Dallas Cowboys: Lack of activity is frightening but patience is key

The Dallas Cowboys haven’t been the most active team as the new league year begins. Though a cause for pause, they’ve earned patience in this area.

Fresh off of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the Dallas Cowboys and the entire NFL got a new league year kicked off with a flurry of activity. Well, the Cowboys had to be included as they are apart of the entire entity, but they weren’t that active themselves.

Unless you include losing talent as “activity”, then the Cowboys were among the least active as far as wheeling, dealing, signing, and trading. They did have to use the franchise tag on quarterback Dak Prescott while coming to a lucrative agreement with wideout, Amari Cooper. They also let Byron Jones explore his options and rightfully so, to which he was then able to come to a lucrative agreement of his own with the Miami Dolphins.

While the Byron Jones move was absolutely the right thing to do, not re-signing him for the top of the market money that is, there were others that are questionable.  The Cowboys let Robert Quinn, their top pass rusher from a season ago, walk to Chicago to play opposite Khalil Mack. They also let one of their most dependable players in a crunch this past season go to the Houston Texans in wideout Randall Cobb.

Look, this isn’t doomsday. They did get Blake Jarwin signed to an extension, among others like Anthony Brown and Sean Lee, as well as bring in veteran defensive lineman Gerald McCoy, so those are definitely wins.

Jarwin’s production can mimic what Jason Witten provided on last season while the loss of Maliek Collins should be more than neutralized by the presence of McCoy. Their ratio of losses to impact additions still bothers me though, as the lot of the guys that have gotten money from the Cowboys were already there and thus doesn’t account for the loss of guys that were (keyword were, as in “no longer”) there with them.

This is where that patience comes in. Although he was a high draft pick, we still questioned the Cowboys’ drafting of Leighton Vander Esch a few years back, but they were right. When he is right and healthy, he is one of the most formidable and apart of one of the most formidable linebacking cores in the league.

The Cowboys also drafted Tony Pollard and Dak Prescott in the fourth rounds of their respective NFL Drafts, with Pollard being even more of a head-scratcher due to Ezekiel Elliott‘s presence but they both worked out, meaning that the Cowboys were again right.

They just re-signed a former sixth-round pick in Anthony Brown to a new deal as well, so it’s safe to say that they were also right there too. They took on Robert Quinn and Michael Bennett both last season as well, for both to go on and work out really well.

The common theme here is that over the past few seasons, the Dallas Cowboys have seemingly made the right moves. They’ve pulled the trigger on the right transactions, while saying no to the wrong ones. They have made the right draft picks, while only taking on the right kinds of guys to help win ball games, although they haven’t done so at the highest level yet.

This is where the sanity of Cowboys fans has to live at the moment. Although they haven’t been extremely active and certainly not as active as some other teams in the league, you have to have patience.

Patience and hope that they can find good talent for cheap, unearth a few gems, use the draft process most efficiently, and lean on their scouting department as they have been over the last few seasons. That’s the way we have to hope they are planning on constructing a winning team for this upcoming season.