Stephen Jones From The Owner's Meeting

Cotton

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Texas Ace

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That is so great to see and very encouraging.

My only issue is that we have too many holes to fill and it could lead to an already bad defense getting worse.

I don't mind losing any one of Carr, Clairborne, Church, or Wilcox, but I don't know if we could afford to lose them ALL.

There's the potential to replace any one of them with someone worse, and that could be a very bad thing.

But I do like that this team seems to be getting out of that awful rut of overpaying and over-valuing JAGs who never make plays.
 

NoDak

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There's the potential to replace any one of them with someone worse, and that could be a very bad thing.

But I do like that this team seems to be getting out of that awful rut of overpaying and over-valuing JAGs who never make plays.
You can't have both. Choose one.

I for one, am pretty damn happy that the team chose the latter. Get rid of the dead weight. And Carr, Claiborne, Church, and Wilcox were just that. Mediocre dead weight. Just good enough to keep us thinking they might put it together. But they never did. And were never going to. Like I said earlier, we're better off without them. Taking a step back in the short term so in the long term we can take three forward. With them we were only standing in place.
 

Texas Ace

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You can't have both. Choose one.

I for one, am pretty damn happy that the team chose the latter. Get rid of the dead weight. And Carr, Claiborne, Church, and Wilcox were just that. Mediocre dead weight. Just good enough to keep us thinking they might put it together. But they never did. And were never going to. Like I said earlier, we're better off without them. Taking a step back in the short term so in the long term we can take three forward. With them we were only standing in place.
I would agree on everyone except Carr.

Carr wasn't a playmaker, that's for sure. And while I definitely want more playmakers on this defense, not everyone is going to be able to be that. The problem for us has been that we've gone years and years with virtually no playmakers on that side of the ball.

My point is, you can get by with a Brandon Carr if you put playmakers in other spots, and that's what we have failed to do. He's not spectacular, but he is a solid and dependable NFL starter at a position where it's difficult to find quality guys.

The other 3? Feh.

Be gone.
 

Smitty

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I don't think you'd hear any complaining at all if we had let go all the same guys except given Carr the exact deal he got from the Jets, which is essentially a series of one year deals with very little guaranteed money, no?

Carr-Scandrick-Brown as your top 3 corners feels like you at least don't have any glaring deficiencies. It's keeping you from having to reach in the draft.

Scandrick-Brown-Carroll seems like a potential for disaster.

But it's not like anyone is bemoaning the loss of Claiborne or Wilcox, really, and for the money he got, I'm not sad about Church either.
 

dallen

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I don't think you'd hear any complaining at all if we had let go all the same guys except given Carr the exact deal he got from the Jets, which is essentially a series of one year deals with very little guaranteed money, no?

Carr-Scandrick-Brown as your top 3 corners feels like you at least don't have any glaring deficiencies. It's keeping you from having to reach in the draft.

Scandrick-Brown-Carroll seems like a potential for disaster.

But it's not like anyone is bemoaning the loss of Claiborne or Wilcox, really, and for the money he got, I'm not sad about Church either.
I feel the same. I don't hate losing those three at all, and in a vacuum I probably wouldn't care about losing Carr either. But losing all of them at once when we already had huge holes up front hurts. I feel like we will have to get very lucky in the draft just to tread water on defense.
 

Texas Ace

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I'm tired of just getting by. Accept mediocrity and it becomes the norm.
And I agree with you, but what I am saying is, you can't have a steak on every plate. And Carr was one of those guys I viewed as a solid starter that a defense has to have.

The Cowboys biggest problem over the years hasn't been that they had an average player here or there, it's that they seemed content to have a unit full of them. Carr becomes a more glaring issue when he's one of 8 players on the defensive side of the ball that never make plays.

You'll be fine with a Carr, or Cedric Thornton, or even a Barry Church, if they are only a handful of decent players in a unit made up of multiple playmakers.

Even the very best defenses don't have elite playmakers all over the field, so I'm not expecting the Cowboys to have that. But the Cowboys just kept bringing back the entire staple of average players year after year and that was the part that frustrated me and what has led to the defense being such a mediocre and often times very bad unit for such an extended period of time.

I don't have an issue with Carr being let go, per se, but I do think it's a problem if you release him along with 3 other starters, and think you can just fill all those holes in one offseason.

Don't know if I explained it properly, but I tried.
 

Texas Ace

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I don't think you'd hear any complaining at all if we had let go all the same guys except given Carr the exact deal he got from the Jets, which is essentially a series of one year deals with very little guaranteed money, no?

Carr-Scandrick-Brown as your top 3 corners feels like you at least don't have any glaring deficiencies. It's keeping you from having to reach in the draft.

Scandrick-Brown-Carroll seems like a potential for disaster.

But it's not like anyone is bemoaning the loss of Claiborne or Wilcox, really, and for the money he got, I'm not sad about Church either.

I feel the same. I don't hate losing those three at all, and in a vacuum I probably wouldn't care about losing Carr either. But losing all of them at once when we already had huge holes up front hurts. I feel like we will have to get very lucky in the draft just to tread water on defense.

Exactly.
 

boozeman

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I'm tired of just getting by. Accept mediocrity and it becomes the norm.
So what made them decide they suck after a 13 and 3 season versus bringing them all back in previous years?

They didn't just suddenly decide, "wait a second, these guys really do suck!". The lack of cap space was just as much of a deal. None of them got "a lot of money" like Jones is pretending.

This just sounds a lot better when at the end of the day, they don't know how to evaluate their own talent. Therefore, the cap does it for them.
 

Angrymesscan

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They've been studying this draft class since the seniors were recruited from HS and knew how good it was regarding DB's so they planned it all to have them all go now...:art

Or the cap did it for them and apparently they got lucky and it was the right year for it...
 

Texas Ace

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So what made them decide they suck after a 13 and 3 season versus bringing them all back in previous years?

They didn't just suddenly decide, "wait a second, these guys really do suck!". The lack of cap space was just as much of a deal. None of them got "a lot of money" like Jones is pretending.

This just sounds a lot better when at the end of the day, they don't know how to evaluate their own talent. Therefore, the cap does it for them.
And that's a very good point.

It's hard to believe that all of a sudden the front office finally realized that all of these average players actually do suck, as you said.

I mean shit, this same organization was persisting with Lance fricking Dunbar in our playoff game vs Green Bay, so I doubt they all of a sudden saw the light.

I think the cap kind of forced their hand, and in the process, maybe someone with a brain said "Look, we've been leaning on these types of guys for years and it just hasn't worked out. It's time we start aiming for something higher and raise the bar around here for the type of player we want and need."

If that's the case, I am ok with that. I just don't know if what happened over the past month was a result of this revelation that the team suddenly had.
 

Simpleton

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Seems pretty logical that they would've been happy to bring back certain guys (Carr/Church) at a predetermined price, and once they exceeded that it was no longer deemed "efficient" due to the lack of turnovers and generally average play.
 

boozeman

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Seems pretty logical that they would've been happy to bring back certain guys (Carr/Church) at a predetermined price, and once they exceeded that it was no longer deemed "efficient" due to the lack of turnovers and generally average play.
Then just be honest and say you had a threshold. I would appreciate that more than having my intelligence insulted after they paid Carr millions, extended Church and gave Claiborne an extra year.
 

Simpleton

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Then just be honest and say you had a threshold. I would appreciate that more than having my intelligence insulted after they paid Carr millions, extended Church and gave Claiborne an extra year.
I thought Stephen basically said that they would've brought back a few guys if the price was right, I assumed they meant Church, either Carr or Claiborne, and perhaps McClain.
 

Genghis Khan

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Then just be honest and say you had a threshold. I would appreciate that more than having my intelligence insulted after they paid Carr millions, extended Church and gave Claiborne an extra year.
Isn't that basically what he said?
 

boozeman

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Isn't that basically what he said?
He talked out of both sides of his ass.

And you can't fucking tell me any of them were any worse last year than they were in any other previous year when he and his stupid father were paying them. So don't try and tell me that they were making changes because they were dissatisfied.

Convenience is a great thing. And he takes a shot at them on their way out so it panders to the fans like there really is a plan other than what amounts to Jerry deciding that he's tired of paying market price.

They played just as shitty last year as in previous years, so try selling that bullshit that they wanted more out of them. What changed? Looked like the same shit all along and now suddenly they felt they just sucked? Nope. They would have signed at least Church back if they could.
 

Cowboysrock55

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He talked out of both sides of his ass.

And you can't fucking tell me any of them were any worse last year than they were in any other previous year when he and his stupid father were paying them. So don't try and tell me that they were making changes because they were dissatisfied.
I'd say it's a little different when you are talking about handing a guy a new contract than when just simply not cutting him.
 

UncleMilti

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I wanted to keep Carr and then one of Church/Wilcox if the money was right, but there is no way I wanted to give Church almost 7 a year or Carr 6+ a year. Wilcox signed a reasonable 2 year, 8 or so million deal with Tampa that I would've been fine with giving him but I keep going back to how most of us wanted him gone last year and then the coaching staff found a way to integrate him as a useful piece to a decent enough defense, so if they were fine letting him go then I'm willing to see how it turns out.

Church had 5 picks in 7 years in Dallas, Carr had 7 picks in 5 years, Claiborne had 4 in 5 years, and Wilcox had 5 in 4 years. That's 21 interceptions in 21 combined seasons, and since Marinelli took over as DC in 2014 these four combined for just 12 picks over those three seasons.

That's an average of one interception per season per player, which is clearly pathetic.

I would've liked to bring one or two of them back simply so we don't have as many glaring holes but I can't blame the front office's logic that they want more play-making from the secondary and that they weren't willing to go above a certain price point to bring some of these guys back.

To me it's that type of logic and thinking that we've all wanted out of our front office for years.
The good news is its not difficult to replace the production-at least on paper- Dallas got out of Carr/Claiborne/Wilcox/Church. Even if its thru the draft, the growing pains will go away quickly.

The thing that worries me is the tendency to get cute in the 3rd, 4th etc rounds of the draft instead of simply going with solid productive players from big programs.

They have definitely gotten better, but that small school, only productive for 1 year BS has reared its head at the wrong time far too many times with the Jones clan in charge.
 

ravidubey

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The good news is its not difficult to replace the production-at least on paper- Dallas got out of Carr/Claiborne/Wilcox/Church. Even if its thru the draft, the growing pains will go away quickly.

The thing that worries me is the tendency to get cute in the 3rd, 4th etc rounds of the draft instead of simply going with solid productive players from big programs.

They have definitely gotten better, but that small school, only productive for 1 year BS has reared its head at the wrong time far too many times with the Jones clan in charge.
Just another area where the Jones routinely get too far up their own asses. They want notoriety as geniuses far more than they can tolerate a sure and steady or dare I say simple draft.

The small school DB crap definitely has to go. It never works.

Also say no to to the injured guy in the 2nd round. If 2 out of 5 play to their reputations one year after their rookie deals, it still only gives you 6 out of 20 productive seasons on rookie contracts from the 2nd round. 30% from the 2nd round is worse than throwing darts.

We are 1 out of 5 so far from Lee, Carter, Lawrence, Smith, and Gregory. And the successful guy, Lee, was hampered for much of his rookie contract by injuries. We did get one good year out of Lawrence and a decent 2014 from Carter, but neither has the 1st round talent they were supposedly sleeping on.

Say you generously count both seasons and one combined from Lee and you have 3 blue-chip seasons out of 20 for an unreal 15% rookie contract production from the 2nd round.

That doesn't even count Escobar being a bust.
 
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