When Cowboys owner and General Manager Jerry Jones gave linebacker Jasper Brinkley a $2 million guarantee on a two-year, $6.5 million contract in March, it came as a surprise: Brinkley had never made that kind of money previously in his career while bouncing around from the Vikings to the Cardinals and then back to the Vikings.
Now it’s an even bigger surprise, as the Cowboys released Brinkley on Monday.
The Cowboys cut Brinkley because he hadn’t earned a spot in the starting lineup and they wanted a roster spot to add offensive lineman Jordan Mills, but Brinkley will pocket his $1.25 million signing bonus and will still get his $750,000 in guaranteed salary.
That’s a waste of Jones’s money, but more importantly it’s a waste of cap space. And it’s surprising that the Cowboys would waste cap space on a marginal player like Brinkley, whom they signed at the same time they were letting DeMarco Murray walk rather than offer him a contract commensurate with what the Eagles were offering Murray.
If Murray has a couple of big games for the Eagles against the Cowboys, Dallas fans will be left to wonder whether the money the Cowboys squandered on Brinkley could have been the difference between losing and keeping Murray.
