The Cowboys need a LB. Let's find a good one.
The cap going up might allow the Boys to chase something nice in free agency.
Good Morning, let’s go shopping.
Late last week, the NFL released information about that the salary cap was going to sky-rocket in 2024. No, despite my Twitter feed having their theories, Taylor Swift was not responsible – these tv deals were agreed upon before she ever attended a single game. Put down your tweets!
Instead, here was the explanation of how they projected a jump all year from $225m to $240m, but instead came in at $255m.
The NFL announced today that the 2024 Salary Cap will be $255.4 million per club, with an additional $74 million per club payment for player benefits, which includes Performance Based Pay and benefits for retired players. Total 2024 player costs will be $329.4 million per club, or more than $10.5 billion league-wide.
The unprecedented $30 million increase per club in this year’s Salary Cap is the result of the full repayment of all amounts advanced by the clubs and deferred by the players during the Covid pandemic as well as an extraordinary increase in media revenue for the 2024 season.
So, with that windfall, the Cowboys have some options. Now, before we get carried away, the cap goes up for all 32 teams, of course, and therefore is not quite the lottery win for Dallas that we might think. Everything is relative and every new contract will reflect higher percentages of this money.
In other words, yes, the QB market will continue to increase.
People can, and will, complain about all non-Patrick Mahomes QB’s getting more than $60 million a season. And they are probably right, but that doesn’t matter. As long as league revenues go up, then so does the 47% that goes to the performers. And of that massive pie, about 20% of that 47% (confusing?) will always go to the rarest of all birds, the franchise QBs.
We aren’t here to talk about that today. I know that will disappoint those who enjoy the Dak Prescott conversation being the only one that anyone has anymore.
Instead, I want to talk about the offseason from a supply and demand perspective. Over the last two weeks, we have formulated our offseason with Part 1 being a discussion of where the Cowboys should go with their 16 UFA’s and Part 2 being more of a overview of the offseason that ended with a full shopping list.
We can call this Part 3. This is going to combine the new cap news with the realities of the Cowboys offseason to arrive at the somewhat obvious conclusion:
If the Cowboys need OL, RB, and LB help badly and if the draft seems full of OL and mid-round RB options (Dane Brugler had 7 RB’s in his Top 100, all listed between No. 70 and No. 92), then we should perhaps use our one veteran expenditure on LB.
Why? Many reasons.
The Draft does not seem to have a deep off-ball LB group.
Even if it did, the Cowboys are already young and inexperienced on their current roster, asking a rookie to help sort everything out seems unlikely.
Mike Zimmer knows exactly the type of player he wants and I imagine part of these intensive meetings will be to evaluate the defense in just this manner. What do we have? What can we draft? What is our most pressing need?
Micah Parsons is never going to be satisfied playing this spot full-time and the Cowboys should probably be smart enough to leave an elite edge rush to elite edge rushing for 80-90% of his job description. Yes, it pays more, but also, yes, he obviously has a gift and everyone else in the LB world does not have that.
Most free agent LBs are not incredibly expensive relative to shopping here for WR, OL, QB, CB, or EDGE (premium positions vs non-premium).
The 2024 Free Agent LB class is pretty solid.
So, it doesn’t always work out this seamlessly – and it may not if the Cowboys get on the clock at No. 24 and OL has been cleaned out – but it sure looks like they have lucked into an offseason where it appears they actually have a chance to tick off their biggest needs in a logical and orderly fashion.
But, much hinges on finding a decent-sized slice of this budget for a free-agent veteran LB who can help organize this defense in a much better way in 2024.
There are three names I want to eliminate quickly here. They are the three biggest names on the list to many readers, I am sure.
Patrick Queen, Baltimore.
Lavonte David, Tampa Bay.
Bobby Wagner, Seattle.
David is 34 and Wagner is about to be 34 in June. I love both players and if you can drop a 24-year old version of either one of them here, I am thrilled. But, I don’t think the Cowboys want to chase guys who don’t really want to leave their current teams and have such high odometers that it isn’t sound business for a position that I call the “RB of the defense” in terms of LB being a high collision position that features high injury rates and short careers on average.
As for Patrick Queen, he is a fantastic 24-year old option who I would love to get, but I cannot see Dallas – with Prescott, Parsons, and Lamb all needing massive deals to sign up for a LB who will cost you more than a million a game in free agency. I expect that the LSU and Ravens stud will come in at about $20 million a season here in a few weeks.
If I am wrong and it drops quite a bit, by all means – get in there! He isn’t a perfect player and Roquan Smith is the lead LB in Baltimore for sure, but he would be quite a get here. Just seems crazy expensive.
But, a tier down and in some cases two tiers down are some fine options. So, in looking at the PFF Free Agency price projections and using some of my materials from my time with Buck/Aikman where we studied these players, let’s give you a quick outline of some of these solid names: