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Pastimes : Football Forum (NFL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert F. Newton who wrote (5809)	3/9/2001 8:37:01 PM
From: MythMan	Respond to of 45645

Giant & Eagle Fans will be heartbroken -g- >>In 2001, Cowboys will be ghosts of former selves Leave it to Dallas owner Jerry Jones to find a bright side to the moribund Cowboys' brutal 2001 prospects. That's exactly what Jones did when talking to senior staffers in the moments after the club cut ties with quarterback Troy Aikman on Wednesday. Jones told the troops, in effect: "We'll take a big hit this year on the salary cap, but next year we'll be in as good a cap shape as any team in the league." Taking the hit on Aikman's $10 million salary-cap charge now makes Jones right, technically, but there is still the little matter of playing the 2001 season. What an ugly season it will be. In 17 years covering the NFL, I've never seen a team -- including the cash-strapped 49ers of the last few years -- in this bad of a financial situation prior to a season. It is six months before opening day, and NFL salary cap documents show that 35 percent of the Cowboys' 2001 cap space will be taken up by ghosts. Costliest Ex-Cowboys Money against the 2001 salary cap Player Pos. Year* Cost Troy Aikman QB 2000 $10.06M Deion Sanders CB 1999 $3.20M Kevin Smith CB 1999 $3.16M Erik Williams T 2000 $1.44M Ryan McNeil CB 2000 $1.24M Chad Hennings DT 2000 $984,000 * Final season with Dallas Woe to the Cowboys Other NFL teams have crippling amounts of dead money on the cap -- for instance, the 49ers and Chiefs each have more than $12 million -- but the Cowboys' $23 million is unprecedented. What this means is that virtually every player they take on from here on out will have to be signed for very near the minimum salary, unless Dallas chooses to continue to commit future suicide by re-doing more contracts. That only pushes the team's financial obligations to the future. For example, on Thursday the Cowboys handed declining receiver Rocket Ismail a $1.1 million signing bonus and extended his contract to get him to play for the minimum wage in 2001. If Jones is truly going to bite the bullet, he must stop retooling contracts to push old players' contracts further and further into the future. He, and the Cowboy Nation, must accept the fact that the team will be awful this year. Ask any Dallas fan. He'd rather be 2-14 this season with a clean slate for next year than 5-11 with another cap crisis in 2002. <<