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By Bob Sturm 3h ago
40 days since Super Bowl 53 in Atlanta, 18 days since the NHL Trade Deadline, 14 Days until Rangers Opening Day, and just two days before the NCAA Bracket is submitted…
We often refer to patterns that have been made clear through years and year of following the Dallas Cowboys. These trends help us prepare for what might lie ahead.
That seems appropriate this week, after hearing from many of you about your percolating frustrations that the Cowboys are never particularly active in free agency anymore.
Owner Jerry Jones once had a reputation for signing major free agents. Deion Sanders was a signature deal amidst the comedy of a Pizza Hut commercial when the Cowboys and Jerry Jones vowed to moneywhip their way to continued NFL dominance by locking down the NFL’s best corner to a whopping seven-year, $35 million deal back in 1995.
Jerry reflected on that during one of his many radio shows a few years back. He said that expenditure caused him some high-level anxiety:
“I flew all the way back to my home, where I was really raised, and walked down the street and looked at an old telephone pole where I’d carved something on it when I was a kid and walked around the old houses. And then walked back … down the street, went up to my old house, looked at it just to say, have you completely lost your bearing on what’s happening here financially?” Jones said. “Boy, I got back in the car, headed back out to the airport, came on back, and I said, ‘Look, that was then, this is now. Go for it.”
Times have changed. As has the financial structure of the NFL, with a very hard and unforgiving salary cap. I have often said the only thing that keeps the Cowboys from the sort of dominant run Real Madrid or Manchester United have enjoyed in the world of soccer is simply the structure the NFL desires for parity. There is no question that world soccer offers an opportunity for the richest teams to dominate via financial muscle and the endless resources to not only buy the best players but also to write off poor purchases with a billionaire’s shrug.
That certainly is not an option in the NFL, for better or worse. This league allows powers to emerge from literally any population base and ownership group as long as they can work under the balanced structure of equality. The league is set up to avoid decade-long dominance (or two-decade dominance, New England) and doesn’t seem to mind a world where power shifts at around the same interval as four-year presidential terms or Olympiads. The NFL remains hugely popular, so this does not appear to be a mistake. But the Dallas Cowboys’ endless reserves of cash really don’t seem to matter.
Forbes told us in 2018 that the Cowboys’ franchise value is easily the highest of any team in the world. The franchise was estimated to be worth $5 billion and enjoyed an annual revenue total of $864 million with an operating income of $365 million. The fixed player costs in a salary cap world total $190 million.
I am no financial wizard, but if revenues more than quadruple personnel costs, the Cowboys are the opposite of short on cash. The rules, however, dictate they cannot spend more than Buffalo or Green Bay. Do you know who the busiest teams are every year when the transfer windows open in Europe? The teams with the deepest pockets. If the Dallas Cowboys were a soccer club, they would run the world with the best players at every position. Is Khalil Mack unhappy? Come to Dallas. Odell Beckham and Antonio Brown? Cowboys to be. Sean Payton wants a bigger stage? There’s one in Dallas. And yes, they would have found a price for Aaron Rodgers that Green Bay couldn’t refuse years ago. But it doesn’t work that way. So what should they do with all of this money?
Buy a yacht that costs $250m, silly.
So here we are at the end of the opening week of free agency. The Cowboys have secured three of their own free agents on small deals with Tavon Austin, Cam Fleming, and Jamize Olawale all back in the fold.
Additionally, they signed an interesting young defensive tackle in Christian Covington away from Houston on a surprisingly cheap one-year, $1.6 million deal. None of these moves have produced even a medium-sized wave in the NFL silly season.
If you have been following the Cowboys over the last several seasons, though, you know free agency is not their jam by any stretch of the imagination. Especially in March when prices have not substantially dropped.
In 2018, for instance, they made a number of tiny deals in the month of March (signifying the opening of the free agency window). A year later we are still trying to find the significant effects:
By Bob Sturm 3h ago
40 days since Super Bowl 53 in Atlanta, 18 days since the NHL Trade Deadline, 14 Days until Rangers Opening Day, and just two days before the NCAA Bracket is submitted…
We often refer to patterns that have been made clear through years and year of following the Dallas Cowboys. These trends help us prepare for what might lie ahead.
That seems appropriate this week, after hearing from many of you about your percolating frustrations that the Cowboys are never particularly active in free agency anymore.
Owner Jerry Jones once had a reputation for signing major free agents. Deion Sanders was a signature deal amidst the comedy of a Pizza Hut commercial when the Cowboys and Jerry Jones vowed to moneywhip their way to continued NFL dominance by locking down the NFL’s best corner to a whopping seven-year, $35 million deal back in 1995.
Jerry reflected on that during one of his many radio shows a few years back. He said that expenditure caused him some high-level anxiety:
“I flew all the way back to my home, where I was really raised, and walked down the street and looked at an old telephone pole where I’d carved something on it when I was a kid and walked around the old houses. And then walked back … down the street, went up to my old house, looked at it just to say, have you completely lost your bearing on what’s happening here financially?” Jones said. “Boy, I got back in the car, headed back out to the airport, came on back, and I said, ‘Look, that was then, this is now. Go for it.”
Times have changed. As has the financial structure of the NFL, with a very hard and unforgiving salary cap. I have often said the only thing that keeps the Cowboys from the sort of dominant run Real Madrid or Manchester United have enjoyed in the world of soccer is simply the structure the NFL desires for parity. There is no question that world soccer offers an opportunity for the richest teams to dominate via financial muscle and the endless resources to not only buy the best players but also to write off poor purchases with a billionaire’s shrug.
That certainly is not an option in the NFL, for better or worse. This league allows powers to emerge from literally any population base and ownership group as long as they can work under the balanced structure of equality. The league is set up to avoid decade-long dominance (or two-decade dominance, New England) and doesn’t seem to mind a world where power shifts at around the same interval as four-year presidential terms or Olympiads. The NFL remains hugely popular, so this does not appear to be a mistake. But the Dallas Cowboys’ endless reserves of cash really don’t seem to matter.
Forbes told us in 2018 that the Cowboys’ franchise value is easily the highest of any team in the world. The franchise was estimated to be worth $5 billion and enjoyed an annual revenue total of $864 million with an operating income of $365 million. The fixed player costs in a salary cap world total $190 million.
I am no financial wizard, but if revenues more than quadruple personnel costs, the Cowboys are the opposite of short on cash. The rules, however, dictate they cannot spend more than Buffalo or Green Bay. Do you know who the busiest teams are every year when the transfer windows open in Europe? The teams with the deepest pockets. If the Dallas Cowboys were a soccer club, they would run the world with the best players at every position. Is Khalil Mack unhappy? Come to Dallas. Odell Beckham and Antonio Brown? Cowboys to be. Sean Payton wants a bigger stage? There’s one in Dallas. And yes, they would have found a price for Aaron Rodgers that Green Bay couldn’t refuse years ago. But it doesn’t work that way. So what should they do with all of this money?
Buy a yacht that costs $250m, silly.
So here we are at the end of the opening week of free agency. The Cowboys have secured three of their own free agents on small deals with Tavon Austin, Cam Fleming, and Jamize Olawale all back in the fold.
Additionally, they signed an interesting young defensive tackle in Christian Covington away from Houston on a surprisingly cheap one-year, $1.6 million deal. None of these moves have produced even a medium-sized wave in the NFL silly season.
If you have been following the Cowboys over the last several seasons, though, you know free agency is not their jam by any stretch of the imagination. Especially in March when prices have not substantially dropped.
In 2018, for instance, they made a number of tiny deals in the month of March (signifying the opening of the free agency window). A year later we are still trying to find the significant effects: