Cowboys fans watched the division-rival Eagles improve an area of relative mediocrity on Monday by trading for safety Kevin Byard, leveraging the two-time All-Pro away from Tennessee for basically a ham sandwich that won’t even come due until spring.
They should not be holding their breath for Dallas to make a similarly shrewd move before the Oct. 31 trade deadline. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is sticking with the party line, saying he’s content with the team as it exists now and suggesting the front office may be open to taking calls from other clubs having a fire sale, but they likely won’t be the ones burning up the phone lines to try to work a blockbuster deal.
“It’ll have to come our way. I don’t want to preclude it in any way, but it always does,” Jones told 105.3 The Fan’s Shan & RJ on Tuesday. “You have a lot of machinations that you’re working with every day- I do- but the initiation of an opportunity to make a trade at this time that would help us, principally, has to start over on the other end. That’s not showing a lack of aggressiveness; it’s just that’s where it starts. I like where we are with our personnel today, and so I’m not thinking in any way that we need to upgrade our roster.”
That won’t sit well with many Cowboys fans who also like the team’s personnel… but also happen to believe that there’s room for improvement and maybe even cause for concern after going just .500 over the past month.
Despite three convincing wins over their first four weeks, no one who watched Dallas fall flat on its face in Arizona, get out-everything’ed in San Francisco, and barely squeak out a victory in L.A. believes this team is perfectly constructed as is to the point actively looking for deals should be off the table.
And by the time they line up for their next measuring-stick game at Lincoln Financial in Week 9, the trade deadline will be long gone and the Cowboys will have no choice but to like their guys.
Jones admits there are positions where the team could be stronger, but he maintains that taking an aggressive approach to pursuing players isn’t the way to address those spots.
“You’re laying in wait, so to speak,” he said. “I have areas of the team that we could, if certain circumstances happen, that you might improve. You don’t know that your best chance to get it done is[n’t] when it comes by you and you grab it. To go out and push it? The odds of getting it done at the price or the trade conditions… is dreaming.”
That doesn’t sound like the same strategy that the Eagles used to snag Byard. Or that the 49ers used last year to land Christian McCaffrey. Or that the Dolphins have been using to assemble an all-star track team.
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Heck, remember when Dallas pulled a late-October deal to get Amari Cooper and instantly change the entire team’s dynamic?
That was just five years ago. What happened since then?
The Cowboys may actually be just one or two key playmakers away from putting themselves in that echelon of talent this season. But fans will likely never find out because of the Joneses’ overly-conservative approach.
Jones loves to say he would write any size check to win a Super Bowl. But he apparently won’t pick up the phone to try to get them closer.
“I would really extend to improve our team right now. That gives you an idea, because I think we’ve got a team that’s a contender. So I would do it right now,” Jones said.
“Would I do something that would take away from this team so that it could help us in the future? Probably not.”
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