Cowboy’s Jones: Investing in free agency ‘overrated,’ ‘detrimental’ to growth

Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

The Dallas Cowboys are arguably the most notorious team at mishandling contracts and the salary cap. They consistently find themselves strapped with bad contracts that they get out of and still suffer cap hits from seasons later. It looks like the Cowboys are learning their lesson though according to comments vice president Stephen Jones made.

“At the end of the day, all 32 teams are figuring out that this is how you build a football team, through the draft,” Jones said Sunday on SiriusXM NFL Radio, via the Dallas Morning News. “It’s obviously well documented of our cap issues. In our mind, they’re not huge issues. They’re ones that we’ll deal with and we’ll certainly digest and get through at the end of the day.”

He added: “The only thing the cap issues do with us is we can’t be big players in free agency, and I think history will tell you that being a big player in free agency is overrated and usually detrimental to the growth of a franchise, because a lot of these guys are leaving their other team for a reason.

“It’s usually because [those teams] don’t want to pay them and usually that’s for a reason.”

Topics: Dallas Cowboys

Mike Dyce

Mike has been a life long sports fan who has turned his passion into a career. He studied journalism at the University of Oklahoma and wrote mainly about Dallas sports teams before joining FanSided. Formerly the editor of NFL Spin Zone, Mike is now Editor of FanSided.com. He can be reached at dyce1809[at]gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mikedyce

Old Frog

Really?! And how many years has it taken them to realize this? I’ve never heard an analyst, commentator, or writer say, “the best way to build a franchise is through free agency.” Better late than never I guess.
SmartThinking

It’s a crying shame our current owner/GM didn’t pay more attention to the management acumen displayed by Tom Landry and Tex Schram. I’m sure there are more and excluding their first year, through the first twenty-five years of this organization’s existence I can only name, I think three players that played for another team before joining the Cowboys. Schram and Landry knew that for a team to be built right, players who came from other programs just weren’t the same over the long haul as the players they drafted and brought up under their system. I think that logic holds true today and it appears, finally, Jones and his bunch are also getting the clues.
Scott.

Well Jerry when you miss pick after pick in the draft is a must: example, Brandon Carr just for starters. It’s amazing he feels this way since there’s example after example of him overspending in free agency. One more statement that can be added to Jerry’s stupidest statements.
deanhighlife

You know what else is detrimental to growth? Piss poor drafting. With Jerry solely in charge, piss poor drafting has happened more often than not.