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 that they couldn’t start adding new players until they extended contracts. from receiver CeeDee Lamb and quarterback. Dak Prescott.
The ensuing delay that lasted until the start of free agency and beyond prompted the observation that, when it comes to managing the contracts of their most talented players, the Cowboys are: (1) cheap; (2) myopic; and (3) they are not as smart as they think they are.
During his appearance Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Jones provided more evidence of that specific brand of generic pudding as he reflected on the decision to trade wide receiver Amari Cooper, just two years into a five-year, $100 million contract.
“We went for the dollars,” Jones said of the trade that sent Cooper to Cleveland ahead of the 2022 season. “When we traded Amari Cooper, we saved almost $20 million for our salary cap and going forward. We took a lower pick in the draft to get those savings.”
In reality, they wouldn’t have taken any draft picks to get the savings, if it had come to that point. The Cowboys had 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 dumped Cooper’s $20 million 2022 salary, the receiver market exploded.
Davante Adams was traded and paid. Tyreek Hill was traded and paid. Although there were plenty of fugazi built into 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 per year for Hill) suggested that the Cowboys had read evil. the market.
Cooper had a pair of 1,000-yard seasons in Cleveland, even though starting quarterback Deshaun Watson played only six games each 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-rounder and a 2026 seventh-rounder.
While at some 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 let Lamb go for two more seasons and signed receiver Michael Gallup to a five-year contract. $57.5 million per year deal when Cooper was traded.
Gallup had two mediocre seasons in Dallas, even with Lamb drawing attention as the number one option in the passing game.
From a football standpoint, the Cowboys made a mistake. They should have kept Cooper. They could have reworked their deal in 2022, lowering the cap number and kicking the can down the road toward years where the overall cap would be higher.
Now it’s easy to say that these were dollars. There is more than that. The Cowboys thought Cooper was no longer worth it (they were wrong). They thought the market wouldn’t adjust in a way that would make Cooper’s remaining deal reasonable (they were wrong).
While they’ve done a good job in recent years acquiring and developing talent, they’ve paid the wrong players (like Gallup), they haven’t paid the right players (like Cooper), and they’ve waited too long to close deals they were going to close. anyway. , driving up the price and losing your leverage along the way.
Lamb eventually got his market-level contract, but only after missing all of training camp and not being as prepared for the regular season as he could have been. Prescott got his deal, but only after the Cowboys realized they had gotten themselves into a tougher corner than they had gotten themselves into with Dak in 2021, all because they waited too long to make the deals they were going to make. anyway. .
There is no clear line, no smoking gun that connects those decisions to the team’s struggles. There is no way to prove with any degree of certainty that the Cowboys would have won more games (especially in the postseason) with Cooper in 2022 and 2023, or that they would be better than 3-3 in 2024 if they had done the same. CeeDee and Dak reach a deal early enough to hire better talent.
Still, the shreds of evidence are 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 those he is going to pay anyway.
That’s why I’ve said once or twice, regarding 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 size of that check. just because of how small it would be.