The Dallas Cowboys’ Extreme Lack of Foresight is Haunting Them

Taco Charlton

Ok, ok, ok…hear me out here. I don’t like Taco Charlton. I don’t hate him either. I thought the Cowboys should have drafted T.J. Watt over him, and I though he had a low ceiling, a poor attitude, and an unexciting game, but I didn’t hate him on this team.

Taco was placed in a difficult situation on the Dallas Cowboys and he did anything but rise to the challenge. So Dallas sent him packing, sunk costs and future needs be damned. In Miami, Taco started five games and collected five sacks. The 6-foot-6 defensive end got new life in his new location and appears to have a future in the NFL after all.

Now, his sudden statistical success is explainable. Because he was so universally regarded as pedestrian, opponents made no effort to scheme against him. All he did is follow the law of averages.

But even so, the Dallas Cowboys would be happy to have an average starting defensive end on their roster right now. Robert Quinn, last season’s starting DE is a free agent. Even if Dallas is able to retain him a case can be made his numbers were outliers and not likely to be repeated. DE Kerry Hyder is also a free agent. Tyrone Crawford missed all of 2019 and may come back with a re-worked contract, but even that’s far from a sure thing.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1175854784621858816

This all leaves a hole at starting RDE. A hole the Dallas Cowboys knew would happen back during the ’19 season when they shipped Taco to Miami for a bag of peanuts. They sure could use Taco in the rotation now. Instead they’re banking on Dorance Armstrong, Joe Jackson, and Randy Gregory to hold down the fort.

Lessons?

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So what have we learned from all of this? Football decisions are hard and while the temptation is always there to strike while the iron is hot, you can never go wrong thinking about the future. We didn’t need a crystal ball to see things unfold like this and if the Dallas Cowboys paid a little more attention to the long-term health of the club, most of this would have been avoided.

Let’s keep this in mind as we head into the 2020 NFL Draft. The temptation is there to draft based on need. Is it just coincidence just about every mock draft out there has Dallas taking a CB, S, and DT in the first three rounds? No, those are the Cowboys biggest needs and we’re letting those needs cloud our judgement regarding best players available.

What are the Dallas Cowboys’ most regrettable moves to you? What preventable and foreseeable mistakes did they make? What are they about to make?