Cowboys Can't Afford to Pick Up Option on Underachieving Mo Claiborne

The Dallas Cowboys have some work to do this offseason after winning the NFC East for the first time since 2009. Key pieces of the offense like wide receiver Dez Bryant and running back DeMarco Murray are set to hit free agency.

The Cowboys have some decisions to make on defense as well, and fans of the team can only hope that team owner Jerry Jones reverses course before making one whopper of a bad one on that side of the ball.

According to Brandon George of The Dallas Morning News, the Cowboys are considering picking up the fifth-year option on cornerback Morris Claiborne:

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Jerry Jones said that CB Morris Claiborne has done enough for the Cowboys to justify picking up his 5th-year option.

— Brandon George (@DMN_George) January 20, 2015"

As Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas tweeted, that team option for the 2016 season would not come cheaply for the Cowboys:

And that price tag is only one of several things that makes it fair to wonder whether Jones is talking about someone else—because he can't be talking about Morris Claiborne.

Year	Games	Snaps	Tackles	INT	FF	PFF Rank*
2012	15	909	55	1	1	80
2013	10	522	26	1	0	88
2014	4	151	7	1	0	198

As George wrote, since being drafted sixth overall in 2012 Claiborne hasn't done much to justify that draft slot, much less the sort of cabbage picking up the option would send Claiborne's way:

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Claiborne has struggled in his time with the Cowboys. He’s played in only 29 of a possible 50 games in three seasons. He suffered a ruptured patellar tendon in his left knee in the Cowboys’ fourth game in 2014 that ended his season. Claiborne also had his right knee scoped a few weeks ago.

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Mind you, we aren't just talking about a young cornerback who struggled for a time as he acclimated to the NFL. Claiborne started out his NFL career bad and then got worse from there. As recently as last September, Jones himself admitted to KRLD Radio (via Drew Davison of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) that Claiborne had disappointed to this point in his NFL career:

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Is he what we had hoped for at this point when we drafted him with the sixth overall pick, giving up the [second-round] pick to go up to the sixth pick to get him? No. But he’s going to be a good player.

"

And things only went downhill from there. After being benched in favor of Orlando Scandrick, Claiborne left the Cowboys' practice facility. He returned a few days later and insisted to MacMahon that his spot on the depth chart wasn't the cause of his abrupt departure:

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I didn't leave from no stretch of the imagination from them telling me that Orlando was back. That wasn't the reason why I left. The reason why I left was how something was brought to me and how it was presented to me. I felt myself at a place where I had to just leave the facility at that moment.

I'm pretty sure everybody has been in that, got in that where they had to just leave. They had to remove themselves from what was going on at that time. I was ready for whatever fines or anything that came with that. I felt like if I stayed, who knows what would happen? I felt like the best thing for me was to leave.

"

Even if you believe Claiborne, the episode didn't paint his maturity level in a flattering light. It was around this time that MacMahon labeled Claiborne the biggest draft-day whiff in the history of the Cowboys' franchise:

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If Jones wanted to criticize Claiborne, he could have called him the biggest bust in Cowboys’ history. That’s a brutally honest view of a sixth overall pick who isn’t one of the top three corners on a defense that was the NFL’s worst last season.

If Claiborne is upset that he’s being replaced in the base defense by Orlando Scandrick, for the second straight season, he’s simply delusional. Sterling Moore, an undrafted player who was unemployed for several weeks last season after being cut by the Cowboys in late August, should be the Cowboys’ third corner based on merit.

That’s pretty pathetic for a player the Cowboys projected to be a perennial Pro Bowler.

"

Mind you, this was before Claiborne tore the patellar tendon in his left knee. As former San Diego Chargers team doctor David Chao pointed out after New York Giants wideout Victor Cruz suffered the same injury, it's going to be a long road back for Claiborne:

So, to recap. We have a highly drafted player with a potential attitude problem who played his way out of the starting lineup just before suffering a catastrophic knee injury.

What part of that exactly is doing enough to merit a $10 million payday in 2016, especially since recovery from his injury could easily leave Claiborne's 2015 campaign a wash?

Well, at least the Cowboys have the cap space to be able to afford such a wildly speculative move.

Oh, wait. No they don't even a little.

Credit: Gary Davenport/Bleacher Report

According to the folks at Over the Cap, the Cowboys are presently about $7.5 million under a projected 2015 salary cap of $140 million. That's the least wiggle room in their division and the 10th-least in the league.

Now, the cap might wind up higher than that, but the fact remains that the Cowboys are far from awash in cap space, and that's before considering new deals for Bryant or Murray.

Sure, Claiborne's option year isn't until 2016, but it's not like the Cowboys' cap situation is drastically going to improve. If anything, it will get worse as the team moves money from this year's books to next in an effort to milk some more cap space in the short term.

You know, like it's been doing every year for the past decade.

We've already seen the shell game have an impact this year. As George reported, the Cowboys declined their option on defensive tackle Henry Melton largely for financial reasons.

Melton played decently in his first year in Dallas, picking up five sacks. But he didn't play well enough to merit the three-year deal that would have guaranteed him $9 million in 2015.

The money just isn't there—and that's for a player who helped the team a lot more than Claiborne this past year.

Frankly, it was a bad idea for Jones to even think about extending Claiborne, given everything he hasn't done to this point in his career. It was a worse idea to speak of those thoughts, as now a player who already walked off the field once will be expecting that extension to come.

But to actually give another $10 million and change to a player who has done nothing in the NFL to this point save making the Cowboys look bad for drafting him to begin with? When that player's status for 2015 is murky at best?

That's just crazy—even for Jerry Jones.

Gary Davenport is an NFL Analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and the Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPManor.