Dallas Cowboys: Early Offseason Review

Well I’m excited to start writing for the site however I am not excited about our recent offseason moves. Don’t take this as me slamming the Cowboys I’m just simply highly aggravated lately with our front office management.

So far my grade for this offseason’s moves is a D it certainly can be worse but not much.

We all know Jerry Jones is the GM for the Cowboys and I have to say I am completely disgusted already with the off-season moves.

First we trade Anthony Henry whom lead The Dallas Cowboys in interceptions in 2007 and we already cut Pacman Jones so now all we have is Terence Newman who can’t seem to stay healthy for an entire season to save his life and the Dallas cornerbacks are weak to begin with!

So we get rid of Henry now it’s Newman, Jenkins, and Scandrick as the top three corners?

Give me a break; remember when Jenkins refused to even attempt to tackle Derrick Ward last season? (footage here) that’s a great guy to have in your top three corners.

I’ve heard rumors about Shaun Springs coming to Dallas and that would certainly help the cornerback situation. However, either way, by trading Henry we lose much needed depth at Corner and actually lose cap space because of Kitna’s contract, when we could have just signed a free agent backup such as Kyle Boller or Rex Grossman who is younger and likely better.

Dallas gave up another late round pick to the Lions did Dallas give them enough this year? We already gave them our 1st round picks and 3rd for Roy Williams and we don’t learn we get ripped off by them again. Kitna is 36 years old I really don’t see much of a difference between him and Brad Johnson.

The Lions were 0-16 last year and by those standars aren’t by any means a good football team yet we keep giving them picks and taking their players that leave much to be desired.

And another thing about the Kitna trade, his best friend on the team is Roy E. Williams so our apperant ”heir” to Owens is going to likely spend more time with our backup Kitna then Romo. That’s going to go over well and certainly help a divided locker room.

Lastly, hasn’t our entire defense had a problem with this guy? Terence Newman, Ware, and Bradie James. Definitely a good way to get a locker room closer together.

We get the chance to sign Ray Lewis a MLB something we actually need, someone who would take command in the locker room and instead we get Keith Brooking. The Cowboys had their most disappointing season possibly of all time last year and what do they do to start the off-season? Trade a needed Corner, get a washed up outside linebacker we don’t need and waste a bunch of cap space.

Dallas also has not resigned Chris Canty who was a vital part of the 3-4 defense last year, now he is on the New York Giants.

Now im not completely ignorant not everything you want can happen. Maybe signing Ray Lewis was a strech but wait Demarcus Ware had this to say

“You know, actually, when we played Ray Lewis and Baltimore at the end of the season, he came over and pointed to my helmet. He said, ‘I want to wear this star on my helmet, that’s my dream…that’s my dream.’ When we got to the Pro Bowl, he did it again. He came at me every day. It’s a great opportunity for him. His door is open. He’s an unrestricted free agent. He’s trying to get down where the star is. He told me he needed me to get him Jerry Jones’ phone number for him. I just busted out laughing.” (Link here)

Wait a second…You’re telling me Demarcus Ware and Ray Lewis our both good friends off the field. Yes they are, so with me typing this seething I think to myself we could have had Ray Lewis and Demarcus Ware the two captains of the defense and take over the entire locker room.

There would be no split locker room or animosity with Lewis coming into the Cowboys defense and Ware saying “this is my defense” The two are already friends!

We aren’t getting a 1st round pick this year so virtually we head into next season with the same exact team as last year. If not a little worse. If that doesn’t scare us Cowboys fan’s i’m not sure what will.

I hope I’m wrong about all this, because all I want is the Cowboys to actually succeed and not be a joke to the media and fans.

But I’m starting to think the longer Jerry Jones is GM the worse this team is going to be. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great owner and business man and has made the Cowboys into an economic powerhouse in the NFL. But looks how many coaches we’ve been through in the last 13 years of not winning a playoff game. How many times do you think he would have fired the GM if it wasn’t him?

Dallas fan’s deserve better, and so does this team.

Cowboys Make Late Moves – Still in The Game

As news gets out that the Cowboys are seeking a trade
partner for SS Roy Williams, there are a few issues to consider regarding the
late moves by the team.

After saying repeatedly during this off-season that the
Cowboys would not be making a big splash in free agency, it appears the ‘Boys
may have been trying to lay a sleeper on everyone.

Early this afternoon, the Cowboys released veteran
quarterback Brad Johnson. The moves frees up about $2 million of the salary
cap, which saw an additional hike in addition to the long planned annual
increase today, and also leaves an opening for even one signed backup
quarterback.

Continue reading →

Cowboys Release Brad Johnson

And Brad Johnson is out of here!

The Dallas Cowboys released Johnson today after he spent the better part of 2008 under heavy scrutiny for his miserable performance during Romo’s injury absence.

The move frees up another couple of million for the Cowboys to use toward either extending Ware’s contract, signing new free agents, keeping some of their own free agents, and signing draft picks come May.

There is no question that Brad Johnson can no longer cut it as an NFL quarterback, and it’s expected that he’ll announce his retirement unless some team is becomes truly desperate for a quarterback.

Look next for a decision on SS Roy Williams. He is on the chopping block this weekend and could be cut as well to free up additional cap space. Williams has made it known that he’d be willing to move to linebacker and even restructure his contract to lessen his hit on the cap this year in order to stay in Dallas.

We’ll bring you more as it’s announced.

The Ray Lewis Saga Continues

It’s Wednesday, just about 28 hours until free agency begins tomorrow night, and the rumors are soaring across the news vine as though they were powered by a jetpack. Ray Lewis seems to be at the top of the list as far as Dallas is concerned, and no I don’t mean that Dallas is considering it, though they certainly may be.

The latest is from FanNation.com and it seems to add fuel to the fire. Apparently Ravens’ owner Steve Bisciotti is irritated with Lewis for not showing loyalty to the team in Hawaii. That is where Lewis made it known that he’d like to play for either the Jets or Cowboys.

I’m still of the mind that Lewis won’t be a huge factor in Dallas and the reasons are clear, this teams’ biggest problem is on offense, and he’ll be brought in as another player, not the commander of the vessel. A point worth debating is whether or not he could control Terrell Owens and inspire Tony Romo to take charge, but the point remains that it wouldn’t be his job to do either.

After the stories came out about DeMarcus Ware and Ray Lewis sharing some not-so-subtle remarks about Lewis wanting to be a Cowboy, it seems this idea is now going wholesale to the public.

The Dallas Cowboys have roughly $12 million in available cap space, and have options to add more by cutting players like Brad Johnson and Roy Williams, but the bulk of it is expected to go to Ware in the form of a new contract, a contract that is expected to be near the top in the history books for a defensive player.

Still, makes you wonder what could be. Bart Scott looks to be real close to signing a new deal in Baltimore, and he had already taken over some duties from Lewis last year. Are the Ravens getting ready to move on without Lewis?

It seems logical to assume they’d only do that if Ray was asking too much to stay, and if so that same asking price wouldn’t translate well to the Cowboys. But would he take a lower figure to fulfill his dream of being a Dallas Cowboy?

Then again, maybe the speculation that Bisciotti is irritated with Lewis is just more fanfare instigated by Lewis and/or his agent to drive his price up, Seems kind of an odd way to do it though.

Given that the rumors and talks of him wanting to come to Dallas have helped Lewis’ worth so far, how much can you take away from that if he does start negotiations with the Cowboys?

We might very well know the answers come Friday afternoon.

Cowboys Aren’t Hinged By T.O.

With all the talk about Terrell Owens and whether he’ll be in a Cowboys uniform next year, the subject of whether or not we can sustain a potent passing game without him has been raised. It’s something that nobody has the answers on, but it makes me wonder, why don’t we?

What is it about Roy Williams that says he can’t handle the load without T.O. across the field? Perhaps the best argument against him is that he played for the Lions until last year, and I know this because I’ve seen it written in so many places, and by so many people. The popular opinion is that he sucks because he was with the Lions.

People like to throw out there that he’s only had one season over 1,000 yards, but what I don’t understand is why the same amount of logic isn’t placed on both sides of the discussion.

He played for the Lions … when is the last time the Lions did anything notable in their passing game? Even I had Mike Furrey on my fantasy team a couple of years ago, but that was also the same year in which Williams got his 1,000 yards, so something was obviously working better that year.

So he comes to Dallas, narrowly escaping a full claim to the worst season in NFL history, and he catches 19 passes for a couple hundred yards. The truth is that Williams, while he caught fewer passes than he could have, was only about 3 yards per catch behind Owens. That means that had our offense not collapsed from mid-season on, he could have ended up with more yards than Owens. Sure, it’s not likely since Owens is the number one wide out, but it’s possible that he could have without him doing anything different.

That has to make you wonder something, how can we be facing such trouble without Owens when Williams was producing at a similar level per catch? Now watch that, I said per catch. A lot went into why Williams had fewer catches, some of it was his fault, some of it wasn’t, so we can’t really make claim to the cause in either direction.

What we do know is, even after Jerry Jones so cryptically told the attending reporters at his press conference yesterday that they weren’t going to get the answer they wanted, that even if he does cut Owens loose, he wasn’t the only guy producing.

T.O. was the only player at a skill position playing in every game of the season.

T.O. did have a blow out game against his former team, nearly breaking his own career record for yards in a game.

None of that says that this team won’t produce over the top should he be gone in 7 months. And to say that we need to pick up another receiver either through the draft or free agency is just idiotic. Why would the Cowboys risk bringing in another player as a project from the draft when we still have Stanback, Austin, and Hurd who have yet to progress past that same status?

Why would we bring in another free agent receiver when we’ve got Williams not playing up to his ability last season; Owens the center of a bigger fuss than Bill Clinton, and the other free agent wide outs we’ve brought in during this decade that have quite literally flopped?

A lot of what’s being said centers around the attention that Owens gets, some off the field, and some on the field. Can this team be any good without Owens occupying double coverage? Well, tell me this, how did Michael Irvin do it all those years? He was never the fastest receiver; he was just a go-up-and-grab-it type of guy. For all accounts, Williams is that type of guy also, he’s just never had a QB worth $60 million throwing it to him.

Give it an off-season, a full training camp and preseason, and you’ll see that Owens is going to get more competition from his right than from the defensive backs facing him.

Pacman Cut, Tough Decisions Ahead

The frenzy has officially begun. Today marks the first day that teams are allowed to release players, and while the Cowboys made their intentions clear a month ago regarding Adam Jones, today is when he officially got the boot.

There are more players than just Pacman that the Cowboys have to consider cutting ties with, and all indications are that they could save enough money by doing so to afford the free agent moves necessary to replace the cut players.

Greg Ellis is one of the ones to consider, and while he has predicted his own demise in Dallas for the fourth consecutive off-season now, this year just may be the time to prove him right. The talent at linebacker in free agency begins and ends with basically one man, Julius Peppers.

My standing opinion is that Peppers is not needed on this team, but that’s not to say that he couldn’t be useful without Greg Ellis around. The Cowboys have a chance to bring in a strong and proven player, instead of waiting to see if Spencer really can be a starter on this team. We got a small peek at what can happen with Peppers and Ware on the outside, and Ratliff in the middle during the Pro Bowl, and it has got to be enough to warrant a look from Jerry and Wade.

Another selling point may just be the more than $5 million that would be spared under the cap by cutting Ellis. Given that this team likely needs a lot of help at linebacker, depending on what free agents Kevin Burnett and Zach Thomas do, it may even be enough to make everyone happy by bringing in Peppers and Lewis. Okay, maybe they’d want too much cash, but it’s worth a look, right?

Brad Johnson is very doubtful to be in a Cowboys uniform next year after his sub-par play in 2008. Add to it that the Cowboys get an extra $2 million by releasing him, and it’s expected that he will be officially released as early as today.

SS Roy Williams gave an interview last night to Newy Scruggs of NBC’s Out of Bounds, and in that interview he stated that he felt out of place in the 3-4 defensive scheme. It’s something many fans would agree with that he has been less than stellar since the switch was made a few years ago.

It would save the Cowboys over $4 million this year to cut Williams, but given his history in Dallas, it’s possible they’ll go another route with him. He’s offered to restructure his contract, and even to accept a move to linebacker, all so he can stay in Dallas. Many feel he is just too small to be a linebacker in a 3-4 defense, but that’s what everyone said about Dat Nguyen too. So ruling that out wouldn’t be smart.

It’s about time to see what the Cowboys are going to do to initiate the change they talked so adamantly about a month ago. Changing two coaches isn’t enough, especially when they haven’t even announced who the new DC will be. Though I suspect Todd Grantham will be the coordinator in Dallas for 2009, you still need a good line coach to take over for him.

More to come …

So The Reeves’ Deal Fell Through

Now that I’ve taken more than five minutes to form an opinion of this whole “Dan Reeves won’t join the Cowboys staff” ordeal, I’m going to try to lay this out as best I can.

There are a couple of possibilities, obviously, for what happened or not with this deal, while none of them leave us with the outcome that we mostly wanted, a good outcome is still possible in some cases.

The most shared opinion among fans, myself included, so far is that Jerry Jones wouldn’t give Reeves the kind of authority and control that he either was seeking, or felt he needed to do other parts of the proposed job effectively. Either way boils down to more of the same … and the beat goes on.

Dan Reeves could have merely been a consultant for a brief time while certain things were discussed. He already shared his own opinion of the team with the media, so it makes sense that he would be brought in to consult for a limited time during the regrouping sessions this off-season. Furthermore, it’s possible that the initial report out of San Francisco was either false, mistaken, or the result of the 49ers management turning down a delayed hire for Reeves while he consulted with the Cowboys first. Far fetched, I know.

If this is the case, then the Cowboys, in some way, should have let on to the fact that he wasn’t going to around long, especially after a report to the contrary surfaced in California.

Still another possible reason is that the Cowboys and Dan Reeves didn’t see eye to eye on things. It basically boils back down to Jones not being willing to give in and give Reeves what he thought was necessary. It kind of seems pointless for that to be the case since you bring in a revered former coach to be a consultant so you can change your current direction with his new strategies and ideas. But alas, Jerry will be Jerry.

Regardless of why it didn’t work out with Reeves, though, this team must move on. It’s a free for all to figure out what comes next, but I suspect there are still some major concerns to deal with before free agency and the draft come around.

The Cowboys have yet to name a replacement for Brian Stewart. As I blogged earlier, it’s been reported that Todd Grantham has moved into the defensive coordinators office, and that could have just been done to allow Reeves an office while he was here. What doesn’t make sense with that is going through the trouble to move Grantham to another office when Reeves could have simply taken the open office. It makes more sense that Grantham was moved into that office because they have plans for him to use it long-term.

Terrell Owens may or may not be an issue that the Cowboys are considering possible solutions for, but the media and many fans certainly are. We’re about down to the fundamental responsibility of the team officials to make an announcement on him one way or another for the sake of the millions that pay their salaries. Yeah, I know. But what else can I say about it? Either they are thinking about releasing him, or they’re not. Either way, make a statement to shut everyone up. It’s not like Jerry Jones is apposed to telling us all that someone isn’t leaving while still considering the opposite. See “Brian Stewart Won’t Be Back Next Season” on the True Blue Fan Club blog.

Several free agents have yet to be decided upon with regard to the Cowboys possible efforts to resign them, like Chris Canty, Keith Davis, Kevin Burnett, Zach Thomas, and a couple of others.

A decision still needs to be made on SS Roy Williams this off-season. His performance has been miserable despite missing most of the 2008 season with two breaks in his forearm. The Cowboys actually stand to gain a little over $2 million towards the 2009 cap by cutting him, and could possibly work out even more benefits by trading him to another team soon. It stands to reason that some teams running a 4-3 defense would be happy to have him since he’s never a distraction and has great stats while playing in a 4-3.

If Owens or Williams are released, in one way or another then comes to work of finding a suitable replacement for both, though an argument exists to find certain types of players both positions even if they both stay. The safety position has been weak since Williams’ production dropped off while Parcels was here, and we need a speed receiver to spread the field more than Owens, Roy E. Williams, and Crayton can do. Miles Austin has some great speed and other nice abilities that make him a solid option for that burst of much needed speed, but his inability to stay healthy has hampered his success.

That doesn’t even get into all the smaller things that need to be worked out like how training camp will be handled this year after direct mention of changes from Wade Phillips in his final press conference of the season.

So we’ll stay tuned for that.

CN.net Position Breakdown – Safety

Since I believe the biggest need this off-season for the Cowboys is at safety, I’m going to offer my breakdown of the players we currently have on the roster.

Roy Williams -
I know, obvious first pick, but Williams is coming off his seventh year in the league and deserves first mention. After all, he has been a safety on the Cowboys roster longer than any other safety here.

Sad to say though, that after Woodson retired, Williams has done little else to warrant first mention, anywhere.

He missed most of 2008 after breaking his forearm not once, but twice, and landed on IR. Many will still agree now, as we did then, that him being injured actually solved the problem of how to limit his liability on the field in coverage.

I think he still has talent, but he doesn’t seem to keep his head in a game and loses focus, which leads to mistakes in all aspects of his game. If Campo, having a full season and two off-seasons to get Williams thinking like a football player again, then I say he stays. But he’d have to really wow the coaches and Jerry Jones in order to justify his salary for the year. Continue reading →

Roy Williams, Linebacker Bound?

This is exactly the kind of stuff I want to be hearing right now!

Move Roy Williams from safety to linebacker? Why would anyone doubt that the soundness of a move like that? I could understand if someone like Ed Reed was available this off-season to the Cowboys, then yeah, cut Williams and get the extra cap space so you can get a high caliber safety. But that just isn’t the case.

If you cut Williams, who replaces him? Who is going to step in and be the hard hitter that he always been? Sure, he struggles in coverage, but against the run he’s still good old Roy.

Maybe there is a point in that he would be facing bigger and stronger linemen every down, but he did that at safety back when Woodson had the air covered. I see Roy Williams a little like Parcels saw Dat Nguyen, a little small, but definitely talented enough.

A middle linebacker usually gets enough help from the rest of the defensive backs that even put into coverage on a tight end or back; Williams could get the job done.

The Cowboys did try him at linebacker in sub-packages for a while, and he wasn’t that great, true. But there is a big difference between a safety coming in as a linebacker sometimes, and a linebacker roaming the field.

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I’d like to find ways to get our current personnel playing to their strengths. And at safety, in coverage, Roy Williams is not doing that.

Dallas Cowboys Nation

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