Dak Prescott is entering the final year of his contract, and whether the Dallas Cowboys will pay Prescott or not has been one of the most fascinating subplots of the NFL offseason.
In the regular season, Prescott has massively overperformed, especially considering the Cowboys selected him with a fourth-round draft pick back in 2016. However, Prescott, who has been named an All-Pro and Pro Bowler and thrown for nearly 30,000 career yards in the regular season, is just 2-5 in the postseason.
Prescott and the Cowboys' playoff woes, most recently exemplified by an embarrassing 48-32 home loss to the Green Bay Packers in the Wild Card, led some to come to the conclusion that Prescott could not be a Super Bowl-winning quarterback and that the Cowboys should not ‘overpay' for the 31-year-old.
In comments to the media during Dallas training camp, though, Prescott indicated that he feels almost an obligation to other players in the NFL to sign a big contract extension.
“I'm a guy that grew up with two older brothers,” Prescott said. “You understand what a brotherhood means, not only for just this team but the fraternity of the NFL and the players. The money is out there and the money can happen. It can be done. There's ways to make everything work for both ways. That's in that sense it's always about pushing the envelope for the next man.”
Dak Prescott contract extension talks continue
As mentioned earlier, Dak Prescott has just one season left on his current deal with the Dallas Cowboys. Prescott signed a four-year, $160 million contract ($126 million guaranteed) in March 2021, and this season, he is set to have a $55.1 million cap hit, the second-highest of any player in the NFL.
While he wouldn't be under contract with the Cowboys next season if the two sides do not agree to an extension, he would still be on the books for $40.1 million in the form of dead cap. Additionally, Prescott cannot be traded nor have the franchise tag placed on him, severely limiting what Jerry Jones and the Cowboys can do with their starting quarterback.
The most likely scenario is that Prescott will sign a 10-figure extension with Dallas, but it's plausible both sides will play these contract negotiations out as long as possible — even until March — to maximize their perceived leverage. Either way, Prescott and his agent now have numerous comparable contracts they can use as a baseline for Prescott's new deal.
Over the past two years, more than 10 quarterbacks have signed new deals, almost all of which carry average salaries of at least $50 million. Prescott is older than most of those players, although Kirk Cousins' four-year, $180 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons and Russell Wilson's five-year, $242.6 million deal with the Denver Broncos were both done despite the players being older than 30 years old.
Jones, the Cowboys' owner and general manager, declined to talk about “progress” on either Prescott or wide receiver CeeDee Lamb's contract talks. However, last week, Jones made a long, bizarre comment that seemed to allude to his willingness to string out contract negotiations as long as possible.
“I have, in my life, played option quarterback so many times and wait until the last leaf on the tree,” Jones said, mixing metaphors. “And if you want to picture a pure option quarterback going out to the sideline, I have run that ball and kept it and not handed it off to the back, not pitch it back, not throw it, and I have run that thing all the way out to the sideline before I made the decision because I couldn't get whatever it took — it wasn't right for me — to make the decision.
“So what our fans, what you're seeing, what we deal with is we're buying time. We're option quarterbacking and we're going on out toward the sidelines and we haven't handed it off, we haven't pitched it, we're trying to make our mind up what we're going to do.”
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