Dodger12

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Good God what a load of shit Dodger. First off where did I ever claim money had nothing to do with Bailey getting cut for Maher? Of course it had a part in it, Bailey was being paid a lot of money and was coming off a very bad end to the prior season. Those watching him in camp last year didn't notice any significant improvement. So Maher rightfully won the job. Cap considerations go into all 32 teams thinking when deciding who to keep or who to cut.

Never mind the fact that Maher was actually better than Bailey last year (he was) or that Minnesota was so concerned that they actually traded a 5th rd pick in training camp this year for a kicker they thought would replace Bailey. Bailey has bounced back nicely this year, but don't act like there were not issues with why Bailey was replaced here. It had nothing to do with being "cheap" They had no problem making Bailey one of the highest paid kickers in the league in 2014, because at the time he was arguably the league's best kicker and was incredibly consistent.

You have a fair point about what happened with Gailey, he did hire Gailey after blowing contract talks with UCLA Head Coach Terry Donahue (Donahue even admitted publicly he was surprised at how little Jones wanted to pay him, but also complained some about not being able to pick his assistant staff). That said, both Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer had contracts that paid them (at that time) pretty large amounts compared to others. He signed Johnson to a 10 yr deal in 1989 and paid him one million per yr, at a time when not many NFL head coaches were making that much. Switzer got a 5yr deal worth one million per year as well. He reportedly offered Donahue half of that. Campo I think was hired more because he would do exactly what Jones wanted, but even Campo got paid more than what Jones offered Donahue.

In regards to players, there's no question they tried to lowball Emmitt and they ended up suffering for it. But Jones has shown over the years he is willing to pay huge contracts (do I really need to name them all, or are you going to be an idiot and insist otherwise?) and we have never been one of the teams that year after year spent well under the cap. In fact our cap has been a mess since the onset of the salary cap era in 1994, at the time due to having such a young, talented team with many players needing market setting or near top of the market deals. Over the years the cap remained a mess in large part due to the Cowboys giving out large contracts to too many players, some who they probably should have made tough decisions on (like Dan Bailey above)

Jones is a loser, but it isn't because he is cheap and fails to pay people. He's a loser because he thinks he is a true "football man" and he really isn't. He's made a number of really poor head coach hires, poor personnel decisions (esp from 94-02) and created a culture where nobody was ever accountable for anything.

Good post dbair.....not sure I completely agree on Maher beating out Bailey, as Maher was given most of the kicks in pre-season. But whatever, we don't need to argue over a kicker. Great post, nonetheless......
 

dbair1967

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The whole Donahue thing smelled like a ploy to placate Troy. Was he the best man for the team or just the best man for his old college QB? At the time, I wanted George Seifert more.

I think the Joe Gibbs stuff was around that time as well. Gibbs would have probably done pretty damn good here, but it never panned out. There was a lot of info that came out on this a couple years ago but I don't recall all the details.

In regards to Donahue, I always thought while he was at UCLA he was a potential quality NFL head coach prospect because they were running a pro style offense and defense, and they were putting a decent amount of talent into the NFL. Of course placating Aikman was probably on Jones' mind too, because the Switzer stuff was so bad. At the time they were trying to finalize the Donahue deal they were also trying to get Brian Billick from Minnesota as OC but the league blocked the move.
 
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