Dallas Cowboys won’t keep getting away with ‘bad business’

By now, you’ve already heard about how Randy Gregory spurned the Dallas Cowboys for the Denver Broncos. As the story goes, upon the deal being conveyed, the front office wanted to change some wording in the contract at the last moment.

That propelled one of the league’s and Dallas’s most electric pass rushers this past season to do the same thing that a former league and Dallas electric pass rusher (DeMarcus Ware) did in the past… leave to sign with the Denver Broncos.

While the mere sound of how this exchange might have gone is bad enough, it reads even worse when you see reports like Ed Werder’s from above. Things like this really leave a bad taste in the mouth of current hopeful signees, free agents abound, future players, and agents of those future players.

It’s really just all bad business. The Cowboys have to make better choices to continue to give themselves a chance.

The Cowboys almost had one of their electric pass rushers back in the mix, but bad business made Randy Gregory leave for Denver

For so long, the luster of wearing that star on your helmet has been a great attraction and in some cases, enough. However, things have started to go the other way in recent years. Situations like this certainly don’t help the allure or interest of joining the Cowboys. However, that’s not the only reason or way that it could serve to eventually bite the front office in the posterior.

Having to crunch numbers to dust this offseason to maximize their competitiveness in the coming season, some of their recent business decisions also ended up costing them money. A recent poorly executed contract decision is causing issues in this current offseason.

Jared Goff and Carsen Wentz both went three rounds before Dak Prescott in the 2016 NFL Draft. The two other quarterbacks would both sign extensions in 2019. With Prescott having to wait two more calendar years for his extension, he eventually got $32 million more than Wentz’s deal and $26 million more than Goff’s.

The way that contracts work in sports (and especially when it comes to NFL quarterbacks) is that the next top guy to get paid usually resets or helps dictate the market. Because Jerry Jones waited so long to sign Prescott, the going rate for quarterbacks went up drastically. At the time, when Prescott inked his deal, that was the market rate.

The way that Goff and Wentz performed after signing their deals compared to Prescott’s performance, the Cowboys quarterback could have and should have made a lot less money. He was playing well enough to earn money when they signed him, but the front office could have saved a lot of money on his deal. Prescott could have made a deal that was similar, if higher at all, than both of those two QBs had America’s Team done the American thing and paid the man his due when they should have.

Yes, Jones is a player’s guy and does support second chance needing players. Gregory is actually a great example of that. The team stuck around him after all of his suspensions and issues. However, the front office can’t keep allowing poor choices like this to happen.

From Prescott getting more money than he should have (which could have saved the team money in an offseason like this) to Gregory headed to now rush the passer with Russell Wilson to the continual lack of signing free agents from other teams, the continual bad business will eventually cost the Cowboys more than it already has. Hopefully, the front office can salvage the remainder of this offseason and surprise a ton of us with how they are able to actually get things done.