NFL Trade Rumors: Keeping Dez Bryant, DeMarco Murray, a 'Big Challenge'

Despite playing a much better season, the Dallas Cowboys are still deciding on whether to keep their best assets or not.

The Dallas Morning News reported that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is cautious about holding on to Dez Bryant and DeMarco Murray, two of the team's best players. Although the two had a huge impact in improving the Cowboy's performance to 12-4 during the previous NFL season, it will require a lot of cash to keep them both. The team will have little salary cap space to work with and Jones does not like to go through the same challenge again.

Jones said in January 2015 in the same Dallas Morning News report, "You remember when that cap makes you poor and you wake up and have those days when you don't have the money and don't have the flexibility. If you don't, you need to sit there long enough to revisit that in your mind - how it was - and see if you make the right decisions."

Jones explained, "The point is, if you can revisit how you felt, that will make you a little more prudent about this cap when you have had a lot of years when you really paid the piper. And you are paying it at the time for a decision that you thought was helping you win a Super Bowl. But then you didn't do it. It was gone. That dream was out the window and there you were paying the bills on it."

When Jones was asked about his decision on keeping Bryant and Murray on February 6, during a United Way event, he replied, "That's a big challenge. You can't have it all. But on the other hand, you can try to have it all. You have to make sure you're making the right decisions on who gets the assets, which in this particular case, it's the room under the salary cap."

In January, Jones said in an NBC report, "Is it possible? Yes. But if you just look at it from the standpoint of dollars and cents, it probably doesn't look reasonable."

SB Nation reported that Murray had a great NFL season with a league-high 1,845 rushing yards and 13 rushing touchdowns. His only drawback is fumbling the football occasionally. As both Murray and Bryant are about to hit free agency, the cowboys may choose to franchise tag Murray and keep him for another year. There are talks that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts are also interested in acquiring running back Murray.