[Underdog]

Beware of DMW

For all of their endless salary-cap restructuring, it was inevitable that the Dallas Cowboys would end up losing a number of key contributors to the insipid largesse of Jerry Jones. While the Cowboys furiously tried to fight that off for another year with a series of moves this past month, their broken cap plan finally came back to bite them on Tuesday. The Cowboys let valuable defensive tackle Jason Hatcher hit the market and will reportedly release Miles Austin, but they just couldn’t clear out enough space to retain star pass-rusher DeMarcus Ware, whom the Cowboys waived Tuesday. Rumors later suggested the Broncos were the favorites to land Ware, who would play defensive end and rush the passer across from Von Miller in a terrifying one-two punch for Denver.

In a way, Dallas’s inability to keep Ware reminds me how destructive a lot of the contracts we saw on Tuesday can be in terms of a team’s planning. You never want to cut a player as talented and productive as Ware; it’s a blessing when you draft and develop a player of his caliber, and while there’s always eventually going to be a time when you move on from a player, it shouldn’t be when he is 31. The problem, of course, is that Jones can’t help himself from locking up mid-tier player after mid-tier player, creating deals that ruined Dallas’s salary cap and forced it to sacrifice Ware in order to field a 53-man team next year. The Cowboys didn’t cut Ware because they thought they could spend their money better elsewhere. They cut Ware because they already misjudged Roy Williams, Gerald Sensabaugh, Jay Ratliff, and Ken Hamlin, and the dead money from those deals created cap emergencies that forced the Cowboys to pay for their mistakes at some point in the future. This is the beginning of the future. And while we don’t know who will fail in their new digs yet, a number of teams in this league will have to move on from true superstars in the future because of the mistakes they made in overpaying players today.

Denver is a logical landing point for Ware, especially when you consider the reports of Jared Allen threatening to retire if Denver doesn’t improve its offer to him. If they’re truly all in, it would behoove the Broncos to sign both Allen and Ware, not just one of them. There are a dozen other teams for which it would make some level of sense to sign Ware and that could financially pull off the move, but there are four that stand out. The Colts, Eagles, Jets, and Packers all play in the 3-4, Ware’s preferred alignment, have the cap space and the roster spot open for Ware to step in as a starter, and are competitive enough for Ware to justify signing with them. Ware is unlikely to get the four years and $52 million he had left on his Dallas deal before the Cowboys released him, but the 31-year-old is still young enough to justify one more serious payday.

Dallas, meanwhile, can rest easy knowing it has kicker Dan Bailey locked up through 2020. The more things change …

http://grantland.com/features/free-agent-frenzy/


Ware to Broncos: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10...0-million-deal