It's officially time for the 2022 NFL Combine to get underway, but that also means free agency is speeding toward teams at breakneck speed. For the Dallas Cowboys, it's not simply about who they will or will not look to add to the roster but, more importantly, who they will or will not be able to retain. It's one of the rare offseasons in which the Cowboys have a list of in-house free agents -- led by defensive end Randy Gregory and tight end Dalton Schultz -- that is absolutely loaded with talent, but they are also quite aware that you can't keep them all; and so that means they better have a Plan A through Plan Z this spring.
What that plan looks like was never expected to be atypical for the Cowboys front office, and team executive Stephen Jones has now confirmed that in addressing reporters from the NFL Combine in Indianapolis on Monday. So if you're looking for Dallas to take the same approach as the Los Angeles Rams did en route to winning Super Bowl LVI, namely going all-in on adding headline talent, you've set yourself up for disappointment.
That has not been the Cowboys' modus operandi for decades now -- mostly content to forgo swimming in the first wave of free agency and instead picking their spots in the subsequent ones -- nor will it be this time around.
"You know, there's a lot of different ways to do things," Jones said of the Rams' approach. "Certainly hats off to them. They had a hell of a year and [won] the Super Bowl, and certainly they went about it in a way that's pushing a lot of chips out there. So, you know, there's some forms of all of this that we'll probably decide where we want to be. I feel like we got a lot of good young players on this football team and you don't want to just be starting over, if you will, if we did too much.
"You know, we could do some things that could allow us to keep most of our guys if we wanted to push it all out, but we'll have a much bigger problem the next year and the year after that."
In other words, as expected, the Cowboys will go hard at trying their best to keep the band together as opposed to throwing gobs of money at players standing outside of the building.
"In general, from a money standpoint, if I'm looking into a crystal ball right now, I see most of our money that would go in free agency going toward our current players," Jones added. "Doesn't mean that won't change. We might come across a value on a player that we say, 'Hey, it's just one we got to take.' I don't want to rule it out.
"But, in general, we go to our players and then we have to be efficient in the draft in terms of improving the team."
And as for the aforementioned Gregory and Schultz, arguably the only two candidates to potentially land either a franchise or transition tag designation ahead of the NFL deadline on Tuesday, March 8, the Cowboys have not stiff-armed the idea of potentially fully guaranteeing one of them an expensive tag salary for 2022 -- should negotiations come to that point.
"Wouldn't rule it out," said Jones. "That's in the strategy meetings."
Cowboys free agency 2022: Stephen Jones reveals Dallas' plan for talent acquisition ahead of pivotal season - CBS Sports
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