Never probably lol


They are "monitoring" the situation. Entire athletic department is run by morons tho so not optimistic.

**** Jay Ratliff

So you're saying defensive line may be a position of need...really stupid thing is that he is one of the closest people in the locker room to Josh Brent according to beat writers and the like.

Can we cut him for free now

Lol no, he just started his extension. He's got $18m guaranteed before last season started and (by my count) they've paid him $2m of it. I don't even know if they can afford to cut him if they wanted to.

What do you do if you're fed up with him? Do you pay the guy $5m to play anyway, or eat $8m in dead money both this year AND again in 2014 (and then have pay somebody to replace him)? This is exactly the type of thing that happens where you wish you didn't start every year tapped out.

Mind boggled by a Cowboy getting another DWI within three months.

A TEAMMATE JUST KILLED SOMEONE DRUNK DRIVING

I think we should start having mandatory IQ tests and psych evaluations before signing a player... Jesus christ.

Obviously from a financial standpoint alone keeping him is the best play. But other things come into play here. Jerry's ego being one, certain moral standards being the other. Other intangibles such as locker room tension. This is an incredibly insensitive stunt that I'm sure a lot of players won't be happy with.

Whether we disagree or agree on whether or not to keep Ratliff, we can all amalgamate our hatred for Jerry Jones as this trigger happy old man just had to break the bank on another player prematurely.

What I mean is, they're $18m over the cap and only have 44 players under contract the last I looked. That's $18m over the cap before paying free any agents, re-signing players, extending players, signing draft picks, or cutting/trading players that cause dead money hits.

If you're going to cut any player that creates more dead money against the cap then it would cost to pay him, that money has to come from somewhere. If Roto numbers are correct, cutting Ratliff would cost $16m this season in dead money, or split that over the next two seasons for $8m each. That's $5.5m more than just paying him the next two seasons and we're not even counting replacement cost yet.

I suspect they'd like to cut Ratliff and eat it but they're just not going to be able to do everything they want. They're going to have to restructure a couple players they shouldn't just to get under the cap. And probably extend Romo on some backloaded deal that will ease 2013 but could screw them in 3 years.

Unless they numbers are off I think they're probably going to have to make the best of Ratliff for another year at least. Cutting him is a luxury.

Many twitter reports suggest ex-U of TN HC Derek Dooley will be the new WR coach.

Hope everyone had some good time off. I just wanted to bump the thread up so people can start talking about drafting Chance Warmack in the first, since apparently he's this year's "once a decade" interior o-line prospect.

I was reading yesterday that they might not cut free... Uh what

None of our guys may be released because their contracts are so horrible we don't even save anything.

There's maybe 5 possible outcomes with Doug Free's situation, and none of them are good. Best case, the Cowboys take their medicine and cut him now, $8m cap hit and all. Say goodbye to Spencer and forget a mid-level free agent you like.

Essentially there's no way to get completely under the cap by cutting players. They're $20m over now, and they'll need another $5m or so for rookies, and then more to fill the empty roster slots and hire replacements as needed. Almost all the money they're going to free up this year will come from resigning Romo to a deal with a tiny Year 1 cap hit, restructuring Carr who didn't start off well, and a couple other players like Austin and Ware who are risky to restructure.

The clear path out of this nightmare is to let go of Free, Ratliff, Connor and whoever else is getting $500k too much. And give serious consideration to trading Miles Austin. I like the guy, but there's no penalty for trading him and that's a fair amount of money he's costing and will cost. He's worth the money but cap savings have to come from somewhere.

There's no way around restructuring Carr it looks like, so better hope he turns out okay.

Mar 12 is the deadline to get under the cap by the way, so we'll see soon enough.

$121.1 million is the cap this year, minus $5m for the league penalty. Pretty bad result for those who took for granted that the cap would keep skyrocketing up every season. Besides now every team in the league is going to be spending $120m. Dallas is now likely to be the team with the least amount of base salaries going to it's players this season.

Jerry spent an hour with a few reporters yesterday and just spewed Jerry bull**** all over the place. I don't even have the energy to type up all of it but Werder's twitter had the details.

I'd agree Austin is tradable but only if we had other wrs which we don't... So think they have to keep him

Meh. He's hurt a lot and makes tons of money. I really don't care if he's gone.

But he's not worth anything...so....

I think he has trade value. He's worth a third or fourth easy. $7m year isn't bad for him considering there's no long-term cap risk or rookie development to sweat. He's a lower end #1 or a high-end #2.

But that's besides what I was really getting at, which is they need to get under the cap somehow. They're running out of options so far as what can actually be done. They can patch it together with some restructures but you're just postponing the inevitable. What they need is some flexibility and they don't have any.

let the restructuring begin!

I saw we were going to restructure 12 people.

lol

YES! Add Jonathan Cooper to the list as well.

OL/DL until we have no more picks.

Need a safety too.

Walter lol football has us taking Kenny Vacarro in the 1st. Puke.

The Jones's sure know how to stomp on my balls.

Among the current or imminent restructures are the following players:

Orlando Scandrick
Jay Ratliff
DeMarcus Ware - for the 3rd consecutive season!
Jason Witten
Ryan Cook
Miles Austin
Nate Livings
Mackenzie Bernadeau
Jason Witten
Brandon Carr

Plus more coming though I could take a few guesses. Meanwhile I see all the clowns on BTB talking like, "see? They've got the cap under control. Everything's fine. Stephen Jones rocks!" They have absolutely no appreciation for what 12 restructures means.

Carr wasn't that great last year but okay, sure, Ryan Cook fine. But Ratliff, Scandrick? Ware's remaining cap years weren't steep enough already? Jason Witten's now an $8.5m cap charge in 2014 and 2015, for a 11 year veteran tight end. Can't cut him because that's $10m, and you can't let him retire, so restructure him again next year to fit under the cap...

See that's the problem with this whole restructure-endlessly strategy; you get to the point where you can't. Players break down, get old, bust, or just have no more future contract years to defer costs into.

All I need to see is Doug Free have $6m turned into bonus and $35 million guaranteed to Romo.