If you're a resident of Dallas Fort Worth, proud Dallas Cowboys territory, you are aware that the local MLB team, the Texas Rangers, just took the cross-state bitter rivals, the Houston Astros to a seven-game series.

The Rangers won in dramatic fashion landing an emphatic and fatal 11-4 blow in Game 7. Now they find themselves in the World Series. Fans are eager for the shot at redemption after being a strike away from winning it all back in 2011, ultimately losing the series. 

But in this whole story, the team across the street, the Dallas football Cowboys have a lesson to learn. 

Just two years ago the Rangers were dead last in their division. 

They finished with a 60-win, 102-loss season. To put it in perspective, this was the third-worst record in the MLB.

Fast forward to today and they're a World Series team.

So what changed? How did they turn the ship around so quickly? The answer is simple: They weren't afraid to spend money.

Following their abysmal 2021 season, the Rangers knew that change was needed. So they went and spent $500 million on two players. They signed shortstop Cory Seager and second baseman Marcus Semien. There were more players they acquired, but the point is they weren't afraid to spend top money on top players.

The following season, in 2022, the Rangers saw improvement. They finished 68-94 and fourth place in their division. Not being where they wanted to be, they went and spent even more money.

They went and signed star pitcher Jacob deGrom to a 5-year, $185 million deal. Then they spent a combined $50 million more between two more starting pitchers: Nathan Eovaldi and Andrew Heaney. 

That's not the end of the story, however. deGrom would get hurt and be out for the season. Knowing they were in a championship window, the Rangers doubled down. On July 30th, they made a big move mid-season to keep it alive.

They acquired Max Scherzer, another ace in a pitching staff just before the trade deadline to further their playoff push. And by all accounts, it has paid off. The Rangers now find themselves with a chance to be crowned the best team in baseball.

The lesson the Cowboys can learn from the Rangers

Now you might ask yourself, why don't we see this happen across other sports? Like, the NFL. We would be out of our minds to not bring up the fact that the MLB has no hard salary cap like the NFL does. 

While that is true, however, we've seen multiple NFL teams manipulate the cap time and time again in order to spend big-time money to put together big-time teams. 

There's no better example than the Los Angeles Rams. They went all in on winning the Super Bowl just two years ago. They employed a risky strategy of trading away early draft picks in exchange for proven NFL players. They spend a lot of money on contracts, to the point where we asked ourselves if the salary cap was removed for Sean McVay's team. 

Of course, there is an argument that they sacrificed their future for a shot to win, but it worked (and they're not playing too badly this year, by the way). 

We have yet to see this from the Cowboys. The last "big acquisition" they made was Amari Cooper back in 2018, and guess what? It made the offense better! It likely saved the season after the "No WR1" plan blew up in their faces. 

In 2023, the front office is seemingly back in their ways of "we like our guys." Jerry Jones recently claimed that any trade conversations would have to start with other teams, suggesting the Cowboys wouldn't actively seek any upgrade. 

Jerry Jones told @1053thefan the Cowboys won’t initiate trade talks to improve roster before deadline. “The initiation of an opportunity to make a trade at this time that would help us principally has to start over on the other end… I like where we are with our personnel today.”

— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) October 24, 2023

The Cowboys are so insistent on developing their own and so steadfast in doing it their way, that it costs this team championship runs. Sure, there is a hard cap but Dallas has failed to work around it as much as they could. They have rarely taken big risks to take the next step. 

Fans can only hope, that the Joneses see what the Rangers, who live 1 minute away from AT&T Stadium, have done and say "Hey, it might be worth a shot." 

Cowboys: DE Sam Williams sends strong message to coaching staff

He’s not happy.

© Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports