WR Priority Takes Backseat To Glenn, Current WRs
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IRVING, Texas - Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is known for his ability to take risks. When it comes to draft day, he is known to gamble, and he even proved that this weekend by making six different trades.
Taking risks often comes down to playing the percentages and odds.
And long before the first pick went off the board on Saturday, Jones said he was weighing his options at the wide receiver position. He said he even made himself a chart.
Jones said he jotted down on a piece of paper all of the logical options for his team at wide receiver.
"I did a chart, sat down with everybody, I looked at all the (veteran) receivers who would fit the definition of somebody who could play opposite of Terrell (Owens), and I put the odds of who likely we were to get that," Jones said of the idea of adding a high-priced veteran, which never happened with his team or any other this weekend. "And that was one odd. I then I put, what are the odds of Terry Glenn coming back? If we got the very best receiver in the draft, what are the odds - this coming year, not in the future but this year - what are the odds there?
"What are the odds of (Sam) Hurd and those guys taking another step? You add the in-house guys and the odds of Terry Glenn up against the odds of getting a free agent and really be the balancing act, and our best odds are here right now. And they're not unrealistic odds either."
When asked for a specific number of the odds that Glenn would be able to return to form this year, Jones had a quick response.
"Fifty. Terry has a 50 percent chance of being exactly what we want, which is being a veteran guy that the defenses are afraid of," Jones said of Glenn, who had two arthroscopic knee surgeries last season that forced him to miss the first 15 games before returning just before the playoffs. "Can he be Terry Glenn and a starter? If he can be Terry Glenn and a starter, we all realize we can't do better than that. And what we're talking about is this year - this year. Just this year. At 33 years old, for this coming year, we could have a far better season than anybody younger than you, opposite of Terrell Owens."
While Jones prefers to take a long-term approach, it doesn't appear he is taking one at the wide receiver position.
When it came down to the draft, which was the first time since 1990 that no wide receiver even went in the first round, the Cowboys apparently didn't see a receiver who not only could challenge for a starting job, but even compete for playing time with the current roster.
"We liked what we have here, better than what was out there," Jones said, referring to Patrick Crayton, Hurd, Miles Austin, Isaiah Stanback and even Mike Jefferson as players who will battle for playing time next season.
Now, this isn't to say the Cowboys have no need to upgrade wide receiver.
Even Jones admitts the possibility of adding a veteran such as Cincinnati's Chad Johnson, Detroit's Roy Williams or Arizona's Anquan Boldin were certainly intriguing. Jones has said the Cowboys have inquired about a veteran receiver, likely to be one of those three, at some point this off-season.
But all three of those teams have said publicly there was no interest in trading them. This weekend, Jones said the possibility to make a trade for a receiver never materialized.
But the option was there, and it was one he even included in his chart.
But at this point, the wide receiver position appears to come down to Glenn, whose career has been in question with the latest knee injury. Set to turn 34 before training camp, Glenn has pondered the idea of undergoing microfracture surgery, which would likely forfeit his chance to play this year, and maybe ever again.
However, it doesn't appear Glenn has any intentions of having a surgery, much less hanging up the cleats. The veteran has participated in the team's off-season conditioning program, an encouraging sign for Jones.
"We saw really good stuff from here out here," Jones said. "You can talk about what he is and what he can do, but you just have to see it. He's back here, he's doing all the kind of things . . . you can't tell by that. He would be a progress-stopper if he were here and you had 10-percent odds. So if we didn't think that he didn't have a chance to be everything we wanted him to be, then we wouldn't have him back here. It would push back the progress of the other receivers."
But instead, Glenn is making his own progress, and apparently enough for Jones and the Cowboys to start counting on him for 2008.
"We're seeing everything we need to see," Jones said. "He's out here working with the quarterbacks. He's out here, and we're seeing it."