Stephen Jones blames failure to pursue Derrick Henry on salary cap-nhungn

Ravens running back Derrick Henry had interest in at least hearing from the Cowboys in free agency. The Cowboys, however, never called.

Appearing with Adam Schein of SiriusXM Mad Dog Radio, Cowboys executive V.P. Stephen Jones addressed the failure to make a phone call to Henry.

“Well, first of all, nothing but respect for Derrick Henry,” Jones said. “I mean, he’s one of the top backs in this league. He’s had one of the great careers in this league. I wish him nothing but the best with the Ravens. I’m sure a great place for him. Our situation is just, you know, and no one ever wants to say it, but it’s salary cap, and we just didn’t have the money to allocate to that position in terms of where we were from a cap standpoint, knowing what we’re looking at with Dak [Prescott] and certainly Micah [Parsons] and CeeDee Lamb. We just didn’t have those type of resources to allocate to that position or we probably would’ve already had it filled with Tony Pollard. We hated to lose Tony Pollard. We had to lose Zeke the year before from a cap standpoint. And, you know, we just didn’t have the dollars to allocate to the running back position. And, certainly, looking to do it in a more efficient way in terms of how it complements the rest of our offensive roster.”

If they had reached a deal to extend the contracts of Prescott and/or Lamb, however, their cap numbers for 2024 — $55.45 million and $17.991 million, respectively — would have dropped, creating room for other positions. That’s how these things go. Cap space gets created, can gets kicked, team can go all in, or something like it.

The problem is the Cowboys didn’t strike a deal with Prescott or Lamb. And it won’t get any cheaper to wait. Unless, of course, they’ll be letting Prescott leave via free agency after the 2024 season. As to Lamb, delay will drive the price up as more and more other receivers do new deals.

The Cowboys need to stop the bleeding. They have a habit of waiting too long, like they did with Dak.

It has kept them from pursuing better options in the offensive backfield in 2024.

And if they wanted to keep Pollard, here’s what they should have done. They shouldn’t have tagged him in 2023, because no one would have offered him a compensation package for last year in excess of $10 million, not with a broken ankle suffered in the playoff loss to the 49ers. They could have signed him to a multi-year deal with manageable cap numbers in 2023 and 2024 — if they’d been willing to take the chance of losing him to the open market.

Again, he was recovering from a broken ankle. They overpaid him last year, lost him this year. And now they’ll be relying on Ezekiel Elliot 3.0 (at 3.5 yards per carry in 2023) and Rico Dowdle to do the job.