Blogging The Boys
A lot of things have gone wrong for the 2024 Cowboys.
The Dallas Cowboys are a hot mess. We haven’t even reached Thanksgiving yet and the dust has already started to settle on the 2024 season. It’s odd to be in this situation as most of the time this football team is right in the thick of things until January. But not this year.
The sadness for this team started back in March when free agency began. As is the case every year, the Cowboys aren’t active players in free agency. The reasons are the same every offseason. They want to give big contracts to their own star players and don’t want to waste cap resources using a roster-building method that typically isn’t effective in getting good returns for their investments. This is what they do and we’re used to it.
Only this year was a bit different. The Cowboys normally offset the moves they don’t make in free agency by retaining some of their own guys who are meaningful contributors. This didn’t happen this year. Instead, several starters and key rotation players left for big money elsewhere. We are all familiar with this, but the damage looks as follows...
The only players Jerry Jones and company brought back this offseason were Jourdan Lewis, Rico Dowdle, Chuma Edoga, C.J. Goodwin, and Trent Sieg. All those players signed super cheap deals. So, right from the onset of the new calendar season, it was going to be an uphill battle for this Cowboys football team.
The front office was unbothered by any notion that their roster was not up to snuff. They still had the draft and several young guys who were up-and-coming players. This was a lot to put on unproven parts of their roster, but the Cowboys have put faith in this before and it’s worked out for them, so why would we believe that their luck would suddenly run out?
Looking at this group of young players, there’s a mixed bag. Mazi Smith hasn’t looked very good, but DeMarvion Overshown has. Jalen Tolbert is a big disappointment, but DaRon Bland is fantastic. And then there are players like Luke Schoonmaker and Asim Richards who aren’t playing poorly, but they just don’t have much of a role on this football team.
The reliance on young players isn’t a huge blemish for the Cowboys. While there are some players who aren’t living up to expectations, overall, they still have some young players with promising upside.
The free agent holes are bad, and the mediocre contributions from their young players are below par, but one of the biggest problems for the Cowboys roster is the heavy amount of injuries this team has faced. This team has suffered huge losses both in quantity and quality. Far too many of the team’s star players have missed extensive time this season.
They’ve also lost a lot of games from some of those young players they were expecting to fill some of their voids.
The Cowboys'...
