Cowboys Offseason: Make a Shopping List, Pt 2

On to the next phase of thinking through the Cowboys offseason planning session.

The wheels keep turning on the NFL offseason and we must try our best to keep up.

Last time, we began our march through the Cowboys offseason by examining the 16 unrestricted free agents, who we need to remove from the roster until they actual agree to an extension.

You can catch up on all of that by reviewing the piece right here. The quick summary would be:

“…aside from Tyron Smith and Stephon Gilmore, I can kind of handle the rest of the list being listed as very low priorities on my shopping lists. That doesn’t mean we are walking away, it just means we are not going to write bad contracts out of some level of panic. This is not a very intimidating list.”

A few days ago, Calvin Watkins confirmed that Tyron Smith would like to stay in Dallas. We can assume that the two sides will attempt to find an agreement here in the next few weeks.

However, the clock is ticking on any business that teams want to get done with their own players because March 13th (actually March 11th, but we play this charade that you can talk with teams, but not agree for 48 hours until the 13th arrives – this, of course, is ignored and ESPN will start announcing agreements on the 11th).

So, that has us at three items on our calendar to consider:

February 20 to March 5 - Yesterday was the opening of the two-week Franchise Tag window. There are some very interesting names who are likely to be tagged kicking around the rumor mill, but nothing that affects the Cowboys too terribly aside from the New York Giants continuous dance with Saquon Barkley.

February 27 to March 4 - The NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.

March 11 - The window opens on the NFL silly season and teams start to check off their boxes on what vacancies they must fill before they got to training camp.

Now, as we know, there are three ways to fill vacancies from players who have departed or been demoted: