Cowboys Offseason Plan: Free Agency Sets Up BPA-Focused Draft

A multiyear plan…

Question- Do you believe Garret planned on going deep into the playoffs this year? With no additions to the horrid defense the year before? With a brand new young crew at offensive line? The Carter pick alone seems to suggest forward thinking.

It smells like he wanted to draft players for the future. A question may be, how far into the future does this thing go.

Personally I like it.

Depending on your answers, the Cowboys have anywhere between nine and nineteen needs, at positions ranging from starting ROLB to fifth corner. If they were to break the bank to secure the services of a Carl Nicks or a Cortland Finnegan, then they’d be filling a lot of those slots with UDFAs. That would return Dallas to an old roster problem they have been working to avoid of late, one they tried to address with the 2009 draft: good talent at the top but an appalling lack of depth. That’s a recipe for disaster come December, when injuries mount.

if I still wrote fanposts, I might write one combining the concepts from this …

If a team spends half its salary cap on a single star player and the minimum salary on the other 52 other players, it’s going to have no depth and a very low median salary. But if a team has a high median salary by allotting its salary cap equally among its players, it may not have any superstars, but it will have nothing but depth.

The Redskins are about average in the league in terms of the total amount of salary allotted to their offensive line in 2011 — 17th by my numbers. But a very large portion of that total goes to Trent Williams. His cap hit this season is over half of the Redskins’ offensive line total of $20 million, which means there’s not much left for the other linemen. The median cap hit is slightly under $600,000….

Williams’s $10 million might be just too many eggs in one basket. He’s a solid player, and is sorely missed at the moment, but I wonder if the team would be better off with two second-round $5 million linemen than one $10 million dollar guy.

and this

In 2008, losing three out of four in the month of December ended a tumultuous year. Down the stretch, with losses in Pittsburgh, at home against Baltimore, and at Philadelphia, the line crumbled again. Before December, the Cowboys allowed the 8th fewest sacks in the league. But after December 1, no team in the NFL allowed more sacks than the Cowboys did (13). The concerns with the offensive line where there for all to see.

In 2009, the Cowboys had a wonderful year along the offensive line. Without question, it was the finest year of pass protection and run production the organization has had in the last decade. All went according to plan until they advanced to play the strong front of the Minnesota Vikings at the Metrodome in the divisional round of the playoffs. [note: was the injury to Flozell the catalyst?] Six sacks later, the Cowboys were bruised, beaten, and eliminated. Anyone who watched that game would be hard pressed to suggest the Cowboys line did their job very well.

In 2010, the breakdown happened earlier in the season, with Tennessee sacking Romo six times as once again Marc Colombo and Leonard Davis looked old and slow. Two weeks later, Romo was lost for the season as the Giants were able to slam him to the turf and break his collarbone. Any doubt about the OL’s pass protection ability was difficult to confirm with sack totals, because they only allowed 31 the whole season. But, observers started to see that Jason Garrett was continuing to alter these totals with play calling. Short passes, many behind the line of scrimmage, were his best remedy for pass protection breakdowns. If Romo (or his healthy QB) could get rid of the ball before his OL was beaten, they could keep any stretchers from being needed.

And in 2011, with the season on the line, the line collapsed again in December.

Stephen Jones said something almost identical – that the only way to go is BPA because (as you and FITAT point out) you don’t know beforehand who you’re going to lose and what that will do to your season. So you have to draft the players you rate as the best, and use FA to fill needs.

Last season, clearly, was anomalous. Dallas was broke because JJ had to agree to a lower cap than he wanted to get the deal done. And the FA period was way to small to maneuver in.

Priority Numero Uno: SIGN MARIO WILLIAMS

Priority Numero Dos: Sign a center
Myers
Wells

Priority Numero Tres: Sign a CB
Finnegan
Carr
Terrell Thomas

…and it has had minimal effects. Maybe we are just signing the wrong guys.

I would prefer to sign 2 guys that I know will have a major effect on the team rather than 5 guys that I am just hoping still have gas in the tank.

As for the draft thing….We have never been shy about selecting a talented player as BPA regardless of our holes. …David Lafluer was a long time ago.

I would cut Scandrick for Finnegan. Rather have two starting CB’s than one starting CB and a nickel CB.

1) How good are the talent evaluators on this team…and I’m referring to the scouts. How well do we evaluate internally and externally if they are allowed to do their jobs?

2) Do we think the young guys we’ve drafted the past 2 years still have upside?

This guy is the great pass rusher we need opposite of Ware and he comes at a price that allows us to be flexible in FA..

you come on here making sense. After a long frustrating season it’s rather refreshing to hear some of that. Let the healing process from last season begin. The Cowboys seem to be in the market for an offensive lineman in FA. I hope it’s the guy that gives us the best ROI. I think we might get a couple of good players out of Nagy, Arkin, and Kowalski, but I don’t think it will be in 2012. If one of them is ready to play well next year, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

are ok as long as they are better than what we currently have.

Filling needs with player whom you know their ability and what they can do in the NFL. This happening AFTER you have done your youth movement with players you want to give a shot to play early in their careers.

However, this has been mitigated by the rookie wage scale now. A team is no longer handicapped by a 1st round player making so much money that they have to start them from day one. If they have a veteran that has earned a spot ahead of them because they aren’t quite ready yet, then so be it. You can go out and fill all of your needs with free agency, draft who you will and when they are ready, put them in. If they are behind on the depth chart then that is a good issue for you because maybe you can trade the veteran for draft picks and stick the young rookie in his place and not lose too much production, if any, on the field, meanwhile gaining draft picks from position needy teams. So it works both ways and nothing should ever prevent you from taking best player available.

Thankfully it appears Garrett doesn’t think that certain positions are better to draft than others and factor into best player available as we have seen in years past. In other words, he possibly see an offensive lineman as BPA over a skill position player like WR.

FREE AGENCY: Our 1st Free Agent priority should be to sign a quality pass rushing DE. Yes, signing Mario or Calais may be a pipe dream but my point is to FILL THE BIGGEST VOID ON THE TEAM (passing rush DE) that could help BOTH our average PASS RUSH and our smallish SECONDARY!!! I explain WHY in the last paragraph. Our 2nd Free Agent priority should be to sign a quality bull-dozing OG to replace aging Kyle Kosier which would help our RUN GAME improve on 3d&short or 1st&Goal. This should be very doable for Stephen Jones to figure out.

DRAFT: Our 3rd priority should be to draft at least one good CB (two preferrably). Janoris Jenkins is the best man-cover CB that may be available at pick#14. If not, pick another man-cover CB. This draft has a few good man-cover CBs that would help make Rob Ryans defensive schemes work better…..especially IF we address Priority Nbr#1!!! *Trumaine Johnson may be the sleeper CB in this draft. If his speed improves, he will be drafted to help cover the bigger 6’2"-6’4" WR’s in the league.* Our practice squad CB, Mario Butler, may be ready this year after working on his body and technique this past season and during the off-season. Mario is also a bigger CB then what we have our roster currently. We also signed quite a few of good Practice Squad prospects from other NFL Teams and one or two may actually compete for some quality playing time. Our 4th Priority should be draft a quality RB that could take over if Demarco goes down again. If you haven’t seen RGIII’s side-kick at Baylor, look at RB Terrance Ganaway. He has crazy running skills (power with speed) and at 6’1" and 241lbs of man-beef, this dude could be a younger version of ‘brandon jacobs’ but with crazy speed.

Bottom Line: The DRAFT can be a crap-shoot!! Use the Giants model and sign a quality FA to fill your MOST GLARING NEED. For the Cowboys, its the need for a 2nd Pass Rushing DE . Spencer as rushing OLB is very serviceable. If Jerrah found a really huge NT (FA or DRAFT) to push the pocket and moved RAT to a DE spot, opposing QB’s couldn’t step up in the pocket to avoid Ware or Spencer outside rush!!! If they did step up, RAT and our other pass rushing DE would make the SACK!!! Additonally, this huge NT would also pay HUGE dividends against our opponent’s RUN Game. Our weakest link besides only an average Pass Rush is our smallish NT in RAT. There are too many 4-6yds gains on 1st down which make our opponents Play-Action Pass game work to perfection…..especially with playing against Eli or Vick or A. Rogers, or Brees.

I wouldn’t risk a 1st rnd pick on Kirkpatrick or Jenkins and so far I haven’t seen another CB worth our 1st Rnd pick. I think Porter will be the best value of all the cb on the market, and the best value of all the Saints free agents.

The Giants spent pretty heavily on their defensive front just a few years back with Joseph, Canty and a third player I can’t remember. They believe heavily that a stacked defensive line can solve a lot of other problems on a team. The year they did this, Joseph and Canty both were injured and didn’t play much of the year. The team got hammered in the media over those signings. Now, a couple of years later, they look like solid investments.

There are two lessons here: A good defensive line can hide other defensive warts and patience. You can’t be studly every year. Put your money in what you believe and let the chips fall where they may.

Our first round pick (2nd and hopefully 3rd) should be the lowest risk-biggest reward guy available who can step in immediately and upgrade the position. As bad as this defense was with as many holes as it has, it seems that our offense is just a few players away from being highly effective. Unless a great pass rusher falls to us at #14, the logic would be to get DeCastro (especially if Nicks wants too much money in FA, though both would be great). Shoring up the middle of that line would directly lead to points in terms of giving Tony more time to throw and in helping the run. Also this would help build a great young line for the future QB as well as the rest of Tony’s dwindling prime. Having said that, the DLine is in dire need of help, so any quality NT or DE would not be a wasted pick. Going CB in the first would be wasted cause any receiver can get open when there is no pass rush. I doubt Revis would be able to help us that much with the lack of pressure. Sign a few CBs in FA that can fill holes for now, or draft CBs in the later rounds. Anything would be an upgrade over what we had. Also-interesting to me that Robinson, a guy that in much later, was a more effective WR than Austin or Bryant—guys who had been here a while.

Most of the playoff teams had some serious holes:

Giants: LBs, OL, fringy CBs.
Patriots: Pretty weak defensive backfield, could stand to improve the passrush.
49ers: QB, WR (in all fairness QB counts as two holes)
Ravens: QB, WR,
Saints: DL, OLB, DB field
Packers: Passrush (mainly along the DL), LBs other than Matthews, and DBs
Broncos: Receivers, QB, run blocking, pass coverage
Pittsburgh: OL, defense was a bit overrated this year
Houston: Well after Schaub went down QB, if he stayed healthy I see no reason why they couldn’t go further
Cincinnati: Overrated QB, meh running game and everything else.

Atlanta: Nothing glaring, their running game wasn’t exactly the best, their defense was good not great…perfect example of a good, not great team.

Detroit: Another team like Atlanta, could stand an upgrade along the OL, several upgrades on the defense…no glaring holes but not exactly a whole lot of strengths either. Stafford, Suh, and Megatron…that’s it. Even Stafford is less impressive given the context of today’s offense. Weak run defense, meh-ish running offense. Sort of the typical “good team,” not great.

When we get to teams like Detroit and Atlanta, they were both good, not great, WC teams Detroit got to get fat off the Vikings and some other weak teams, Atlanta off the Bucs. They were both one and done, and I would take the Cowboys’ passing game over any unit that either team has. However, the teams that got far all had some bigger holes, but more importantly bigger strengths. I think the Cowboys have an elite passing game, but not the skeleton to hold it together. It’s like being awesome at video games (Romo) and having all the best games (receivers/RBs) but not the PC to run it all (OL). To me, that’s the biggest hole and the one that needs to be filled first. They can’t get by with that OL, or at the very least it’s highly unlikely that they do. Assuming they bring back Spencer and Robinson, their next biggest hole is replacing Newman with a good CB. Newman was downright atrocious, hell even if the replacement is average they will provide a massive upgrade over Newman. I think they can accomplish both of those things this year, finish fixing the OL and get a CB that will provide them with a respectable DBfield. The next move is finding a NT to allow Rat to move to DE.

… of someone underselling the ability of players already on the roster and being over-dramatic regarding how far behind this team is.

The reality is, the Cowboys were a few plays away from a 10-6 or even 11-5 record last season. This does not mean that we’re “12+ draft picks over the next two years to get back on track.”

I’m not buying in to your catastrophic doomsday scenario in which you’ve grouped the Cowboys.

“but you’re trying to do that so you can draft as purely as possible. Couldn’t do that last year.”