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Horror story In 2001, Cowboys will be ghosts of former selves
Updated: Friday March 09, 2001 3:33 AM
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.
Woe to the CowboysOther 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.
Bledsoe's big newsOvershadowed by Aikman's situation was the contract signed Wednesday by Drew Bledsoe. At the age of 29, Bledsoe has settled into the middle of the NFL quarterbacking pack and the Patriots' brass spent much of the 2000 season fuming about Bledsoe's contract stance. Here's a good quarterback, but one who hasn't had a great season in several years, the club thought. And here was Bledsoe, the highest-paid player in the game during the past six years, wanting to stay that way. In the end, the Patriots and Bledsoe compromised. Through the next four years, Bledsoe will make an average of $7.5 million a season. In this market, that's a fair figure, for both sides. Then, early in 2005, when Bledsoe will be a 12-year veteran, the Patriots will be able to pay him another $8 million bonus, activating the final years of his contract, or they can cut him. This should allow Bledsoe to be the football version of Carl Yastrzemski and John Havlicek in New England -- a star whose sun rises and sets in Massachusetts. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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