When the Cowboys offseason was getting underway, they had wide receiver Michael Gallup, defensive end Randy Gregory and tight end Dalton Schultz on the road to free agency.
They were able to re-sign Gallup and they used the franchise tag on Schultz, but Gregory left for the Broncos and wide receiver Amari Cooper was traded to the Browns in a move driven by cap concerns. They didn’t make any significant additions in free agency, but executive vice president Stephen Jones said on PFT Live that wasn’t a problem because the Cowboys see free agency as “an inflated situation.”
Where Jones would like to see the Cowboys do things differently is in re-signing players well before they can hit the open market. Jones said the salary cap situation of the last two years made that difficult and left the team with “more free agents” than they’d like in one offseason.
“Certainly we feel like we’re going to get back in the mix of getting some of these players, these young players that we want to keep around here, get ahead of it, get ‘em signed, so you don’t have that type of free agency risk that we had this year,” Jones said.
Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb won’t be getting an extension this offseason, but he’ll be eligible for one in 2023 and Jones said the team is “always in that planning mode” when asked about ensuring there’s room for him once it comes time to hammer out another contract with the 2020 first-rounder.
