Cowboys WR Shaquelle Evans Suspended
Cowboys wide receiver Shaquelle Evans was suspended for the first four games of the 2017 season, per a league announcement. Evans violated the NFL’s Policy and Program for Substances of Abuse.
You may remember Evans as a notable Jets draft bust during John Idzik‘s tenure as GM. The 2014 fourth-round pick was placed on injured reserve in August of his rookie season, ending his first campaign before it could begin. After he healed from the shoulder injury, he was unable to make the Jets’ 53-man roster and he was cut loose in September 2015.
Evans came to the Cowboys on a January practice squad deal and was already viewed as a longshot to make the roster. This could effectively shut the door on Evans’ 53-man chances.
Ryan Seymour Retires
- The Cowboys have placed offensive lineman Ryan Seymour on the reserve/retired list, tweets the Seattle Times’ Bob Condotta. The Seahawks used a seventh-round pick on Seymour in 2014, but he didn’t see any game action with them. Seymour went on to play in a combined 13 contests with the Browns, Saints and Cowboys during his three-year career. All three of his professional starts came in 2014 with Cleveland, as did a personal-best 11 appearances.
Cowboys To Sign S Robert Blanton
Former Bills safety Robert Blanton has signed with the Cowboys, agent Jason Bernstein tells Adam Caplan of ESPN.com (on Twitter). Blanton visited with the Cowboys earlier this offseason and, one month later, he has agreed to sign.
Blanton has mostly served as a second-stringer during his five years in the NFL, except for the 2014 season with the Vikings in which he started 13 games and made 105 tackles. He’s only gotten three starts in the last two years, but he could be in for a significant role after the Cowboys’ secondary was picked apart by free agency. The Cowboys now have four safeties on the roster in Byron Jones, Jeff Heath, Kavon Frazier, and Blanton. Dallas is expected to add to the thin cast in this month’s draft.
Last year, Blanton appeared in ten games (two starts) for Buffalo, amassing 26 tackles in total. A foot injury halted his season in November.
Cowboys Host Marlon Humphrey
- Alabama cornerback Marlon Humphrey met with the Cowboys, reports Todd Archer of ESPN.com. Humphrey may well be off the board by the time the Cowboys are on the clock at No. 28, though it’s possible he’ll drop amid unwanted comparisons to another ex-Alabama corner, recent first-round bust Dee Milliner.
Cowboys Interested In Charles Harris
- The Cowboys are in need of pass-rush help, which could come in the form of Missouri defensive end Charles Harris. The club’s attraction to Harris is no secret, reports Charean Williams of the Star-Telegram, though she notes that he might be off the board by the time Dallas is on the clock at No. 28 overall.
Cowboys Exercise Zack Martin’s 2018 Option
The Cowboys have officially exercised their 2018 fifth-year option on guard Zack Martin, the club announced today. The option will be worth $9.341MM, tweets Field Yates of ESPN.com.
The decision comes as no surprise, given that Cowboys executive VP Stephen Jones said in January Dallas planned to pick up the option. Martin, 26, has started all 48 games since joining Dallas three years ago, and has emerged as one of the league’s best guard on one of the NFL’s finest offensive lines. Playing alongside talents such as left tackle Tyron Smith and center Travis Frederick, Martin graded as the third-best guard of 2016, per Pro Football Focus. Jones called an eventual Martin extension a “big priority,” and Martin himself is in favor of a long-term deal.
“It would be huge,” Martin said. “I’m not real worried about that. I’m worried about playing. Obviously I’ll be here for hopefully a long time. These guys make it fun to come to work every day…Hopefully we can get something done.”
A new contract won’t come cheap, especially after Kevin Zeitler reset the guard market last month by inking a five-year deal with the Browns that pays him $12MM annually. Martin, a two-time All Pro and three-time Pro Bowler, will surely set Zeitler’s pact as his target. The Cowboys, meanwhile, have already invested significant resources in the offensive line, as both Smith and Frederick are under contract via long-term deals.
Malik McDowell To Visit Cowboys
- Michigan State defensive tackle Malik McDowell met with the Seahawks on Monday, tweets Rapoport, and will visit the Cowboys later this week, reports Charean Williams of the Star-Telegram. McDowell is among the top D-tackle prospects in a weak class of interior defenders, and might be a fit for Seattle at No. 26 or Dallas at No. 28.
Cowboys, Falcons, Bucs Eyeing Justin Evans
Texas A&M Justin Evans has a strong chance of being selected in the back end of the first round of the draft, according to Tony Pauline of DraftAnalyst.com, and the Cowboys, Falcons, and Buccaneers are among the NFL teams with the most interest in the defensive back prospect.
Evans has met with both Dallas and Atlanta, per Pauline. The Cowboys saw a high percentage of their defensive secondary leave during the free agent period, and two of their top three safeties — Barry Church and J.J. Wilcox — signed multi-year deals with rival clubs. The Falcons, meanwhile, may view Evans as an improvement over incumbent defender Ricardo Allen, as Evans would give head coach Dan Quinn an Earl Thomas-esque defender, per Pauline. Dallas and Atlanta hold the No. 28 and No. 31 picks, respectively.
The Buccaneers, meanwhile, likely won’t let Evans get past them in second round, where they own the No. 50 selection. Tampa Bay inked Wilcox last month, but could still use more depth in a safety group that was among the league’s worst in 2016. Chris Conte, Keith Tandy, and Ryan Smith comprise the remainder of the Bucs’ safety depth chart.
Evans has also met with the Dolphins during the predraft process.
NFL Helped Raiders Secure Vegas Funding?
When the Chargers announced in January they were taking the NFL up on its offer to join the Rams in Los Angeles, the NFL foresaw a possible route to San Diego for the Raiders. The league did not want that, so it shifted focus from helping the Raiders procure a new stadium in Oakland to making sure the Las Vegas deal didn’t fall though, Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN.com report in an expansive story chronicling the Raiders’ move to Sin City.
As the Raiders’ Vegas deal was flailing after the departures of Sheldon Adelson and Goldman Sachs in during the winter, league executives joined Raiders president Marc Badain in contacting Bank of America, according to Van Natta and Wickersham. The company soon replaced Adelson as a backer, injecting new life into the Raiders’ Vegas venture, and pledged a near-$1 billion line of credit to cover cost overruns from the impending stadium construction project.
Jerry Jones also played a role in this key chapter of the Raiders’ relocation process. Mark Davis said to Jones at one point last year, “you screwed me on L.A.” and Jones began to act feverishly to help the Raiders relocate. The Cowboys owner put his full support behind the project, something the league and the Raiders appreciated, according to the ESPN reporters, and attempted to procure financing for the endeavor. But some around the league are concerned with the fallout.
Jones’ push helped bring some owners off the fence, paving the way for the 31-1 relocation vote. But it irked another influential owner. Robert Kraft took exception to Jones’ stake in Legends Hospitality, a merchandise and concessions company that could stand to benefit from the $1.9 billion stadium deal.
Sources told Wickersham and Van Natta that Legends emerged as a contender to partner with the Raiders for nonfootball revenue. Kraft spoke to Adelson, a longtime friend who played a key role in helping secure the Raiders the record $750MM in public money before stepping aside due partially to a falling out with Davis, and told him “Jerry is running wild; I can’t believe this.” Adelson, according to the ESPN reporters, then said he would “kill” the Raiders’ deal in Vegas if Kraft wanted. But Kraft, who had been a backer of the Raiders’ effort, did not want to exercise that prospective option.
Kraft wasn’t the only high-powered NFL figure who was suspicious of Jones’ help here. The Dallas owner helping sway his peers while potentially factoring into the stadium’s finances would cause “a major conflict of interest,” a longtime aide to an NFL owner told ESPN, who added the question of “won’t Mark Davis always be beholden to Jerry Jones?” Bank of America has served as the Cowboys’ bank for 25 years, along with a team sponsor. It’s also the Raiders’ longtime bank.
Davis and NFL executive VP Eric Grubman were working toward different goals, with Davis concentrating solely with Vegas and Grubman working to keep the Raiders in Oakland. Grubman, who also attempted to work with St. Louis last year while Stan Kroenke set his sights on Los Angeles, concluded in December — according to ESPN — Oakland did not have a viable proposal. At that same December league meeting, Badain called Oakland’s proposal a “political, cover-your-ass joke” and said in October, per ESPN, “it would have been better if (Oakland) had offered nothing.”
“The stadium proposals received from Oakland are dependent on various contingencies and involve a number of significant uncertainties that membership concluded cannot be solved in a reasonable time,” the league’s statement on the Raiders’ relocation reads (via Scott Bair of CSNBayArea.com, on Twitter), also citing the lack of Oakland progress in a two-year period after the league denied relocation applications in 2015 and placed the Raiders behind the Rams and Chargers in the Los Angeles pecking order a year later. “The proposal to relocate to Las Vegas involves a clearly defined and well-financed proposal for a first-class stadium.”
Romo Almost Signed With Broncos, Cardinals
As an undrafted free agent, Tony Romo almost wound up with the Broncos or the Cardinals over the Cowboys.
“I actually wanted to go to Denver a little bit more, I felt like I had a better chance of making the roster,” Romo told Peter King of The MMQB this week. “The money … Arizona, I believe, offered the most, probably around $20,000 or $25,000, which was like being rich at that time. Denver came in and they were like 15 to 20, but they also had Mike Shanahan who I had strong respect for, and obviously the Cowboys came in. It was Mike Shanahan on one side and then Bill Parcells on the other. Sean would call in and then eventually he passed the phone to Jerry [Jones], so you went through the whole gamut.”