Cowboys Offseason - Make a Shopping List
Step one in every offseason is figuring out which of your own you wish to keep around
Happy New Year!
Well, to be fair, the new league calendar in the league that never sleeps – the NFL – does not officially drop until March 12th. But, those of us who do this every year know that today at 4pm Eastern is the first time teams can do business for the new season.
Here is what we are looking at over the next three weeks:
Today, February 18th - Teams may designate Franchise or Transition Players
February 24 – March 3 - NFL Scouting Combine (Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis)
March 4 - Deadline for designating Franchise or Transition Players
March 10 - Teams may opening negotiate with UFA’s from other teams
March 12 - Teams may officially sign UFA’s from other teams at 3pm
Now, I included March 12th as a comedy item because the league continues to claim it to be serious. That date, as we saw last year, is a complete joke. On March 10th when teams may open communications is actually the 1st day of free agency as you will get announcements from the Insiders on terms being reached by dozens of players before we get to March 12th. So, free agency actually opens on March 10th, even if the league fax machine won’t accept the paperwork until that Wednesday Afternoon.
From a Cowboys standpoint, we will cover the offseason with as little cynicism as possible and offer them a chance to reframe how we think of their front office at the moment. I don’t want these Cowboys pieces to be depressing, so from this point forward, here at #Sturmstack, we will offer them every opportunity to do better in this 2025 offseason than they did in the 2024 offseason and use their resources to build a better roster. Last year was not good enough and hopefully they learned their lessons and also want to offer Brian Schottenheimer a decent chance at getting off to a good start with his staff (Speaking of his staff, I plan a breakdown of that crew of young and lesser-known names soon).
Schottenheimer’s staff may see football very differently than the Mike McCarthy staff and therefore we will need to see their moves through the lens of how things might be changing. It would be silly to view their needs until we get an idea what they think they are when they begin talking publicly (which will happen starting today).
That said, as we can tell, their list of needs far outweighs their resources. They have a lot of needs and probably not nearly enough money and picks to fill them properly, so this will either be a very creative offseason or it will be a roster that takes holes to the season and tries to plug them while their ship is at sea – which we never like to attempt, if at all possible.
Today’s exercise is about listing those needs and looking at some options, but know it will be an ongoing project because the pieces on the board will be changing as we go.
The league does not really help planning for teams like I think they should. The following sports point is one that I make annually because I think it could be made better by how the league lays out its calendar. I call my annual speech…
“The NFL should have the draft before free agency”
The NFL is put together differently than our friends in the NBA, NHL, and MLB.
In those sports, you either have free agency fully separated from the drafting of youthful prospects altogether (MLB), or, you have the NHL and NBA systems that put the draft BEFORE the free agent marketplace. That small adjustment may not sound like much, but say you want to try to replace Osa Odighizuwa as your starting defensive tackle.
In this scenario, there may be five defensive tackles in the draft that I think could do a reasonable job starting for you in 2025 and maybe even be as good or better than Osa. But, then, he would be better than anyone below that group in the draft if you miss on those five. If the draft was first, you could allow the draft to develop and see if you like the prices on everyone BEFORE you decide to not compete to keep Odighizuwa.
But, this isn’t the NBA. So here, the Cowboys have to show their cards on their starting (and only) reasonable 3-technique DT and at the same time wonder if the draft will allow them to get their guy to replace him. It is about six weeks of having nothing too appealing at a starting position and this leads to the desperation we sometimes see from teams that don’t want to look at a depth chart and see nothing but a blank space.
My solution is for the NFL to switch the draft to before free agency, but since I have been saying this for at least 20 years, it doesn’t sound like they are too compelled to chase common sense. Rather, the “we have always done it this way” will keep free agency in March and the draft on the last weekend of April. So, if you are just going to draft a guy to replace Rico Dowdle, Osa, and maybe Jourdan Lewis, well, you better hope the draft falls properly and I guess we aren’t worried about “best player available” in that scenario – because now we are chasing needs.
I really think this would be solved by the draft in March (or even February) and the start of Free Agency hitting on April 1 or so, but they don’t really care what I think.
Today, let’s start chipping away at this spring team-building season: