Cowboys Are Not Signing Earl Thomas if they are “Bargain Shoppers.”

Ari Temkin on SHOW TIME: “The Cowboys are not signing Earl Thomas if they are truly ‘bargain shoppers.'”

Bargain Shoppers is a notation the Cowboys have worn proudly in recent history. It’s certainly the correct way to build the core of your roster in the modern NFL, but it’s a complete overcorrection from what they were.

When Jerry Jones was running the show, the Cowboys were big spenders and therefore made tremendously bad decisions that helped derail much of the Tony Romo era. They were saddled with underperforming players and bad contracts. However, since Stephen Jones has taken the reins from his father, they’ve overcorrected. They haven’t really spent much at all in free agency. That’s the issue. Stephen was correct in putting the majority of the team’s resources into scouting and development, but all Super Bowl contenders supplement misses in the draft, or areas needed for improvement, in free agency. You can’t build a championship roster strictly through free agency, but the same is true in the inverse as well.

Why does this matter?

The Cowboys finally have some cap space to spend in free agency and even though they have their own internal decisions to make, they are no longer in “salary cap hell.” They have the financial flexibility to improve their roster through free agency beyond the bargain shopping that has defined them in recent years.

Calvin Watkins reported for The Athletic that a Cowboys source told him they probably “wouldn’t be more than bargain shoppers here.” Here being Earl Thomas…or so we hope.

The biggest question of the Cowboys offseason is: are the Cowboys finally willing to spend and take a risk in free agency or are they going to go status quo?

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