I haven’t looked at the actual breakdown of their roster’s cap-hit per player, but general consensus seems to be that they can identify talent as well as anyone, and that stars they want will not be poached away, but that they’re very willing to let depth and less glamorous positions suffer for it. In particular, the OL has eroded, and the interior DL and secondary have been “meh” for years.

Those precious stars know they have you over a barrel and they will get bigger contracts than necessary because billboards and commercials are as important to Jerry as anything else is. He overpaid for Dak (twice, arguably), overpaid for Demarcus Lawrence, and insanely overpaid for Zeke’s big contract back when. If he weren’t viewed as such a sucker for stars, they probably save enough with each contract to keep a couple of better depth pieces around.

Beyond the player roster, Jerry still rankles at the relative amount of credit Jimmy Johnson gets for the Super Bowl wins. Jerry desperately wants to win a title, but only with a roster of “his guys” and a coach who is not a public competitor for praise and attention, and that directly affects the way he hires coaches. He stayed with Jason Garrett for so very long precisely because Garrett was a creation of Jerry (at least in Jerry’s mind), and he is an unassuming football-nerd personality who would be sated by the success itself more than the public praise. Mike McCarthy was picked up off the scrap heap and didn’t demand roster control, so he was acceptable as well.

And then, despite all the dysfunction, the regular season record is quite good over the years. Perhaps the biggest irony of all this is that Cowboy fans feel hopeless not because Jerry is a terrible GM, at least on a year-to-year basis, but rather that he’s a mediocre one who always thinks ultimate success is just a season or two away.