The Continued Demise of the Dallas Cowboys

Ladies and Gentlemen of the sports world, I find myself perplexed. Perplexed as to how exactly it is that the Dallas Cowboys, in desperate need of Safety and Offensive Line help, find themselves essentially neutered during this NFL Free Agency period. While much has been made of the absolute disaster that is the NY Jets salary cap situation, it seems that the Dallas Cowboys are in an only slightly less precarious position. Granted the Cowboys are facing a preposterous $5 million penalty for exceeding a nonexistent salary cap in the 2010-2011 season (lets not even broach the subject of how owner's managed collude and impose a cap without repercussion from the NFLPA, but I cant quite grasp how exactly it is that they are this hard against the cap given their roster. If Dallas were the 49ers I would be more apt to understand. After all the 49ers roster is littered with Pro Bowl and All Pro caliber players all of whom must be paid, Dallas however does not have a roster of such compliment.

When you look at the Cowboys roster it is indeed a talented one. However many of those talented players are still under their rookie (read inexpensive) contracts, Sean Lee, Bruce Carter, & Dez Bryant to name a few. With so many young impact players the only reasonable explanation for why Dallas has essentially no cap space is that they are grossly overpaying the veterans on the roster. Many would point to Tony Romo's $16+ million salary for this upcoming season as one such instance but I would argue that while Tony may indeed seem overpaid, the cap penalty for this season is due to Dallas' penchant for restructuring contracts as opposed to signing Tony to a lucrative deal. Let us remember that Romo has played 4 of the 6 years on the 6 yr/ $67 million contract in question on a base salary of less than $1 million dollars due to those restructurings. As such, anyone of the opinion that Romo should "take one for the team" needs to realize that he already has...on 4 separate occasions...and all he got for his trouble was an Offensive line that allowed him to get sacked 36 times last year.

Its not so much that the Jones family restructures contracts, its that they don't improve the roster when they do. Take the Anthony Spencer/Victor Butler decision for example. Yes, Spencer is coming off his best season with 11.5 sacks and 95 tackles but that was in his SIXTH NFL season not to mention a contract year. In his previous 5 NFL seasons Spencer had accounted for a total of 21.5 sacks. Now that sounds like an impressive number until you realize 21.5 sacks in 5 years is a paltry 4.3 average per year or in Spencer's case .4 sacks per start as a 3-4 OLB. There are Inside or Middle Linebackers with a better sack per start ratio than Spencer yet Dallas has seen fit to franchise him twice. By comparison, Victor Butler (whom Dallas seems willing to let walk) has 11 sacks in 4 years even though he has only started 2 games in that time span. I am not saying that Butler is a better player than Spencer (although that could turn out to be the case), I'm only saying that Spencer's production doesn't meet the production you would expect from someone being paid $10.63 million for a season.

A less grievous offense is the Jason Witten contract. Now I love Witten's game & work ethic and he's probably been the most consistent Cowboy during his tenure with the team, but I seriously doubt you can find anyone who believes he should have a higher average salary ($7.2 million) than Rob Gronkowski ($6.9 million)

Decisions such as this are why Dallas finds itself in the position of spectator as the deepest free agent pool of Offensive Lineman in seemingly a decade signs elsewhere while Dallas watches replays of Romo running for his life time after time behind a porous O-Line. The inability to pursue quality O-linemen in free agency would be of minimal concern considering the number of Blue Chip prospects available in the Draft, but Dallas also has a need at Safety and only one pick to utilize in the first round. Poor financial decisions mean the Cowboys find themselves in a position to choose between a top flight safety & an upgrade at O-Line as opposed to being able to acquire both. The problem is, Dallas hasn't exactly shown a penchant for making quality decisions of late.