Blogging The Boys
Here are 3 players who should really help the Cowboys this season.
[Ed note:] A guest post from long-time NFL writer Doug Farrar.
The time between when free agency and the draft have concluded and the start of the regular season is the few-month period in which hope truly springs eternal. Every player is in better shape than they’ve ever been before, every new head coach is the next Bill Walsh, every new position coach is either the next Sid Gillman or the next Dick LeBeau, and every move your favorite team made in the offseason will coalesce perfectly to form a Super Bowl champion.
Of course, reality usually sinks in sooner than later, but we’re not here to get into that – we’re here to spread fairy dust and belief juice as much as possible. In our new “Hidden Gems” series, we’re taking a detailed look at three impact players for each NFL team – one underrated veteran, one underrated free-agent signing, and one underrated draft pick.
We begin with the Dallas Cowboys, whose owner/president/general manager (Jerry Jones) and Son of Jerrah/co-owner/executive vice president/CEO/director of player personnel (Stephen Jones) are even better at handing out optimism in the face of personnel shortfalls as they are at handing out titles to each other.
Everybody even remotely familiar with the Cowboys’ current offense knows full well that the receiver corps is far too thin. Last season, CeeDee Lamb was targeted 146 times, which represented 36.1% of Dallas’ receiver targets. Not what you want to go into a season with, and after refusing to accentuate that group with a single move in free agency or the draft, the Jones Boys are stuck trying to explain the process.
Jerry Jones said after the draft that “the train has not left the station” when it came to bringing in more receiver help, and Stephen Jones recently said this about the guys behind Lamb on the depth chart – with Jalen Tolbert, Jonathan Mingo, and KaVontae Turpin as the primary secondaries:
“Those guys have potential to be a No. 2, but they’re not there yet. They haven’t done it. They haven’t hit that level yet, and that’s why we have had an interest in upgrading that room.”
Well, unless a trade is in the works, the remaining receivers in free agency don’t offer a ton. When you’re trying to make a receiver room work with Keenan Allen, Amari Cooper, or Tyler Boyd at the top of the list, you’re pretty much trying to put up a wall in your house with nothing but spackle. No disrespect to any of those fine gentlemen and what they’ve achieved in their careers, but we are where we are with all that.
The good news after all that bad news is that Stephen Jones might be underestimating one of his own with the assumption that Jalen Tolbert hasn’t shown enough to be a true No. 2 receiver in the offense now...
