When the Cowboys haven’t been talking about the somewhat convoluted hierarchy of their coaching staff, they’ve been talking about the need to clear cap space ahead of the start of the new league year.
Defensive end DeMarcus Ware’s contract may be restructured and wide receiver Miles Austin could be dropped from the roster, but executive vice president Stephen Jones is downplaying the cap crunch facing Dallas this offseason. During an interview on Sirius XM NFL Radio with Jeff Rickard and Howard Balzer, Jones said “they’re not huge issues” in part because the Cowboys aren’t prioritizing free agents as the route to improving the team.
“The only thing the cap issues do with us is we can’t be big players in free agency. 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 [other teams] don’t want to pay them and usually that’s for a reason.”
Jones said building through the draft is the best way to put together a winner, but the Cowboys haven’t had a high enough hit rate in recent drafts to realize the rewards of that approach. That will need to change in order for the team’s cap issues to truly be a non-issue in the 2014 season.