Notes & Quotes: Day 3 AUSTIN - It only took one "recruiting" trip for Broderick
Thomas to decide where he wanted to play football in 1996.
"I got off the plane after getting home from Cincinnati, and I called
my agent," he said. "I told him to get me to Dallas and I'd be
fine. Other teams pursued me, but I had a plan and it was to get to Dallas
as quickly as possible."
His agent obeyed the order and Thomas signed a free agent contract with
the Cowboys on March 22 to replace Dixon Edwards, who had left for Minnesota
via free agency.
Thomas' signing was the second in a busy offseason for the Cowboys, who
went out and signed four veteran free agents that they'll be relying on
heavily this season. The other three are middle linebacker Fred Strickland,
defensive tackle Tony Casillas and running back Herschel Walker.
The Cowboys also traded for safety Roger Harper, who will back up Brock
Marion.
The signings were a continuation of a trend that the Cowboys began when
the salary cap was instituted in 1993.
The trend? Plug the holes in the dam with as many stopgaps as possible,
and keep on winning football games and Super Bowls.
The Cowboys were the first team to really take advantage of free agency
when they signed 16 Plan B free agents before the 1990 season.
Only one player - Jay Novacek - is left from that group, but the Cowboys
got solid production from fullback Tommie Agee, linebacker Vinson Smith
and safety James Washington over the course of the next several years.
Dallas signed eight more Plan B free agents over the next two years, and
got good production from three of them.
But the tide began to turn when unrestricted free agency hit the league
three years ago.
The Cowboys began losing more players than they signed, topped by the 11
they lost after the 1995 season. In fact, since the end of the 1993 season
the Cowboys have lost 27 players to free agency while signing just 10, not
including their own free agents.
But while the good players were leaving Dallas, the superstars were being
locked up with long-term contracts. Over the last four years, Troy Aikman,
Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, Novacek, Daryl Johnston, Leon Lett, Erik Williams,
Kevin Smith, Charles Haley, Tony Tolbert and Darren Woodson have signed
long-term deals that keeps the team's nucleus intact.
It was a decision that team management was forced to make a few years ago.
"We made the decision - and I believe it was a sound one - in the first
year of the salary cap that we'd keep our stars," said Larry Lacewell,
the Cowboys' director of college and pro scouting. "We knew it was
going to cost us some good players, but we didn't want to lose our superstars.
"Rather than spread our money around and give some to this guy and
some to this guy, we've become like some small countries in that we don't
have a middle class," Lacewell said. "On this team, you're either
high-dollar or low-dollar. Because of our success, we've been put in the
position that we'll always lose guys because we can't afford to pay them
what other people will pay them."
Three examples of that came this past offseason when backup offensive lineman
Ron Stone jumped to the New York Giants for a five-year, $10 million contract,
middle linebacker Robert Jones accepted similar money to sign with the St.
Louis Rams, and Russell Maryland signed with the Oakland Raiders for big
money after a star-crossed career in Dallas.
"You know, there's no way we could have paid that kind of money for
those guys," Lacewell said. "It was heartbreaking to see Maryland
leave, but he's not a great football player. To see Stone leave strips us
of a key backup. And Robert Jones was a good boundary-to-boundary linebacker,
but he wasn't a physical presence in the middle.
"But I don't think you'll see anybody carry the kind of depth we had
a few years ago," Lacewell said. "If we had paid the money to
those guys that other teams had, we wouldn't have been able to keep our
superstars. We haven't done that, but we couldn't have done it even if we
had to."
That's because of the salary cap, which has stripped this team of its once-unparalleled
depth. And that's the reason the Cowboys have decided to fill their holes
with stopgap players that won't cost much more than the minimum veteran
salary of $275,000 per season.
"We've just been putting patches on the intertube," Lacewell said.
"Fortunately we don't have as many holes in our tires as some teams."
And those players that do end up in Dallas to patch those holes do so for
one reason:
"To win the ring," Walker said.
Before training camp began, head coach Barry Switzer said that there are,
realistically, four or five teams that have a legitimate shot at winning
the Super Bowl, and the Cowboys top that list. That's why they're able to
get guys like Walker or Strickland or Ray Donaldson to join them for minimum
cost.
"Fortunately, Dallas is still an attractive place to play," Lacewell
said, "regardless of our off-the-field problems. It hasn't hurt our
recruiting at all.
"Because of the success we've had, if the money is close between us
and another team, we'll usually get the guy," Lacewell said. "And
no matter what anybody says, there are a lot of guys out there who want
to play for Barry Switzer and Jerry Jones."
Once the Cowboys decided that the best way to keep their name at the top
of the NFL was the free agent route, they made a move to upgrade their scouting.
"We upgraded the emphasis in our pro scouting department," Lacewell
said. "We grade every guy that's available through free agency. We
also know what the money situation is for that player. Then we try to group
players into an area that fits our salary cap needs."
The free agent Cowboys are a direct contradiction to the Jimmy Johnson Cowboys,
who were built mostly through the draft. But with most of the Cowboys' superstars
having put a lot of wear and tear on their bodies, this is no time for a
three-year rebuilding plan.
"We're a product of the system right now," Lacewell said. "You
have to ask yourself if you're better off playing a young player as opposed
to signing a guy like Tony Casillas and playing him.
"Now, if we were a young football team that hadn't won anything, I'd
have reservations about getting into the free agent market, because my philosophy
is still to build through the draft," he said. "But again, right
now, we're patching holes."
And, Lacewell hopes, winning more Super Bowls.