The Cowboys weren’t going to pay DeMarco Murray what he thought he was worth.
But Murray’s friend Tony Romo said he was willing to take less than he was worth to keep him.
“DeMarco ended up asking me, ‘Why don’t you take a pay cut?‘” Romo said on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, via Todd Archer of ESPNDallas.com. “I was like, ‘I will. I will take a pay cut to go do this.’ I was like, ‘They’re going to restructure me and the whole thing,’ that’s the same thing in some ways just for salary-cap purposes. He was like, ‘OK, now we’re back to being friends.’ ‘You’re really worried about me? I would take $5 million less if it meant getting you back’. He knew that.”
If one of the conditions of friendship is sacrificing your own salary so someone else can get more, it might explain why I don’t have so many (OK, maybe that’s not the only reason).
But the Cowboys never asked Romo to move off the $17 million he’s due this year in any effort to keep the league’s leading rusher.
Instead, they stood on a four-year, $24 million offer to Murray, who eventually signed a five-year, $42 million deal with the Eagles.
That principle and fiscal responsibility is admirable, but it’ll be interesting to see if they value the running back position thus if, say, an Adrian Peterson became available.