Dallas has a Money Problem and Murrary could suffer

The Dallas Cowboys for the first time in a long time finished something other than 8-8 and now the Cowboys have to manage something they haven't in along time. Expectations. Treading new water for Jerry Jones who has been known as of late for making very ill advised moves in free agency and taking draft picks too early.

Heading into the summer of free agency the Dallas Cowboys have 2 big name free agents that have the potential to leave their roster. Demarco Murrary and Dez Bryant. They both had fantastic years and are looking to get paid. Which puts a lot of pressure on the front office to bring both of these two key members of the winning franchise back.

I have heard that in the Dallas hallways Bryant is target number 1. As everything sits right now the Cowboys only have about 8 million dollars in salary cap room including what they are expected to pay their up coming draft picks. Bryant is expecting to make at least 14 million dollars but maybe closer to 16. You can already see the problem. Dallas is already going to have to move players and cut active players just to keep Bryant on the roster. It doesn't help that the Cowboys have 9 million dollars of 'dead money' already going into next season.


So where does that leave Murrary? Maybe in New York. The Jets have an unreal 45 million dollars in spending room. Landing Murrary could be easy for the Jets just because they could out bid every other team in the hunt. The Cowboys will try to make things work and keep Murrary in the hallways but the 6.5 million dollars he says he wants annually just may not happen. With Bryant and Murrary hitting the market at the same time it could really cause the Dallas Cowboys to relook their future options.

Cowboys fans now ask what happens to their potent running attack that they had relied on this past season. Well. Peterson said he wanted to be a Cowboy. We all know the back story of Peterson and his sudden break up with the hurting Vikings fan base. Well Peterson is assumed to be reinstated before the start of free agency and could be the solution for Dallas. Peterson is past his prime and won't be demanding his monster salary we saw in Minnesota... or at least we assume he won't.

Signing Peterson isn't going to give the Cowboys a long term solution but it will solve their problem for the next couple of years and give them a running game they can rely on again. If you want my honest opinion I would want Murrary over Peterson if I was a Dallas fan. Murrary fits more into the mold of what dallas does with the off tackle and screen game. Dallas runs through the C gap and off tackle on 72% of their runs and also run 4 screens a game. Both of those statistics in the top 5 in the NFL. Peterson ran 64% of his runs in the A gap and B gap in his 2000 yard season. Different style and that means a different offense.

Do Dallas fans really want to put up with another learning curve? I don't know. But for now, lets just be thankful they are a contender again.