For years, the Dallas Cowboys front office has faced difficult decisions regarding roster management. Determining who to keep and who to let go in free agency hasn’t always been easy. The board does the best it can by being responsible with the salary cap to be able to compete year after year. And sure enough, that’s exactly what they do. They are a team that wins constantly and continues to form one of the strongest squads in the NFL.
The challenge the Cowboys currently face is difficult. We’ve been hearing for months that keeping Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons doesn’t seem financially possible, since all of those players will command the best prices on the market at the three most expensive positions in the NFL. We have discussed this dilemma and last week we outlined what it would take to retain all three players. In that article, we stated that the strategy for maintaining a deep talent group meant that the Cowboys had to follow a formula consisting of these six elements:
To examine those elements in more detail, see Part II of the article on the Cowboys contract conundrum.
Most of these actions are easy to understand since the Cowboys already perform several of them. The board chooses the main players of its team and invests a lot of money in them. They restructure deals to open up cap space and rely heavily on keeping a roster of young contributors on super-cheap rookie deals. This is the Cowboys style.
What deserves a closer look is how the Cowboys are preparing to let good players leave in free agency and how the impact of those departures can be minimized. To provide a better understanding, we have created importance levels for the top contributors on the Cowboys roster to help illustrate what this front office will attempt to do.
These levels are separated by their importance to the Cowboys’ success. Top-level talent is of great importance. In addition, the medium and low levels are also divided into two groups. Players who have two or fewer years left on their contract have a higher priority than those who stay for a while.
THE GUARDIANS
Each team has a short list of star players who will take up 50-60% of their cap space. This group identifies itself as “the guardians” and for Dallas, they are the big three that everyone has been talking about, with Trevon Diggs and Tyler Smith also included. These are the most talented players on the team who are expected to be around for the long term. As noted in the previous article, they are expected to occupy 59.4% of the team’s resources over the next few years.
DIFFICULT DECISIONS
Now, the challenge is: how can the Cowboys fill out the rest of their roster with only 40% of their budget? This will be possible by making great sacrifices. Those sacrifices will include moving on from talented veterans (example: Tyron Smith) and letting good players leave in free agency (Tony Pollard, Tyler Biadasz and Dorance Armstrong). The team will receive compensatory Draft picks for losing these players, however, those picks will be outside of the top 100 draft picks and are mostly just darts to throw, hoping to get lucky like they did with a quarterback. field that the major will soon command. contract in NFL history, valued at more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
Assuming those losses is the first step. Prepare for impact. Losing Zack Martin and DeMarcus Lawrence will be sad. And giving up talented young players like Osa Odighizuwa, DaRon Bland and Jake Ferguson will hurt a little. Of course, there will be room for the Cowboys to keep one or maybe two of these guys, but most of them have to go. It’s a harsh reality, but it has to happen.
REPLACE DIFFICULT DECISIONS
Fortunately, the Cowboys have several young players at the same level of importance because they are young players with good upside who will be around for a while. Some of these players will work. In fact, you could see one of these guys supplanting one of the big names in the Tyler Smith-esque goaltending group. The key thing to remember is that some of the players in this group will take on bigger roles and one day make tough decisions. As long as the Cowboys can continue to draft well, these talented players will be able to replenish themselves, providing the team with strong contributions at a very low cost.
It’s worth noting that some players in the “tough decisions” group were once acquired with late-round draft picks and we didn’t expect them to shine as much. That means some players who will eventually replace them have yet to be revealed.
REPLACEABLE
While we appreciate their contributions, many players are not that difficult to replace. Players like Connor Williams, Dante Fowler and Jayron Kearse contributed significant plays, but they don’t possess any special skills that justify investing extra money their way. The Cowboys are content to let those players walk in free agency if someone is willing to give them a raise for their services. And as with the “hard decisions” level, the front office could sign one or two players from this group (a la Jourdan Lewis) if they can reach a cheap deal. In most cases, those players won’t stick around.
REPLACE SPARE PARTS
This is the easiest part of this process to understand. The Cowboys have done an outstanding job in this department. This can be done by spending on low-cost free agents or late-round picks/UDFA. Every year, the Cowboys find unexpected contributors taking up a small fraction of the cap space. This part is repeatable.
It’s important to lay things out this way to see how the Cowboys have been replenishing the team with good players despite the consequence of having to cut good players because they have expensive players at the top of their roster, and will continue to do so. so. Keeping strong talent at premium NFL positions is smart and they are good for filling out the rest of your roster. Players we once didn’t want to leave have been replaced by new players who we eventually won’t want to leave either. This wouldn’t be possible if the Cowboys weren’t a good draft team, but they are. It’s hard to keep the band together when so many strike big-ticket deals, but responsible budgeting and smart purchasing will continue to make them one of the best teams in the league year after year.
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