Why the Cowboys should have prioritized Cedrick Wilson

The Dallas Cowboys are in a bit of flux right now. Just a day or so after trading the underwhelming, at times, Amari Cooper to the Cleveland Browns, another domino has fallen against the grain for America’s Team.

It is now being reported that former Cowboys wide receiver Cedrick Wilson, with the keyword here being “former”, is signing a three-year pact with the Miami Dolphins. Here are a few specifics of the deal:

Listen, there can be a few theoretical arguments for why he should still be a member of the Cowboys, but three stick out above all else. When you think about Wilson and what he has done for the Cowboys across his tenure, it isn’t hard to see how his impact could go understated.

With just 67 catches across his three years with Dallas for 837 yards, those aren’t eye-popping numbers by any stretch of the imagination. For Wilson though, it isn’t necessarily about what numbers he’s put up so far, rather it’s about how he got to those stats.

Oftentimes, Wilson would be called upon in clutch, big, or wanky scenarios. He was involved in big plays that the team needed to move forward, he threw a few passes of his own, and he stepped up when other receivers went down. Wilson always seemed to deliver in a big way despite being the No. 4 guy. He knew how to explode for big plays despite being the backup guy.

The Dallas Cowboys continue to lose talent in the offseason. Here’s why WR Cedrick Wilson should have been re-signed.

Not only has Wilson maximized such limited opportunity during his tenure, but without him, the Cowboys are now down one of their main receivers (Cooper) and won’t have Gallup back in the mix as his full self while he continues to recover and get back from a torn ACL. Although Gallup is rumored to be 100% by August, a team can truly never predict how a player will or won’t recover from an injury like that.

Dallas needed to keep a guy like Wilson in the mix to account for what they won’t have for a while. Wilson was the perfect receiver you could count on. The wide receiver position now has little-to-no depth. Wilson added to the corps’ dynamism even when they were again at full strength. That all boils down to the last reason though.

This is the one that frustrates you the most. He only drew about $23 million on the open market with about $13 million guaranteed. That sets his earnings at just over $7 million per year, which for wide receivers in this day and age isn’t a ton of money. That contract stings, as you’d think the Cowboys could have brought him back at those numbers. Yes, they have some cap issues. Perhaps, Wilson just wanted a change of scenery.

All of that can be true. However, at those figures, the Cowboys should have made him a Godfather offer relative to the one he got. That would have, perhaps, been at $30 million for four years, which could have allowed them to still structure his contract with only two years of guaranteed money (to protect themselves) but a slight bump in the annual average value of the deal.

Money talks and a bigger overall figure could have spoken with enough volume to entice him back. Needless to say, Miami got a good one, a really good one. It’s now on Dallas to find a guy to fill his shoes. Noah Brown, Simi Fohoko, and hopefully at this rate, Malik Turner, you are all on the clock.