Dallas Cowboys News & Notes: Dez Bryant And DeMarco Murray Both In Cowboys' Long Term Plans

Jerry Jones wants to win now, with Bryant and Murray | The Star Telegram The Star Telegram
Jones acknowledges that the team needs to improve on defense, but for Jones, building on last year’s success begins with holding onto Dez Bryant AND DeMarco Murray.

"We’re real clear: Dez is a player we want for long term," Jones said. "And we want Murray for his career as well. The only reason to have any equivocation on that is that this is pro football and we have limitations on what you can allocate to any position or allocate to your football team, which side of the ball you want to allocate your dollars on. It’s pretty obvious anybody can add up we got a lot of money allocated to our offense right now. Nothing wrong with that because we can win with a lot of money allocated to our offense, but we’ve got to be cognizant of the fact we want to improve our defense."

Are Jerry Jones And His Staff Going All In On Cowboys Now? - Blogging The Boys
Working off Jerry Jones's latest talk with the media, in which Jerry Jones dropped some tantalizing hints about the Cowboys' future, Tom Ryle surmises that the Cowboys may be going "all in" this offseason.

There is a good bit of logic to this. Last season, the team rode a top flight offense and an overachieving defense to the playoffs and came a few missed opportunities (and one egregious misinterpretation of what a football move is) from advancing to the NFC Championship against a Seattle Seahawks team that the Cowboys had already found a successful plan to defeat in their house. The team is not in the "one piece away" mode, but it does know what it needs to do to get better in 2015.

Jerry Jones: I want DeMarco Murray with the Cowboys for his entire career | Dallas Morning News
While holding court in his bus at the Combine, Jerry Jones confirmed he wants DeMarco Murray to be a Dallas Cowboy for his entire career.

"In a legitimate negotiation you usually have both of them thinking ranges," Jones said. "You have both of them in brackets. You have both of them thinking brackets and within the parameters how you get a deal done. And you can usually tell if one or the other is outside the parameters significantly and then there really is – usually both parties to a negotiation know because they’ve bracketed and realize they’re not in sync with the bracket, then they know for whatever the reasons something else has got to play in."

"We want DeMarco enough that I got some serious flexibility in my bracket," Jones said.

If DeMarco Murray returns to Dallas Cowboys, workload could lessen - Todd Archer, ESPN Dallas
Jerry Jones said the Cowboys want to make sure DeMarco Murray will be fresh for the playoffs if he remains with the team.

"I don’t think we would go into a season now with Murray thinking that he was going to have the load that he had last year," Jones said. "I don’t believe we would."

"Murray is such a warrior and Murray is such a horse, he’d actually get upset if you took him out of the game," Jones said. "But it was [not] the thing to do for Murray to let those guys have more touches. Now, why did we go along with it? We just happened to be doing you know what? Winning. We were very successful so it’s hard to make that change."

Cowboys were close to Dez Bryant deal during season, but not much negotiating since | Jon Machota, DMN
Jerry Jones provided some perspective on the stalled contract negotiations with Dez Bryant, but also pointed out that these things can sometimes be resolved "in a matter of hours."

"Since Dez changed agents we haven’t had timely or substantive negotiations," Jones said. "We thought we had something in the middle of the season, early part of the season. That didn’t work out. That’s not a criticism. It just didn’t work out. So from the standpoint from where we are there, we’ll just see.

"Contract negotiations are a funny thing. You shouldn’t measure progress by the latest visit or the fact that things are silent. It takes two and when an agreement can be reached it can be done in a matter of hours and so you’ve got to be careful measuring any degree of interest any degree of urgency. You can’t measure it like that.

"We’re real clear: Dez is a player we want for long term."

Can the Cowboys draft an immediate starter at cornerback? - Todd Archer, ESPN Dallas
Archer answers a reader question about development time for cornerbacks in his latest Twitter mailbag.

I think it would be smart to draft a cornerback. Maybe a couple of them. I know the Morris Claiborne trade has not worked out so far. Drafting Mike Jenkins in the first round didn't work out either. But I wouldn't let those bad experiences stop me from taking one early. Now, should you expect Patrick Peterson type production early? No. It does take time. It's a different game. They can't be as handsy as they are in college football. The receivers are better. The quarterbacks are a lot better.

But I don't think there's any reason why a first or second rounder can't come in and start right away. One of their best drafted corners has been Orlando Scandrick. They got him in the fifth round and he was a contributor right away.

Cowboys Free Agent Rolando McClain Facing Four-Game Fine - Blogging The Boys
The Cowboys free agent linebacker is facing a possible four week fine for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy.

They won't be Cowboys, but Garrett likes Mariota, Winston - NFL.com
People who don't know Jason Garrett do not understand that he never has a bad word for, and is perpetually "excited" and "impressed" by, any player.

Garrett called Jameis Winston "a very impressive guy" and labeled Marcus Mariota a "class kid" during a brief sitdown Saturday with Rich Eisen and Mike Mayock on NFL Network.

"I think everybody sees that in (Mariota)," Garrett said at the NFL Scouting Combine. "And very athletic, for him to run as fast as he ran, and then he's really smooth dropping back and throwing the football. And he's certainly the top quarterback, he and Jameis are the best in this class and they will be franchise guys for a particular team in this league."

Dallas Cowboys NFL Combine Interview List - Blogging The Boys
Since yesterday, the list of Cowboys interviews has expanded to include OLB Eli Harold, DE Mario Edwards Jr., and FS Chris Hackett.

How the NFL leverages the lack of an LA team to take billions from city budgets - NYTimes.com
The N.F.L.’s savvy capitalists threaten to move to Los Angeles because they know the public — that is, the taxpayer — in their home towns will pick up a large part of the tab for new stadiums that way.

Which of course is precisely why N.F.L. owners threaten to move to Los Angeles. With Los Angeles just sitting there, un-footballed, it gives the 32 owners of N.F.L. franchises enormous leverage over the cities in which they play to extract goodies that few other capitalists would dare ask for — not just run-of-the-mill tax abatements, but egregious benefits like free rent, which of course means bigger profits for the wealthy men and women who own the teams. "The way to really make money is to privatize the revenues, and socialize the costs," says Neil deMause, who runs a website called Field of Schemes.