Cowboys could be slow-playing free agency for one specific reason

ARLINGTON, TX - OCTOBER 31: Fans of the Dallas Cowboys wear brown paper bags over their head as they watch the Cowboys play against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Cowboys Stadium on October 31, 2010 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Chris Chambers/Getty Images) | Getty Images After some moderate activity in the first few days of free agency, the Cowboys have been pretty quiet. And it’s not like the Cowboys have filled all their roster holes, far from it.

Bob Sturm recently opined that the reason the Cowboys are so bad at free agency is that they set valuations on players, which is a smart thing to do in principle, but those valuations result in their first bid being consistently too low (“comic lowballers”). The Cowboys enter these negotiations looking for a bargain, which we see all the time with lowball opening offers for their own free agents (Aubrey, Prescott, Lamb, Parsons, Pickens … the list goes on and on. ) But that’s not going to work in free agency, where the winner is always the one who overspends the most.

The Cowboys were never ever going to be successful at free agency and there are a few reasons why. @SportsSturm of 1310 The Ticket breaks down why there was little hope that the Jones boys were going to learn how to make deals in the moment or without leverage to fix their… pic. twitter.

com/vh7aKqYl7s — D Magazine (@DMagazine) March 16, 2026 In the second and third week of free agency, prices for players tend to come down, as the auction premium from the free agency frenzy of the first 48 hours rapidly declines. This is the time when agents and players start getting nervous as they see more and more open slots being filled up across the league, and prices drop significantly from where they were at the start of free agency. So why are the Cowboys sitting on their hands when there already are bargains to be had?