Going into the NFL offseason, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones admitted that keeping Dez Bryant and DeMarco Murray would be a difficult task. That’s not to say he didn’t want to do so, but knew financially the Cowboys were going to have a hard time thanks to the salary cap.
Dallas was said to have offered the running back a deal worth about $5 million dollars annually, but that was easily trumped by the Philadelphia Eagles who offered the Cowboys single season rushing leader a contract that will pay him over $8.5 million every season.
Murray apparently would have happily listened to the Cowboys if they could have come close to such a figure, but according to Peter King, the Dallas Cowboys never thought about matching the DeMarco Murray contract.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. This is exactly what happened in Dallas with DeMarco Murray: The Cowboys, pre-free-agency, set a soft limit on what they would offer Murray—$5 million per year on a four-year deal. When the money started getting out of sight from Oakland and later from Philadelphia, the Cowboys stretched to $6 million, on average (four years, $24 million). When the Eagles got to an $8.5-million average, with $21 million guaranteed, the Cowboys never thought about matching. In fact, the Cowboys weren’t particularly in mourning about losing him….
While Murray is a very talented player, there’s probably not a position in football easier to replace than that of running back. Given that, Dallas probably feels they can get somebody else behind their extremely talented offensive line who will, like Murray, have very good success.
