Cowboys OT Doug Free To Retire
Right tackle Doug Free has informed the Cowboys he plans to retire, according to Todd Archer of ESPN.com. Chatter had arisen in recent weeks regarding Free’s status, and although multiple reports denied Free would hang up his cleats, the veteran lineman ultimately decided to call it a career.
For Dallas, the loss of Free is a blow to its league-best offensive line, a group that had already seen the defection of top backup Ronald Leary earlier this week. While Free was probably the link weak link along the Cowboys’ front five, he was still a starting-caliber player (No. 40 offensive tackle in 2016 per Pro Football Focus), and the club will now have to assess its options as it seeks to replace him.
Internally, the Cowboys’ top option is Chaz Green, a 2015 third-round pick who played 151 snaps last season. If Dallas isn’t ready to hand over right tackle to Green, it could venture into the free agent market, where options such as Austin Pasztor, Sebastian Vollmer, and Andre Smith still reside. Adding a tackle through the 2017 draft is another possibility, with Wisconsin’s Ryan Ramczyk, Alabama’s Cam Robinson, and Utah’s Garett Bolles in the mix as first-round picks.
Alternatively, the Cowboys could consider moving incumbent left guard La’el Collins to right tackle and bringing in another guard. Collins played left tackle in college so he could probably handle the right side, and his versatility will likely play a role in Dallas’ decision. The Cowboys knew Free was retiring before the beginning of free agency, tweets Archer, so the decision not push harder for a Leary return was unrelated.
Originally a left tackle, Free shifted to the right side after Dallas drafted Tyron Smith in 2011. The Northern Illinois alum had undergone foot surgery in each of the past two offseasons. The Cowboys will pick up $5MM in cap space thanks to Free’s retirement, and while they could conceivably recoup $2.5MM in signing bonus money, the club probably won’t ask Free to give that total back.
Minor NFL Transactions: 3/10/17
Today’s minor moves:
- The Bears will sign free agent offensive tackle Tom Compton, per Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports (Twitter link). The 27-year-old has primarily worked as a reserve during his five NFL seasons, having started in just 11 of 44 appearances with Washington and Atlanta. Last season was Compton’s only one as a member of the Falcons. While he played in all of the NFC champions’ games, he didn’t start any of them.
- The Cowboys have signed defensive end Damontre Moore, according to Brandon George of the Dallas Morning News (Twitter link). Moore, a former third-round pick, has appeared in 49 career games but never started a contest. Although he’s posted 10 sacks during his NFL tenure, Moore might be best known for getting cut by the Giants after a headphone-related altercation. He’ll compete for a rotational role in Dallas.
- The Chiefs re-signed offensive lineman Mike Person, tweets Terez A. Paylor. Person, 28, was a 14-games starter for the Falcons in 2015 but didn’t see the field last year. Person, who has 31 career starts under his belt, is in the mix for a reserve role for Kansas City.
- After being non-tendered by the Seahawks earlier this week, linebacker Brock Coyle has now signed with the division-rival 49ers, per his agency (Twitter link). Coyle is a former undrafted agent, and though he’s never been a full-time starter, he’s appeared in 35 games during his three-year career.
- The Jets announced that they’ve re-signed long snapper Tanner Purdum. Purdum has been with Gang Green since 2010 and has appeared in every game during that time.
Cowboys To Sign Nolan Carroll
The Cowboys are having a busy hour, as they’ve agreed to a contract with cornerback Nolan Carroll, tweets Ian Rapoport of NFL.com. It’s a three-year, $10MM deal that includes $4MM in 2017, per Tom Pelissero of USA Today (Twitter link).
After a quiet first day of free agency, Dallas has now signed Carroll, wide receiver Terrance Williams, and defensive lineman Stephen Paea in the last thirty minutes or so. The addition of Carroll could be a sign the Cowboys are bracing to lose either Morris Claiborne, who is reportedly garnering interest from the Ravens, or Brandon Carr, who is also an unrestricted free agent.
Carroll, 30, spent the past three seasons with the Eagles, and was discussing an extension with Philadelphia as of last December. The seven-year veteran started all 16 games for the Birds last season (the first time he’s done so in his career), and managed one interception, 10 passes defensed, and a forced fumble. Pro Football Focus wasn’t very fond of Carroll’s play, however, grading him as the NFL’s No. 92 cornerback among 112 qualifiers.
Carroll will join a Cowboys secondary that ranked 18th in DVOA last season and is currently comprised of Orlando Scandrick, Anthony Brown, and Leon McFadden.
Cowboys To Sign Stephen Paea
The Cowboys have agreed to a one-year deal with free agent defensive tackle Stephen Paea, reports Brandon George of the Dallas Morning News (Twitter link).
Dallas will be the fifth NFL organization for the 28-year-old Paea, who entered the league as a second-round pick in 2011 and has since played with the Bears, Redskins and Browns. Chicago heavily relied on Paea, who started double-digit games in three of his four seasons with the club, but he served as a reserve in Washington and Cleveland over the past two years. Paea started just one game apiece for those teams, and he’s coming off a 13-appearance, 12-tackle campaign. Despite his less-than-gaudy numbers, he ranked as Pro Football Focus’ 40th-best interior D-lineman among 127 qualifiers in 2016.
As a member of the Cowboys, Paea will attempt to replace the departed Terrell McClain, who signed with NFC East rival Washington on Thursday. Paea is slated to join Cedric Thornton and Maliek Collins as the Cowboys’ top interior options.
Cowboys To Re-Sign Terrance Williams
The Cowboys have reached a four-year agreement to re-sign wide receiver Terrance Williams, tweets Adam Caplan of ESPN. The pact is worth $17MM, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL.com, while Caplan adds that it carries a max value of $22MM (Twitter links). It contains $9.5MM in guarantees, Todd Archer of ESPN.com writes.
Williams, 27, has spent his entire four-year career with the Cowboys and is now in position to remain in Dallas for the foreseeable future. The team went into free agency bracing for his departure, but it will instead keep the No. 2 wideout and Dez Bryant complement in the fold. Since going in the third round of the 2013 draft, Williams has played in all 64 of the Cowboys’ regular-season games, made 52 starts and averaged 44 catches, 698 yards and five touchdowns per year.
The 6-foot-2, 208-pound Williams is the latest wideout off the board in a class of available receivers that’s quickly losing its appeal. Among PFR’s 15 highest-ranked receivers entering free agency, only Cordarrelle Patterson, Michael Floyd, Kamar Aiken and Victor Cruz remain. All of those players come with obvious flaws, which made it that much more important for the Cowboys to keep the steady Williams from exiting.
J.J. Wilcox To Visit Seahawks
In addition to meeting with the Buccaneers, free agent safety J.J. Wilcox will visit the Seahawks, reports Brandon George of the Dallas Morning News (Twitter link). Wilcox spent the first four seasons of his career with the Cowboys, but they won’t attempt to re-sign the 26-year-old, per George.
Wilcox is now poised to become the second safety to leave Dallas in free agency this year, joining soon-to-be Jaguar Barry Church. Functioning as the Cowboys’ third safety behind Church and Byron Jones last season, Wilcox appeared in 13 games and picked off the fifth pass of his career. Wilcox only started four contests – down from 16 in 2014 and 13 in 2015 – but Pro Football Focus ranked his performance a terrific 27th among 89 qualified safeties.
The next chapter of Wilcox’s career could take him to Seattle, which boasts a highly accomplished secondary and two star safeties in Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas. Chancellor is currently scheduled to become a free agent next offseason, though, and Thomas flirted with retirement after an injury-shortened 2016.
NFC Rumors: Romo, Baker, Jeffery, Eagles
Tony Romo was “never being waived” by the Cowboys, a source tells Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (Twitter link). We presume the source means “cut” rather than “waived” since vested veterans cannot be waived in the offseason. Word on Wednesday was that the Cowboys would release Romo, allowing him to sign with another club. Then, on Thursday, it was reported that the Cowboys were expecting to trade the quarterback to the Broncos or Texans. For now, things remain in a holding pattern for Romo.
Here’s more from around the league on Day 1 of official free agency.
- The Redskins did not end up making an offer to Chris Baker, who agreed to a deal with the Buccaneers, Dianna Russini of ESPN.com tweets. Baker joined DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon as higher-end free agents who left Washington this week.
- Alshon Jeffery looks to be a believer in Carson Wentz. The sixth-year wideout turned out a turned down a multiyear deal with greater security from the Vikings to sign with the Eagles, Ian Rapoport tweets.
- Torrey Smith‘s Eagles deal is for one year and $5MM, Tom Pelissero of USA Today reports (on Twitter), adding that the contract contains two option years. Both option years are worth $5MM apiece. Smith will collect a $500K bonus from what will be his third NFL employer.
- Chance Warmack signed with the Eagles for one year and $1.51MM, per Pelissero (on Twitter). This looks like a value-re-establishing season for the former Titans first-rounder, who will receive a $500K signing bonus.
- The Seahawks‘ Luke Joeckel deal is for one year and up to $8MM, Mike Garafolo of NFL.com tweets. The guaranteed money here isn’t known yet, but Joeckel could do well for himself after seeing seeing the Jaguars pass on his 2017 option in 2016 and then going on IR.
- New Giants wide receiver Brandon Marshall said four teams were on his top tier in terms of giving him the best chance to win: the Giants, Patriots, Steelers and Seahawks, per Art Stapleton of The Record (on Twitter). Marshall has never made the playoffs in 11 seasons. The Giants made their first playoff berth in five years in 2016.
Sam Robinson contributed to this report.
Texans Trade Brock Osweiler To Browns
Whoa! The Texans are trading quarterback Brock Osweiler and a 2018 second-round pick to the Browns in order to move his $16MM salary off the books, according to ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter (Facebook link). The deal will also see the Browns’ fourth-round pick go to Houston and the Texans’ sixth-round choice to go Cleveland. The Texans have made the deal official, announcing its completion via press release.
This type of deal rarely goes down in the NFL and is more of an NBA or MLB type of transaction. In this swap, the Browns are absorbing an albatross of a deal in order to acquire significant draft compensation. The wheeling and dealing might not stop here: Cleveland is not committed to keeping Osweiler and is likely to try to trade him, sources tell Schefter.
On the other hand, maybe they’ll keep him. The Browns are expected to move on from Robert Griffin III and the Brock Osweiler acquisition should clear the way for that, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets.
The move clears out tons of cap space for the Texans who are expected to use that money towards signing Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, Schefter writes. The deal saves $10MM in cap space for the Texans and $16MM in cash.
The Texans signed Osweiler to a four-year, $72MM roughly one year ago today with the hope that he would be their QB of the future. That, obviously, did not work out. Osweiler’s deal calls for him to earn $16MM guaranteed this year. After that, he has $18MM and $17MM non-guaranteed salaries in 2018 and 2019.
The Browns came into this week with upwards of $100MM to spend and Schefter writes that they would have struggled to spend all of it. Still, this seems like a very strange way to utilize that space. The only way this trade would make real sense for the Browns, in my view, is if they already have a final leg of the trade set up in which they deal Osweiler for something else of value. As of this writing, the Browns are spending $16MM in cash to acquire a second-round choice and that is not good business.
Cowboys Expect To Trade Tony Romo To Broncos Or Texans
1:31pm: The Broncos are not currently shopping Siemian, James Palmer of NFL.com tweets.
1:27pm: Some “backpedal talk” has emerged regarding a Siemian-to-New York trade, Mortensen tweets. But he adds that Romo remains a trade candidate a day after being expected to be released.
1:07pm: The Cowboys now expect to trade Tony Romo to the Broncos or Texans, sources tell Chris Mortensen of ESPN.com (on Twitter). Meanwhile, the Broncos are talking with the Jets about trading Trevor Siemian to New York.
A Broncos trade for Romo would be surprising, a source tells Denver7’s Troy Renck (Twitter link). The Broncos have long been connected to Romo but never via trade until today. For more than a month, reports out of Denver have pegged the Broncos as being willing to look at Romo as a UFA.
Wednesday, there was word that the Cowboys would be releasing Romo, allowing him to explore free agency. It turns out that the Broncos and Texans are now willing to acquire him via trade. If a deal goes down, it stands to reason that Romo could agree to restructure his deal in order to make things work for the acquiring club.
Romo, 37 in April, has not been healthy for two full seasons. However, he does have four Pro Bowl selections on his resume. In his last healthy season (2014), Romo completed a league-high 69.9% of his passes with 3,705 yards through the air and 34 touchdowns against just nine interceptions.
The Broncos have been telling everyone that they are willing to go into 2017 with Siemian and Paxton Lynch as their quarterbacks. However, the Romo talk has been strong for weeks now and it sounds like they are looking to bring another star QB to Denver. The Broncos brought in Peyton Manning at a time when the world was writing him off and they might be able to find the same success here with Romo. If they do acquire him, it will be interesting to see whether Romo will be put into an open competition with Lynch or given the starting job from the get-go.
Houston has not been as bullish on a Romo acquisition as Denver has been reported to be. Although neither side has exactly been aggressive, word out of Houston was the team was not going to pursue Romo. The two-time reigning AFC South champions, though, did not get close to what they hoped from Brock Osweiler this season. The Texans’ four-year $72MM contract — one that cannot be realistically removed from the payroll until 2018 — now looks like an albatross after the 6-foot-7 passer could not complete his first Houston season without being benched. He returned to the lineup once Tom Savage sustained a concussion and won a playoff game, but Osweiler did not provide many signs he is the future in Houston.
The Cowboys would take a ~$19MM cap hit this year if they were to trade Romo rather than release him. They could not spread it over two years as they could by designating him a post June 1 cut.
The Jets would like to deal for Siemian but they will look hard at Jay Cutler if they cannot pull off a trade with Denver, Mortensen tweets. Right now, Siemian is Plan A, Cutler is Plan B, and it’s not clear what their Plan C might be if both fall through. The Jets, with limited cap space and little chance of contending in 2017, have very few options to address their vacancy under center.
A seventh-round pick out of Northwestern, Siemian has two years and just $1.3MM left on his rookie contract. He completed 59 percent of his passes and led the Broncos to an 8-6 record. But two injuries sidelined him, providing possible durability queries going forward.
Photo via PFR on Instagram.
Mutual Interest Between Bucs, J.J. Wilcox
Mutual interest exists between the Buccaneers and free agent safety J.J. Wilcox, reports Jenna Laine of ESPN.com, but the Cowboys are now hoping to retain the 26-year-old defensive back after seeing Barry Church sign with the Jaguars, tweets Charean Williams of the Star-Telegram.
Wilcox appeared in 13 games last year as the Cowboys’ third safety behind Church and Byron Jones, but given that Dallas is reportedly bracing to lose many of its internal free agents, Wilcox appeared to be a goner. But with Church out of the picture, the Cowboys may push harder to re-sign Wilcox, as the club might not be comfortable starting special-teamer Jeff Heath in the back end.
Safety is a definite need area for the Buccaneers, as both Chris Conte and Bradley McDougald are pending free agents. Keith Tandy figures to take at least one of Tampa Bay’s starting safety jobs after playing well down the stretch in 2016, but the club could certainly use another defensive back. Wilcox ranks 12th on PFR’s list of free agent safeties.