Over the last few years, the Cowboys have preferred to spend their big free-agent money on their own players, but the decisions have been hit and miss. Ezekiel Elliott, La'El Collins and Jaylon Smith come to mind, and now there has to be some concern about the Michael Gallup deal. With a new round of players entering free agency, is this a good strategy? – Drew Benjamin/San Antonio, TX
Nick: I don't really think it's a strategy. I think the Cowboys are no different than any other team when it comes to re-signing their own players. I think it's more case-by-case and always comes down to the simple question: do we want to keep this guy on our roster? Like you said, there are a few guys you'd like to redo if you had it over again. But with this new round of players, just ask yourself about wanting to keep Lamb, Pollard, Parsons and Diggs. I think you'd want to keep them all if possible. Same with Terence Steele and a few others. But they won't keep them all. You just hope 2-3 years down the road you can look back and feel like you made the right call. But this is a team that has drafted well and when that happens, you want to keep those guys and keep the consistency they bring. But ultimately, I think it's a choice by player more than an overall strategy.
Mickey: Most free agency decisions end up being hit or miss around the league. Now it's hard to group all those guys together, because re-signing Collins was a good move until he lost that season with a hip injury and never was the same offensive tackle. Signing Smith might have been premature but re-signing Zeke was a necessity. And as for Gallup, come on, the guy was coming off an ACL repair. Let's give him another season before passing judgment on that one. To me, I'd rather take a chance on re-signing my own guys that I know intimately than to try spending big money on someone another team didn't want to re-sign and I don't know a whole heckuva lot about.
