Cowboys Get a Free Pass on Free Agency, 'Skins Don't

Bledsoe signed for how much? Brunell has to restructure. :oink:
Brunell can't really restructure himself out of a bonus he's already received. Let's just learn from our mistakes.

It looks as if they missed all of our misstakes and are now doing the same thing. I hope they have the same results.



They will not get a "Free pass"! All of those cowroid lovers will turn angry when the "roids" go 6-10 again! Then, they will be closer to the cap, and unable to see their way out. It takes a while for all of this Free Agency to settle down, and the Talking heads to evaluate teams based on paper! Then, translating what they have on paper to what actually happens on the field, will make the paper yellow more quickly! I only wish they had Norv for coach, and not Tuna!

Yeah you would think all the NFL teams would have looked at us a few years back when we signed Sanders, Smith, George, etc....

Daniel Synder had the "we're going to change it around now!" attitude; same as Jerry Jones this off-season. I think he is loading the team up to make Parcells happy. Its quite obvious that Dallas is thinking win now so we can have a reason to suck later on!

The Bledsoe signing is a good one because the signing bonus is so low. Suppose Bledose totally bombs out this year and has to be cut next January. HIs signing bonus was $2M over 4 years meaning that $500K was counted in 2005 and the "dead money hit" is only $1.5M. That's not such a horrible risk to take.

I also like the Ferguson signing. Absent a serious injury, Ferguson is a bona fide run stopper on the DL. He will have to play there for three years to make his dead money hit reasonable, but there isn't any reason yet to assume he can't do that. He may not be an All-Pro, but he can still play.

Rivera is a guy who just gets the job done without and flourish or fanfare. He is awfully long in the tooth for an offensive lineman - despite the Ray Brown example - and so he is a much bigger gamble.

Anthony Henry is the biggest gamble of the lot since I'm not sure he is good enough to deserve a $10M signing bonus no matter what he age is.

I concede SC that Bledsoe's signing isn't bad for the cap. I also admit that Rivera is a pretty good guard.

But I do not agree that the signing of Ferguson was smart. He's solid, but old and costly. $9 million is a lot of guaranteed money for a guy his age (see, Brunell).

My point is that they are overpaying (except for Bledsoe) older guys who have had very solid, if unspectacular, careers.

Ramseyfan:

This is probably amatter of semantics. I don't think they overpaid for Bledsoe because I don't think he will ever see the big money years in that deal and it will not be "painful" for them to ditch him. The difference between the Bledsoe deal and the Brunell deal is that Brunell hauled down a MUCH larger signing bonus and so it will hurt the Redskins to jettison him for several years because of the "dead money hit".

We differ in our assessment of Ferguson. I figure he has three or four good and productive years left in him - absent a serious injury of course.If he plays 3 years and then they have to cut him, the dead money hit will be about $3.5M - assuming no restructurings along the way. If he plays 4 years and is a cap cut because the deal is so heavily backloaded, the dead money hit would only be $1.8M. So, if I'm right in my assumption that he can play 3 or 4 years in a competent manner, that's not such an awful deal.

I completely agree with you on the risks in the other two contracts. I trhink both of them are a "stretch".

i dont see why you'd load up in a seller's market with a bunch of oldies when the sum total of this team's talent doesn't even look good enough to get 2nd place in their division... maybe they figure for a killer draft... its possible.

Prior to the start of free agency, Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones said the Cowboys would aggressivley pursue free agents this offseason. And sure enough, they have. The Cowboys signed Drew Bledsoe, age 33, to a four year $14 million deal with a $2 million signing bonus. The team also added Jason Ferguson, who will be 31 in November, to a 5 year, $22 million deal with a $9 million signing bonus. Their third big free agent acquisition is Anthony Henry, who will be 29 in November, to a 5 year, $25 million deal with a $10 million signing bonus. Finally, the Cowboys have reportedly inked former Packer guard Marco Rivera, who is 33, to a long-term deal.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the Cowboys have invested over $20 million in signing bonuses and about $70 million in salary payments to four guys who are past their primes and average 31.5 years of age?

Apparently, the Redskins get nailed when we sign anyone to any sort of deal, but the Cowboys get a free pass for free agent spending sprees on aging players.

I'm glad Snyder, Gibbs & Company decided not to overspend on free agents whose prices are inflated because the free agent market is so piss poor. I'm also glad that the Cowboys have done a "mini-2000 Redskins'" spending binge on AARP members.

I think this stems from the fact that Parcell doesn't plan to hang around very long at all. Since I live in Texas and get all the Cryboy news on tv, radio, and the paper.....I would not be surprised if next year was Parcell's last year......They are definitely going with the George Allen philosophy "THE FUTURE IS NOW" Not all the Cowboy pick ups have worked, Wiley was a bust, so was Galloway who they got rid of, and I hope some of these "oldsters" are too........However, from what I read about Rivera, he was a solid OL and did a good job protecting Favre .......

monk81:

Rivera is fine as a guard; there's no reason to think he's a stiff. But he is long in the tooth and signing somebody of that age to a long term deal is dicey because when an offensive lineman starts to "lose it", they tend to drop in effectiveness pretty quickly.

I figure Parcells is in Dallas for one more year - or two at the very most. I presume that the locals there have come to grips with that scenario...



ThatGuy:

If you look at that NFC East from the Cowboys' perspective, this is a division ripe for the taking. Granted the Eagles look to continue to be the class of the division for the next year or two but looking at the Redskins and the Giants is hardly fearsome. The Cowboys probably think that they won 10 games in 2003 and if they get back to 10 wins next year that's all they will need to be a comfortable 2nd in the NFC East and a wild card team in the playoffs.

BTW, that should be exactly the way that the Skins and Giants are looking at the NFC East for the next year - - except that neither the Skins nor the Giants have won 10 games in a single year for a while.

SC,

I actually think we agree as to Bledsoe, Henry, and Rivera.

I do also believe that Ferguson is a good player with a few years left in the tank. But a $9 million signing bonus? We gave Griffin a signing bonus of 8.3 million and Griffin is on the upside of his career, not the downside. At 31, Ferguson's pretty damn old.