- Joined
- Apr 7, 2013
- Messages
- 120,216
By Bob Sturm
6h ago
This week’s riffing was more about finally getting another project crossed off the list and showing you the results you helped me put together on something I started Jan. 28. Another way to say that date is that was six days after the Cowboys season ended in Santa Clara, Calif., against the 49ers, so you can bet my attitude was probably kicking it a bit too negative at the time.
That said, I do love putting together things like this because it helps us crowdsource our way to the right answers. Also, very few lists on these matters are ever assembled with a rather negative tone. But, since you know what I have generally thought of the Jones family running their entire operation like the world’s most valuable fantasy football franchise, you know I have been keeping mental notes on this for a long time.
The topic today — and Jan. 28 — is “worst front-office decisions of the past decade.” These would be all of those that seemed to sabotage the efforts of this franchise erasing the pain and exiting the championship-level drought it’s had since Super Bowl 30. It could be anything that involved an active decision from those in charge and most likely elicited conversations that will not be posted at DallasCowboys.com about how they arrived at their verdict and who was offering the deciding opinion.
Last decade is a bit arbitrary, but then again, so is the entire list.
Thankfully, more than 1,000 people responded and we went through in great detail finding the candidates that we all felt strongly about.
And then, I got 10-feet deep in draft preparations for the next 100 days and lost track of it. I guess my multitasking was not exactly foolproof, but in early April, our friend Zach Barnett from Football Scoop was tired of waiting for me to get it together and he prodded me to not forget about it.
Thank you, Zach. Fortunately, I still had the compiled data and am ready to roll with all of your findings. Now is the perfect time to walk down memory lane. We will put the slider at about the start of the 2013 season and run it through the end of the 2022 season and call that the decade sample. Here it is: The five worst mistakes by the front office in the last decade:
5. Taking a RB at No. 4 overall in the 2016 draft (10 percent)
This one is not a second-guess from your friendly Cowboys writer, as I am sure many of you are well aware. I pounded the table in the spring of 2016 that Derrick Henry in Round 2 will be plenty available and this allows you to go get a Jalen Ramsey (or DeForest Buckner, I concede) in Round 1. The receipts are everywhere at my old stomping grounds (and yes, some of the links still work!) about how strongly I felt about this, despite also knowing that Ezekiel Elliott was the better overall prospect with fewer questions. It should also be said that from 2016 through 2018, Elliott was not only the better of the two players, but also a key reason why the Cowboys were winning games at a very high rate — aside from his massive suspension of 2017. The Cowboys took their version of what might be the next Emmitt Smith at that spot and while we can still debate whether the real mistake was the pick or the extension (see below), we also wonder how Cowboys history might be different in this alternate universe. Anyway, enough of you voted for this that it cracked the top 5.
4. Taking Taco Charlton over T.J. Watt in the 2017 draft (13.3 percent)
Here is another classic. The front office has really been great at picking first-rounders over the years. So, I suppose we should offer some latitude when it misses by just a small bit. But, this one seemed like a pick that was made for all of the wrong reasons as the Cowboys continuously told us it was about positional fit, even though they were (we assume) failing to realize that “nickel is base” for 70 percent of all snaps. If nickel is base, then we better go get the guy who actually is twitchy enough to have his game translate to the NFL after a productive season in the Big Ten. They hinted that Watt may not have a fully healthy medical check (Darnell Washington vibes), but his athletic testing was elite at every level. Meanwhile, Charlton was big. That was his best attribute, that he looked like a big guy who cannot break 4.9 in the 40. But, he is big! Once again, we were pretty adamant on this one, but the Cowboys took their guy and were pretty pleased with it — until they released him in September of 2019. Not ideal.
3. Keeping Jason Garrett way too long, 2013-2019 (13.7 percent)
I always felt strongly about this one — strongly enough to write a three-part series in the summer of 2020. You can see in great detail that I would have made the change in January of 2013 after the 8-8 debacle of 2012 that ended with a humiliating loss at Washington, but instead, the Cowboys ran back the Jason Garrett era for seven more seasons. An excerpt from that piece:
“I would have fired him long ago.”
Forgive me for quoting myself, as that can be quite rude. But this became my stock answer at some point over the thousands of times I was asked about Jason Garrett’s coaching tenure by the time we got to 2016. Or 2017. And 2018 or 2019. So, yes, by the time we were coming down the stretch of this latest season, it had literally felt like the Cowboys had been extending him mulligans and second chances for as long as I can remember. Let’s be clear: Nobody in this business wants people to lose their jobs. Everyone has empathy for the difficulty of doing a job well and for decent humans finding success in a very difficult situation, but there is also the question of whether being a very nice human qualifies you for an indefinite job running the Dallas Cowboys. From the perspective of someone tasked to cover this team since 1998, I certainly have attempted to slow play my decisions and to allow a man to fail and learn before we suggest it is time to try a new coach. I try to be patient and understand that any new job requires a growth period, but when the growth appears to have halted, I do grow tired of what appears to be stubbornness about the coach.
Many of you agreed with me. You will have a hard time finding a coach who lasted that long — 152 games as head coach over 10 seasons — without ever gaining either an NFC Championship Game or back-to-back playoff years. Both are low hurdles in today’s NFL, especially with two different franchise QBs, but Garrett accomplished neither and yet was given a decade. For me, this might be No. 1 on my list, but the crowd voted it third.
2. The Amari Cooper trade of 2022 (16.3 percent)
Giving away Amari Cooper for a fifth-round pick to move out his contract and the Cowboys playing a season with Noah Brown as their second-best wide receiver for the entirety of 2022 as Michael Gallup had no real quality for most of the season makes No. 2 on the list. This is another one that we called a ridiculously bad idea in real time. It is all right here for you. Somehow, the Cowboys got it in their heads that they wanted him gone because he missed two games due to not getting vaccinated in the previous season. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Dallas found anyone who would offer literally anything and then proudly marched ahead into a season with Dennis Houston and Jalen Tolbert as their solutions until Gallup returned. The comedy there is that Gallup never actually returned, so the Cowboys rushed him back to only get a disappointing version of him who was a net-negative as a receiver in 2022. With the WR market going crazy, we could quibble greatly with the price they were able to elicit. But honestly, keeping Cooper around until they were actually in a decent spot with him — or just keeping him for his contract which is nowhere near obtrusive since the market changed — would have been the smart play. Instead, Dallas hurried to turn him into cap space — that we don’t think actually has been utilized — and Matt Waletzko. Goodness gracious, that one still seems pretty awful. I suppose the Brandin Cooks deal will be their version of a “my bad” acknowledgement, but in the process, your offense looked pretty poor again when it mattered in 2022. They apparently didn’t believe in the “you can never have too many playmakers around” theory prevalent in today’s NFL.
https://theathletic.com/4498065/2023/05/08/cowboys-53-man-roster-projection/
1. Ezekiel Elliott’s contract extension of 2019 (16.5 percent)
Finally, our champion. This won by a very narrow margin, but it is a worthy winner. One of the main reasons the Cowboys were fine taking a RB with one of the highest picks in franchise history was the knowledge that they could keep him for five years (2016-2020) of reasonable pay and perhaps even franchise him for Year 6 (2021) and maybe Year 7 (2022). The problem with that is you need a very compliant football player who hears he is being taken advantage of — the term “run into the ground” is often used in public parlance — and doesn’t act to stop that. Elliott is a smart man represented by even more smart men who called the Cowboys’ bluff by hiding Zeke in Cabo for the 2019 training camp to ensure he was given his guaranteed money. Instead of the Cowboys letting him twist — like Le’Veon Bell in Pittsburgh — they caved. They caved badly and gave him the worst RB contract in NFL history (six-year extension for $90 million). One that didn’t even start until he was pretty well cooked. His final 50 carries as a Cowboy were for 100 total yards (2 yards per) and he played center in a Football Follies masterpiece on his final snap. Had the Cowboys stood their ground, we all suspect they could have not compounded the mistake badly and then felt the need to confirm their decision with hundreds of underperforming carries … but here we are.
Well, there is your list. It should generate plenty of discussions and “well, actually” offerings, but I think overall you all had a strong showing at the polls. Here are some others that didn’t crack the top 5:
Honorable mention
• Jaylon Smith’s extension
• DeMarcus Ware’s exit
• Greg Hardy’s signing
• Not pushing Tony Romo back out on the field in 2016
• Jason Witten’s return
• Waiting two years to give Dak Prescott a contract and having to overpay
• Hiring Mike Nolan
• Dez Bryant’s exit
• Letting Byron Jones walk
• Taking Leighton Vander Esch over Calvin Ridley
• Keeping Rod Marinelli too long
• Trading Charvarius Ward for someone named Parker Ehinger
I hope you enjoyed this unenjoyable look at the past decade of what having a GM who cannot be fired can sometimes looks like.
