For the past two years, it’s seemed fairly clear that the Dallas Cowboys were content to let veteran defensive end Marcus Spears depart. This was less an indictment of Spears’ play--he actually has had two very solid seasons in this span--than it was a statement on the promise of younger ends like Stephen Bowen and Jason Hatcher. Basically, it seemed that in the Cowboys’ eyes, Spears had become expendable.
Somewhere between the lockout and Bowen agreeing to a $27 million deal with the Redskins though, this feeling changed. Spears was awarded a five-year, $19.2 million deal a little over a week ago, leaving many around Dallas--Spears included--pleasantly surprised.
"A bit surprising,” Spears told 1310 The Ticket's Norm Hitzges on Monday, per the Dallas Morning News. “But like I've said before, you never know what's in store for you. I kept my nose to the grindstone and kept faith that something positive would come out of it, and that I would be somewhere where I would love being.
“It ended up being this place, and Steven and Jerry [Jones] stepped up big and made a commitment to me, and I made a commitment to them to give them a real good football player over the next five years. That was the whole conversation."
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