- Joined
- Apr 7, 2013
- Messages
- 122,653
Gosselin: Greg Hardy signing reinforces that Cowboys are just trying to win instead of trying to win the right way
Rick Gosselin Follow @RickGosselinDMN rgosselin@dallasnews.com
Published: 22 March 2015 07:10 PM
Updated: 22 March 2015 07:26 PM
Desperate teams sink to desperate measures.
The Cowboys are a desperate team. They discovered in 2014 they are a pass rush away from the Super Bowl. Thus, they agreed to pay former Pro Bowl defensive end Greg Hardy up to $13 million this season to rush quarterbacks.
I went back to my 2010 draft notes to see what I had on Hardy. One general manager said, “when he decides to play, he’s the most talented player in the draft.” A scout called him, “the most talented defensive end in the draft.” Another scout said, “as pure a pass rusher as there is in this draft.”
Yet in a league that’s driven on defense by the pass rush, Hardy slid all the way to the sixth round of the 2010 draft. He was the 175th overall choice and 14th defensive end taken. The Cowboys had three chances to draft Hardy but passed each time.
That’s because red character flags abounded. He was suspended for two games in 2008 for missing classes and workouts, and NFL talent evaluators spoke of his maturity and trust issues plus his sense of entitlement.
Seven NFL teams told me they had taken Hardy completely off their draft boards. They weren’t going to mess with him in any round at any price.
And that was before Hardy was convicted of domestic violence in 2014 and sentenced to 60 days in jail (suspended) with 18 months of probation. Hardy appealed the verdict and the charges were dismissed last month because court officials were unable to locate the victim to testify.
Hardy posted nine sacks in his last four games for Carolina — the final three games of 2013 and the first game of 2014 — before he was placed on the NFL exempt list to deal with his legal issues.
The Panthers eventually decided he was too much of a distraction to bring back in 2015, so they cut him and all of his pass rush potential earlier this month. Now Hardy awaits word from the NFL if he must sit for a stretch in 2015 with a suspension.
So the next time I hear Jason Garrett talk about bringing “the right kind of guy” into the Cowboys locker room, I’m going to turn my tape recorder off. Then I’m going to politely excuse myself.
After a brief spell of trying to win the right way with high-character players — think Sean Lee, Brandon Carr and Travis Frederick — the Cowboys are now just trying to win. The arrivals of Hardy and Rolando McClain plus the return of Josh Brent are proof of that. That’s a trio I wouldn’t invite over to my house for dinner any time soon.
The bottom line is the Cowboys have one of the worst pass rushes in the NFL. They managed only 28 sacks last season. Only four teams got to the quarterback fewer times than the Cowboys.
That fatal flaw became painfully evident in the second half of the NFC semifinal playoff game against Green Bay.
Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers sat in the pocket unchallenged and hit 15 of 20 passes for 226 yards and two touchdowns in those final 30 minutes to rally Green Bay to a 26-21 victory. He had upward of five seconds to throw on any given snap and was not sacked a single time.
You can’t compete for Super Bowls when your sack count is in the 20s. You need to get into the 40s. The NFL established sacks as an official statistic in 1982. Since then, the 33 champions have averaged 42.7 sacks in their Super Bowl seasons. Only 10 of the 33 Super Bowl champions had fewer than 40 sacks. Nine had 50 or more.
Of the 66 teams that reached Super Bowls in the sack era, only one had a sack count in the 20s. That was the 2006 Indianapolis Colts with 25. But the Colts dialed the rush up in the postseason with eight sacks in four games on the way to a Lombardi Trophy.
You can already subtract nine sacks from that 2014 count of the Cowboys with the free-agent departures of Bruce Carter, Henry Melton and George Selvie this offseason.
So how do the Cowboys come up with 21 extra sacks to get into the 40s this season? Selecting at No. 27 in the first round of the 2015 draft, the Cowboys will not find the impact pass rusher they need. The elite pass rushers fly off the board in the Top 12 of every draft.
The Cowboys wanted and would have drafted a pass rusher with the 18th pick in the 2013 draft or the 16th pick in 2014. But there were none to be found, so the Cowboys wound up with a couple offensive linemen.
Jerry Jones released a statement after the signing of Hardy saying essentially that the Cowboys had done their due diligence with Hardy. But they did their due diligence as well in 2010 when Hardy was coming out of college and decided they wanted no part of him then. And that was before the term “domestic violence” entered the conversation.
So a desperate team took a desperate measure.
And Greg Hardy is now a Cowboy.
-------------
Gosselin is an effing tool.
You can look around the NFL and find player after player that got popped by some "scout speak" or whispers he was lazy or what not.
Fact is, NFL "talent evaluators" don't know what the eff they are dealing with in regards to character issues.
Yes, there are "red flags". And often, a player matures their way out of it.
I hate to tell them that they are dealing with a "red flag" demographic to begin with.
But yet, they blame something else when their choices turn out wrong.
And yep, the Cowboys are desperate for a pass rush.
Guilty as charged.
But why is that? Oh yeah, because nobody knows how the hell things will work out.
This was a smug article that I thought reeked of cronyism on the behalf of Gosselin for all his little scout buddies.
You know, the ones who fed him draft shit the night before that made his career. Yeah, those guys.
The ones who are wrong more often than not.
Rick Gosselin Follow @RickGosselinDMN rgosselin@dallasnews.com
Published: 22 March 2015 07:10 PM
Updated: 22 March 2015 07:26 PM
Desperate teams sink to desperate measures.
The Cowboys are a desperate team. They discovered in 2014 they are a pass rush away from the Super Bowl. Thus, they agreed to pay former Pro Bowl defensive end Greg Hardy up to $13 million this season to rush quarterbacks.
I went back to my 2010 draft notes to see what I had on Hardy. One general manager said, “when he decides to play, he’s the most talented player in the draft.” A scout called him, “the most talented defensive end in the draft.” Another scout said, “as pure a pass rusher as there is in this draft.”
Yet in a league that’s driven on defense by the pass rush, Hardy slid all the way to the sixth round of the 2010 draft. He was the 175th overall choice and 14th defensive end taken. The Cowboys had three chances to draft Hardy but passed each time.
That’s because red character flags abounded. He was suspended for two games in 2008 for missing classes and workouts, and NFL talent evaluators spoke of his maturity and trust issues plus his sense of entitlement.
Seven NFL teams told me they had taken Hardy completely off their draft boards. They weren’t going to mess with him in any round at any price.
And that was before Hardy was convicted of domestic violence in 2014 and sentenced to 60 days in jail (suspended) with 18 months of probation. Hardy appealed the verdict and the charges were dismissed last month because court officials were unable to locate the victim to testify.
Hardy posted nine sacks in his last four games for Carolina — the final three games of 2013 and the first game of 2014 — before he was placed on the NFL exempt list to deal with his legal issues.
The Panthers eventually decided he was too much of a distraction to bring back in 2015, so they cut him and all of his pass rush potential earlier this month. Now Hardy awaits word from the NFL if he must sit for a stretch in 2015 with a suspension.
So the next time I hear Jason Garrett talk about bringing “the right kind of guy” into the Cowboys locker room, I’m going to turn my tape recorder off. Then I’m going to politely excuse myself.
After a brief spell of trying to win the right way with high-character players — think Sean Lee, Brandon Carr and Travis Frederick — the Cowboys are now just trying to win. The arrivals of Hardy and Rolando McClain plus the return of Josh Brent are proof of that. That’s a trio I wouldn’t invite over to my house for dinner any time soon.
The bottom line is the Cowboys have one of the worst pass rushes in the NFL. They managed only 28 sacks last season. Only four teams got to the quarterback fewer times than the Cowboys.
That fatal flaw became painfully evident in the second half of the NFC semifinal playoff game against Green Bay.
Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers sat in the pocket unchallenged and hit 15 of 20 passes for 226 yards and two touchdowns in those final 30 minutes to rally Green Bay to a 26-21 victory. He had upward of five seconds to throw on any given snap and was not sacked a single time.
You can’t compete for Super Bowls when your sack count is in the 20s. You need to get into the 40s. The NFL established sacks as an official statistic in 1982. Since then, the 33 champions have averaged 42.7 sacks in their Super Bowl seasons. Only 10 of the 33 Super Bowl champions had fewer than 40 sacks. Nine had 50 or more.
Of the 66 teams that reached Super Bowls in the sack era, only one had a sack count in the 20s. That was the 2006 Indianapolis Colts with 25. But the Colts dialed the rush up in the postseason with eight sacks in four games on the way to a Lombardi Trophy.
You can already subtract nine sacks from that 2014 count of the Cowboys with the free-agent departures of Bruce Carter, Henry Melton and George Selvie this offseason.
So how do the Cowboys come up with 21 extra sacks to get into the 40s this season? Selecting at No. 27 in the first round of the 2015 draft, the Cowboys will not find the impact pass rusher they need. The elite pass rushers fly off the board in the Top 12 of every draft.
The Cowboys wanted and would have drafted a pass rusher with the 18th pick in the 2013 draft or the 16th pick in 2014. But there were none to be found, so the Cowboys wound up with a couple offensive linemen.
Jerry Jones released a statement after the signing of Hardy saying essentially that the Cowboys had done their due diligence with Hardy. But they did their due diligence as well in 2010 when Hardy was coming out of college and decided they wanted no part of him then. And that was before the term “domestic violence” entered the conversation.
So a desperate team took a desperate measure.
And Greg Hardy is now a Cowboy.
-------------
Gosselin is an effing tool.
You can look around the NFL and find player after player that got popped by some "scout speak" or whispers he was lazy or what not.
Fact is, NFL "talent evaluators" don't know what the eff they are dealing with in regards to character issues.
Yes, there are "red flags". And often, a player matures their way out of it.
I hate to tell them that they are dealing with a "red flag" demographic to begin with.
But yet, they blame something else when their choices turn out wrong.
And yep, the Cowboys are desperate for a pass rush.
Guilty as charged.
But why is that? Oh yeah, because nobody knows how the hell things will work out.
This was a smug article that I thought reeked of cronyism on the behalf of Gosselin for all his little scout buddies.
You know, the ones who fed him draft shit the night before that made his career. Yeah, those guys.
The ones who are wrong more often than not.
