IRVING, Texas --Many feel the Cowboys overpaid cornerback Brandon Carr with a five-year, $50.1 million deal, roughly half of which was guaranteed.
Jerry Jones agrees -- sort of.
"We know we overpaid to get Carr. Not overpay -- we paid retail," Jones acknowledged last week at the NFL meetings.
That's the nature of free agency. It is overpaying. Draft pick salaries are mostly slotted, but teams can set the free agent market -- and sometimes launch it into a new stratosphere -- based on their available cap room.
Some $50 million is the going rate for a top cornerback. That's about what Cortland Finnegan got from the Rams. The Carr deal, as well as Anthony Spencer's $8.8 million franchise tag and six other new contracts ate a huge chunk of the Cowboys' cap space.
But Jones said they still have some flexibility going forward.
"If a situation comes along, we'll be able to act on it if we want to," he said. "We want have a restriction if the right situation comes along. We were able to get all of that done plus have the money we need for the draft. "It was well-planned, well-thought out and it happened that way. In free agency, there is always the problem of no matter how well you try to execute, no matter how well you plan, there is another influence that can make it for you and it's somebody else paying too much or offering too much so you have to do with less. We didn't have to do that this time."
