After Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones claimed he was “all in” (in the normal sense) for the 2024 season, it quickly became clear they couldn’t start adding new players until they extended the contracts of receiver CeeDee Lamb and quarterback. Dak Prescott.
The hesitations that followed through to the start of free agency and beyond led to the observation that, when it comes to managing the contracts of their most talented players, the Cowboys are: (1) cheap ; (2) myopic; and (3) not as smart as they think they are.
During his Tuesday appearance on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Jones provided more evidence of this specific brand of generic pudding when reflecting on the decision to trade wide receiver Amari Cooper, just two years into a 100-year deal million dollars over five years.
“We went with the dollars,” Jones said of the trade that sent Cooper to Cleveland before the 2022 season. “When we traded Amari Cooper, we saved almost $20 million for our cap and for the future. We chose a lower draft pick to achieve those savings.”
In fact, they wouldn’t have made any draft picks to save money if it had come to that. The Cowboys planned to cut Cooper if they couldn’t trade him.
Yes, they got a fifth-round pick and a swap of sixth-round picks from a team that was happy to take on the remaining $60 million over three years. And then, after the Cowboys lost Cooper’s $20 million salary for 2022, the receiver market spiked.
Davante Adams was traded and paid. Tyreek Hill was traded and paid. Although there was a lot of fugazi in their contracts (Adams reportedly received $28 million per year and Hill reportedly received $30 million), the actual numbers – $22.9 million per year for Adams and $25 million of dollars per year for Hill — suggested the Cowboys had read it wrong. the market.
Cooper had two 1,000-yard seasons in Cleveland, even though starting quarterback Deshaun Watson only played six games per year. In 2023, Cooper was a Pro Bowler. If the Browns were contenders this year, they wouldn’t have traded the remainder of his contract plus a 2025 sixth-round pick to Buffalo for a 2025 third-round pick and a 2026 seventh-round pick.
Although at one point the Cowboys likely had to choose between Cooper and Lamb as the team’s WR1, they didn’t need to do so in 2022. They dragged their feet on Lamb for two seasons extras and signed receiver Michael Gallup to a five-year contract. -year, $57.5 million deal when Cooper was traded.
Gallup had two lackluster seasons in Dallas, although Lamb attracted attention by being the No. 1 option in the passing game.
From a football standpoint, the Cowboys were wrong. They should have kept Cooper. They could have redone his deal in 2022, lowering the cap and pushing back years where the overall cap would be higher.
It’s easy to say now that it was all about money. There is more than that. The Cowboys thought Cooper wasn’t worth his money anymore (they were wrong). They thought the market would not adjust in a way that would make Cooper’s remaining deal reasonable (they were wrong).
While they have done a good job in recent years of talent acquisition and development, they have paid the wrong players (like Gallup), not paid the right players (like Cooper), and waited too long to close deals they were going to make anyway. , driving up the price and losing their leverage along the way.
Lamb eventually got his contract at market level, but only after missing all of training camp and not being as ready for the regular season as he could have been. Prescott got his deal, but only after the Cowboys realized they had found themselves in a tighter situation than they entered into with Dak in 2021, all because they waited too long to make deals they were going to make anyway. .
There is no bright line, no compelling evidence that connects these decisions to the team’s struggles. There is no way to show with certainty that the Cowboys would have won more games (especially in the playoffs) with Cooper in 2022 and 2023, or that they would have been 3-3 in 2024 if they had made the same match. CeeDee and Dak make deals early enough to recruit better talent.
Either way, the evidence is there in plain sight. Jones has a bad habit of wanting to pay less than he needs to have a championship-caliber team. He has the worst habit of waiting too long to pay guys he’s going to pay anyway.
That’s why I’ve said a time or two, as for Jerry’s periodic boast that we’d be surprised by the size of the check he’d write to guarantee a Super Bowl victory, we’d be surprised by the amount of that check. only because of its small size.
