Dallas City News

As the Dallas Cowboys build their 2024 roster, many factors will go into their decisions as they work their way down from 90 to 53 players. One issue that can come up is the pain of admitting defeat on someone you’ve spent significant money or draft capital on. If the Cowboys allow “sunk-cost fallacy” to affect their judgment, it could mean having a weaker team this season.

What is sunk-cost fallacy? Simply put, it’s when you hang on to something to your own detriment based on how much you’ve already invested. It’s like finishing a bad meal or sitting through the rest of a bad movie; you’ve already paid for it and spent time on it, so now you just want to see it through. But the food or movie didn’t get any better, and now you’ve wasted even more of your time and energy on something you didn’t enjoy.

From a professional football perspective, this usually rears its head because a team wants to justify the resources they used to acquire a player. A higher draft pick or a significant amount of money; these can lead to less-productive players getting roster spots because the organization isn’t ready to give up on their investment. Pride certainly comes into play as well between executives, coaches, and scouts who don’t want to be proven wrong about a decision they’ve made.

When it comes to the 2024 Cowboys, two particular players stand out as having sunk-cost potential: quarterback Trey Lance and running back Ezekiel Elliott. Based on what we’ve seen and heard so far from training camp, the argument could be made that Dallas would be better off with neither of them on this year’s roster. But given what the team’s already spent on them, both could very well make it despite performance concerns.

As we’ve discussed before, Lance is much closer to being the emergency QB on game days than pushing for a future as the starter. He’s getting outplayed by Cooper Rush at camp and has few still considering him as even a viable backup candidate. One could make the case that Dallas would be better off not even keeping a third quarterback on the 53, using that roster spot to protect depth and upside at some position. The odds that you’ll ever actually need a third QB in a game are very slim.

But if the Cowboys did release Lance, they’d still carry a $5.3 million cap hit in 2024 due to a fully guaranteed bonus and the final year of his rookie contract. They’d also close the book on the fourth-round pick they sent to San Francisco for Lance last year, getting next to nothing in return. Those are tough pills to swallow for fans and executives alike.

However, if they don’t trust Lance to play now and can’t see him as a long-term asset, then why not cut their losses? The money’s spent and the 49ers already used the draft pick, so the damage is mostly done. Assuming Lance isn’t going to make enough progress, the only way he can hurt the team more is if he steals a roster spot from a more valuable prospect at another position.

We’re not saying Lance is a bust but this is his fourth NFL season. Unless he shows something far different in the preseason games from what we’ve been hearing out of Oxnard, there doesn’t seem much more hope for him. He is still just 24 years old so you might show some grace on that front, but he’d hardly be the first highly-drafted player to not make it in this league.

In a far different scenario, but still relevant to our premise, is the veteran Ezekiel Elliott. Back in Dallas after his one year as a Patriot, Zeke returned with what felt like an automatic claim on the short-yardage role and a substantive share in the RB rotation. But after the first two weeks of camp, it’s been Rico Dowdle, Royce Freeman, and Hunter Luepke who’ve earned praise while Zeke has been mostly noted for looking old and slow.

The Cowboys showed faith upfront with Elliott’s contract. While he only got a one-year, $2 million deal this offseason, all but $375k of it is guaranteed money. That’s an unusually high amount for such a small deal, meaning Dallas had little thought of Zeke not being part of the 2024 roster. But if he’s even more broken down than they realized, the Cowboys may need to rethink this reunion.

There is precedent for such a reversal of intention. Back in 2015, Dallas signed veteran linebacker Jasper Brinkley as a potential starter. But after getting outperformed in camp by other options, Brinkley didn’t even make it past final cuts and the Cowboys ate $2 million in guaranteed money. And this was nine years ago so that $2 million was a bigger chunk of the salary cap and more valuable than it is today.

Of course, Ezekiel Elliott is a far different figure for the organization than some journeyman linebacker. He’s top-three all-time in every major rushing category behind Emmitt Smith and Tony Dorsett, only needing five more touchdowns to pass Dorsett on that list. He was one of the Cowboys’ most marketable and popular players from 2016-2022 and earned loyalty, hence why he’s even in camp when most of the NFL seemed content to let him stay home.

But how far should that go? If Zeke isn’t one of the top three backs on the roster, why keep him beyond this month? You’re not saving anything on the cap and for as much as there’d be some disappointed fans, there’d be another large swath angered if they felt he was retained at the expense of superior options. There’s more than enough nepotism already in the front office; don’t need it on the field, too.

Again, it’s too early to proclaim that Ezekiel Elliott and Trey Lance won’t be deserving of roster spots this season. But if the Dallas Cowboys are going to field the best team possible in 2024, they need to take pride and any concerns about sunk costs out of their thinking process. Nobody’s going to care if the team’s winning, so don’t handicap yourself with unproductive players.