went back to that day because i don't want to hear anything about any previous drafts, or taking back trades. i just want to know specifically what you would do in this offseason that would put the Cowboys in the best position as possible.

Get as crazy with it as you like, if you truly believe it would make us better.
For the record, i'm cool with the Romo signing and I don't spend a lot of time focusing on salary cap numbers so this isn't some sort of trick question. i just want to know what some of you guys would do.

This is not an easy to answer question. And i don't think you can change things in one year. Especially not this year where most of the problems from bad decissions the years before come together.

I won't list everything i would have done differently. Here are some things i would have done in 2011/2012.

- Cut Spencer
- Not trade up for Claiborne. Even if i love him as a player i think it was the wrong move. We had and still have other needs.
- Really solidify the OLine: 1.) draft another guard in the first or second round. Get Ben Grubbs - His contract is lower in the first two
years then Living's and Bernadaud's together. And essentially his contract is looking the same - it's a two year deal.

That's only a few things i would have done differently. And there alot more the years before - but right now i am too lazy to put a real strategy together.

The major thing is going for OLine and getting rid of high contracts. CBs are fancy picks but you don't build your team around them.

Of course we had to go CB in 2011. We wouldn't have had if we had better decissions the years before. So i can't say anything against the Carr deal. Still we could have done much better.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Of course you don't. You have mastered a style of trolling the people wwho worry with your paradigm and empirical commentary.

The facts are what they are. This is a .500 team since 1997.

You cannot deny that.

There is one constant in that time frame, and that is the management.

You cannot deny that.

You suggest you don't equate one to the other, but you deny empirical evidence every day you do this dance about prove it

It has been proven beyond a reasonable man's opinion.

You elect to be obtuse about it for some personal reason. No problem, but your dancing above doesn't change the facts of the case.

I don't plan because I don't see the point. I realize that I am not in a position to really make an educated assessment so I choose not to. I definitely going to comment as if things are certain given those limitations. This is in the grand scheme of things unimportant matters but in other things I have seen all too closely how taking action from judgments on circumstances I don't have the complete information is folly. I NEVER do that unless I have to.

I was thinking about this as I knew that you would fall back on the lame deduction argument. I did not figure you would whine and accuse me of trolling. I am genuine in my feelings on this. Reductionist empiricism is literally my philosophy in all things. If people are going to claim truths as absolutes then yeah I am going to use my method of determining something as being true. You guys don't even come close. If you don't like it then put me on ignore because I am going to keep on coming with what has been shown to expose the truth time and again.

Maybe you guys are comfortable on accepting things on poor logic and a flawed approach but I have higher standards. What part of me not buying top down analysis as absolute was difficult for you to understand?

I'll humor you and argue your lame methodology anyway as if it has merit.

Your deduction is flawed. You don't get to cherrypick time frames with confirmation bias. While 1989 to 1996 are inconvenient to your argument they still exist as a time where Jerry Jones was general manager. That is objectively true. That is not an opinion but empirical fact. As such, them winning three super bowls completely invalidates your assertion that Jones as GM/owner precludes us from going all the way.

I know all the canned answers about Johnson and how 94-95 don't count, but if nothing else Jerry Jones did not prevent Johnson from winning anything. He is not inherently the cause of failure as a GM. Had that been the case they could not have won yet they did. If you want to say that it took a great coach to overcome his deficiency or whatever else unprovable nonsense then go ahead but us being unable to win is not a foregone conclusion. In the converse Johnson in Miami demonstrated that he was not cause either.

Additionally, even had you not conveniently ignored data that proves you wrong, at best you would have shown correlation. While you may think that the only consistent thing, you in no way have demonstrated that. There are all manner of physical truths; for example their headquarters has been the same.

Further you have not excluded other things from being cause. Who is to say that there were not multiple separate causes during that time frame. You in no way have demonstrated that there is only one cause or that there cannot be multiple causes. You don't even attempt to control for cause. I doubt you would even know how to begin.

I would assert that it is quite obvious that there are many things that go into a teams potential of winning any game.

In order to deduct something you have to eliminate every possibility. This is a complex issue and quite frankly cherry picking a timeframe and make claims about the only consistent thing with no proof is intellectually lazy trash. It's simply dumbing things down so stupid people can point a finger and focus their anger. It's an age old trick. Show a loose correlation to the person involved and an undesired circumstance and point that finger.

If you want to eat it up then go right ahead. I instead will be interested in knowing the details. Occam's razor is a cop out for the intellectually lazy. This has been demonstrated time by the bohr model being trumped by vsepr theory as well as newtonian physics to relativity to quantum dynamics.

It is what it is.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Oh and still no accounting of how we are going to be in cap hell. You basically granted that you were being intentionally obtuse about the 2014-15 cap figures. You didn't even really try. I don't go for the whole accept something as true without knowing the specifics.