Why the Cowboys WANTED Their Free Agents To Go

The Cowboys may have lost multiple internal free agents this month but there’s good news to be found in that.

The Dallas Cowboys have been getting their share of grief for the way they are handling themselves this free agent period. While quantitatively speaking they’ve been quite active in their signings, they are falling short of expectations to most people’s qualitative standards.

Many in Cowboys Nation can accept and even embrace the Cowboys are free agent bargain hunters rather than big game hunters. But allowing their own proven free agents to depart, uncontested, to other teams on very modest deals, has been hard for almost all of us to digest.

Whatever happened to “the devil you know is better to the devil you don’t” line of thought?

at the end of the day, the players that left were allowed to leave for a reason.

After all, it’s not like these players broke the bank.

Barry Church signed a 4-year deal worth $26 million. J.J. Wilcox signed a 2-year $8.5 million contract. Brandon Carr signed a team-friendly deal for 4-years and $23 million. And Morris Claiborne signed a no-commitment 1-year, $5 million deal.

Even by the thrifty Cowboys standards, they could have signed one of these guys. Heck, moving around some cash they could have signed two or three.

"“Players we want to keep, we keep them,” executive vice president Stephen Jones said. “Most of these players, I’m not going to single out guys, but most were ready to let move on.”"

As David Moore from DMN reported yesterday, price plays a part in Stephen Jones’ decision-making but at the end of the day, the players that left were allowed to leave for a reason.