Why Cheap Players Rock

[T-RO]

I'm an unusual spender. Though I love Starbucks coffee...I prefer to buy it at $19 for a big bag at Costco and skip the $3+ cup drive-thru. Though I enjoy dining out...I rarely do so. Habits like this not only help me save money, but also make it easy to afford nice things. The formula is this: save money everyday = enjoy nice things.

Most NFL teams know this same trick of course, though perhaps no team in recent times has been adept at it as the Cowboys.

Consider the Cowboys inexpensive players:
-4th round QB Dak Prescott (inexpensive for now)
-David Irving
-LG Jonathan Cooper
-Cooper Rush
-Noah Brown
-Blake Jarwin
-Lewis Neal
-Anthony Brown
-Kavon Frazier
-Keith Smith
-Rod Smith
-Xavier Woods

How does a team acquire beneficial cheap talent? Draft well in the later rounds, sign good undrafted free agents, and display a savvy to find diamonds in the rough that other teams fail to appreciate.

The players above not only produce as a group tremendously well for the Cowboys, they provide the team an ability to retain all-pro and other top players on the team. It's a key factor for the Cowboys current success and could help push them to a title--this year or in the coming few seasons.

 

[John813]

Quite the level of disparity of proven talent on that list.
Some have done a great job, a la Dak and Irving. Some have been good like Cooper and Frazier(STs). Others have shown promise at one point like Woods, Brown(16). But a good amount haven't proven anything, let alone suited up for the Cowboys in the regular season. Jarwin we signed so the Eagles couldn't claim him. He's #4 out of 4 on the depth chart. Rush looked good in PS, but he replaced a guy earning peanuts in Moore. Neal hasn't played a snap yet. Rod Smith got a handful of snaps.

Not buying that all listed produce as a group when some barely play

 

[KingintheNorth]

Oh boy.

Trying to justify being cheap. Still doesn't absolve them of poor albeit cheap signings this past off-season.

Get better, nothing else really matters. If you can get better without having to spend as much as others, great, but being frugal isn't more important than getting better.

 

[NoLuv4Jerry]

Spend a little. Spend a lot. Draft great. Draft poorly. What does it matter? There are ZERO repercussions for the fact that we have not won in over 20 years. I am too tired to laud ANY approach we take...until there is proof we are positioned to compete for a Super Bowl.

 

[Melonfeud]

Quite the level of disparity of proven talent on that list.
Some have done a great job, a la Dak and Irving. Some have been good like Cooper and Frazier(STs). Others have shown promise at one point like Woods, Brown(16). But a good amount haven't proven anything, let alone suited up for the Cowboys in the regular season. Jarwin we signed so the Eagles couldn't claim him. He's #4 out of 4 on the depth chart. Rush looked good in PS, but he replaced a guy earning peanuts in Moore. Neal hasn't played a snap yet. Rod Smith got a handful of snaps.

Not buying that all listed produce as a group when some barely play

First thing I noticed, also.

 

[tm1119]

The top 3 are the only ones even worth mentioning. The rest are all jags that every other team has at the same price. Maybe woods has starter potential we’ll see. And depends on which Anthony Brown we are talking about. ‘16 Brown looked like a great pick. ‘17 Brown looks like the 6th rounder we spent on him.

And even Cooper didn’t exactly take genius thinking to put a former top 15 pick in between Fred and Smith to get the talent out of him.

take away the almost accidental Dak pick and the franchise is in shambles...because of being cheap. So yeah, let’s not celebrate what’s really hurting the team

 

[KingintheNorth]

take away the almost accidental Dak pick and the franchise is in shambles...because of being cheap. So yeah, let’s not celebrate what’s really hurting the team

Head shot.

 

[John813]

The top 3 are the only ones even worth mentioning. The rest are all jags that every other team has at the same price. Maybe woods has starter potential we’ll see. And depends on which Anthony Brown we are talking about. ‘16 Brown looked like a great pick. ‘17 Brown looks like the 6th rounder we spent on him.

And even Cooper didn’t exactly take genius thinking to put a former top 15 pick in between Fred and Smith to get the talent out of him.

take away the almost accidental Dak pick and the franchise is in shambles...because of being cheap. So yeah, let’s not celebrate what’s really hurting the team

And the team wanted to go with Green at LG till he got injured.

One he missed was Brian Price, who at least turned out to be a decent waiver wire pickup at 1 tech.
Even then, he may just end up being a dime a dozen DT we'll see coming and going through Valley Ranch through next year.

 

[T-RO]

Quite the level of disparity of proven talent on that list.
Some have done a great job, a la Dak and Irving. Some have been good like Cooper and Frazier(STs). Others have shown promise at one point like Woods, Brown(16). But a good amount haven't proven anything, let alone suited up for the Cowboys in the regular season. Jarwin we signed so the Eagles couldn't claim him. He's #4 out of 4 on the depth chart. Rush looked good in PS, but he replaced a guy earning peanuts in Moore. Neal hasn't played a snap yet. Rod Smith got a handful of snaps.

Not buying that all listed produce as a group when some barely play

- I'd feel better about Rush than a lot of backups. Our two quarterbacks combined are costing the cap $1mil bucks! Some teams are paying just their backups over $8 mil.

- David Irving is making 600k..if he was making a high draft pick salary would cost us 6-8x as much. If he were a free agent today...he might pull $10mil

- Brown is virtually a starting cornerback. What's the going rate for one of those?

 

[T-RO]

Spend a little. Spend a lot. Draft great. Draft poorly. What does it matter? There are ZERO repercussions for the fact that we have not won in over 20 years. I am too tired to laud ANY approach we take...until there is proof we are positioned to compete for a Super Bowl.

News flash: We are positioned to compete for a Super Bowl. Only Pats have won more game over past two seasons.

 

[GhostOfPelluer]

Take away that Dak pick? That's like saying take away the Brady pick and the Patriots approach is crap.

 

[T-RO]

The top 3 are the only ones even worth mentioning. The rest are all jags that every other team has at the same price. Maybe woods has starter potential we’ll see. And depends on which Anthony Brown we are talking about. ‘16 Brown looked like a great pick. ‘17 Brown looks like the 6th rounder we spent on him.

Anthony Brown grades out as an average NFL cornerback at PFF. Price tag? 540k. We won't know what we have w/some of the others until they play more.

And even Cooper didn’t exactly take genius thinking to put a former top 15 pick in between Fred and Smith to get the talent out of him.

31 other teams could have grabbed Cooper. They didn't. He's paid a mere 1.6 mil and he's starting and playing pretty well.

...

take away the almost accidental Dak pick and the franchise is in shambles...because of being cheap. So yeah, let’s not celebrate what’s really hurting the team

Shambles? Sorry that's the dumbest thing of the century. 18-6 in two seasons....young, talented and loaded w/draft picks. Well... you did give me a good chuckle.

 

[T-RO]

There were a lot of screw-ups in years past, no doubt. Bad process in place.

In the past few seasons, however, nobody has done as good a job as the Dallas front office. Nobody.

 

[xwalker]

I'm an unusual spender. Though I love Starbucks coffee...I prefer to buy it at $19 for a big bag at Costco and skip the $3+ cup drive-thru. Though I enjoy dining out...I rarely do so. Habits like this not only help me save money, but also make it easy to afford nice things. The formula is this: save money everyday = enjoy nice things.

Most NFL teams know this same trick of course, though perhaps no team in recent times has been adept at it as the Cowboys.

Consider the Cowboys inexpensive players:
-4th round QB Dak Prescott (inexpensive for now)
-David Irving
-LG Jonathan Cooper
-Cooper Rush
-Noah Brown
-Blake Jarwin
-Lewis Neal
-Anthony Brown
-Kavon Frazier
-Keith Smith
-Rod Smith
-Xavier Woods

How does a team acquire beneficial cheap talent? Draft well in the later rounds, sign good undrafted free agents, and display a savvy to find diamonds in the rough that other teams fail to appreciate.

The players above not only produce as a group tremendously well for the Cowboys, they provide the team an ability to retain all-pro and other top players on the team. It's a key factor for the Cowboys current success and could help push them to a title--this year or in the coming few seasons.

You have to get production from draft picks on their rookie contracts and some other low paid players to be competitive in the salary cap era.

 

[T-RO]

You have to get production from draft picks on their rookie contracts and some other low paid players to be competitive in the salary cap era.

Exactly. Winning in the salary cap era has a lot to do with stretching the salary cap dollar.

At some point Dak won't be cheap so we'll need to continue to find these bang-for-the-buck players.

As it stands now we have a decent draft class. If Taco could develop it could become a great draft class. The 2016 Cowboy harvest was a historically awesome collection.

 

[Stash]

Oh boy.

Trying to justify being cheap. Still doesn't absolve them of poor albeit cheap signings this past off-season.

Get better, nothing else really matters. If you can get better without having to spend as much as others, great, but being frugal isn't more important than getting better.

It's an obvious reach.

 

[Stash]

There were a lot of screw-ups in years past, no doubt. Bad process in place.

In the past few seasons, however, nobody has done as good a job as the Dallas front office. Nobody.

There were several screwups this year, no doubt.

And a million threads like this one don't erase that.

 

[tm1119]

Anthony Brown grades out as an average NFL cornerback at PFF. Price tag? 540k. We won't know what we have w/some of the others until they play more.


31 other teams could have grabbed Cooper. They didn't. He's paid a mere 1.6 mil and he's starting and playing pretty well.

...

Shambles? Sorry that's the dumbest thing of the century. 18-6 in two seasons....young, talented and loaded w/draft picks. Well... you did give me a good chuckle.

I don’t give a damn about PFF rankings. Brown flat out hasn’t played like a top 3 CB this year. He’s a backup. Most backups are cheap.

How do you know how many teams did or didn’t try to sign Cooper? You don’t think Dallas being the best possible destination for any LG had anything to do with it?

And you chose to skip over the 1st part of my last point. WITHOUT DAK. If our GM/Owner had his way we would indeed be in shambles with Paxton Lynch at QB. Or Connor Cook

 

[T-RO]

There were several screwups this year, no doubt.

And a million threads like this one don't erase that.

The only real mess up, IMO, was the Carroll signing...which I concede was a head-scratcher. I always viewed that as an insurance signing in case rookies didn't deliver, but price and duration were too much.

Big picture, Cowboy front office has been steam-rolling.

 

[T-RO]

I don’t give a damn about PFF rankings. Brown flat out hasn’t played like a top 3 CB this year. He’s a backup. Most backups are cheap.

Teams around the league pay considerable money for PFF's analytics (stuff we outsiders can't see or buy). PFF's grades aren't perfect but their opinions are valued in the industry. Is anyone buying your opinions?

I'm not.

How do you know how many teams did or didn’t try to sign Cooper?

What we do know is that the other teams didn't sign him. He signed w/Dallas on what is turning into a ridiculously good value contract for the Boys.