The Dallas Cowboys have not been very active players in the free-agent market this offseason, which is certainly not what one would expect from one of the most free-spending organizations in football.
However, there is a reason for the Cowboys' lack of activity: they have a lot of their own players to worry about.
With quarterback Dak Prescott, running back Ezekiel Elliott, defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence, wide receiver Amari Cooper and linebacker Jaylon Smith all due for new deals in the near future, Dallas needs to save some money to try and keep all of its guys, and Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones understands that doing so will be tricky:
“Where it starts to be a logjam is, when you look, we’ve never paid our linebackers a lot of money, and we’ve got two, I think, rare ones in Jaylon and Leighton [Vander Esch],” Jones said, according to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated. “That’ll be where the logjam starts — when you figure out how to pay the pass rusher, the corners, the receiver, the quarterback, the running back, across the board on the offensive line, and then try to pay a couple linebackers. That’s when you start to have to get super creative. And if you go out and do a deal right now that’s not efficient, you’re starting to take some creative money away that hopefully is going to help you keep Jaylon, hopefully help you keep both corners. We’ll just have to see.”
The Cowboys are coming off of a 2018 campaign in which they won 10 games and captured the NFC East division title. They then went on to defeat the Seattle Seahawks in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs before falling to the Los Angeles Rams in the Divisional Round the following week.
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