Every year that goes by, the price of business goes up. Whether it’s the price of a Happy Meal for the kid, the cost of a tank of gas for the family cruiser, or the growing rate of locking down a franchise quarterback in the NFL, things are getting jaw-droppingly expensive.
The Cowboys are experiencing this reality firsthand. Not only are they trying to work out deals to keep All Pros CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons in Dallas for the foreseeable future, but they are also trying to retain their star QB, Dak Prescott. With Trevor Lawrence’s recent extension in Jacksonville, the going rate of a franchise QB has passed the $55 million/year mark. QB salaries are taking up well over 20 percent of team cap space and that number seems to only be rising.
The Cowboys’ struggles with the salary cap are hardly unique. Nearly every team with a franchise-level QB on the books has faced the same obstacles as Dallas. How does a team re-sign their star QB and still afford to build a decent team around him?
The dilemma has caused some teams to shift to younger, less proven options. Their rookie deals make up for the potential decline in play from the position. Look no further than teams like Chicago, Minnesota, San Francisco, and Seattle as resent examples.
It should be no surprise Tom Pelissero from the NFL Network revealed owners have been discussing the possibility of adopting a QB salary cap to curb their spending at this ever-inflating position. QBs are often the face of their respective franchise, and no team likes the idea losing the face of their franchise. This would effectively lock the player in because as long as the home team is offering a max deal, other teams couldn’t beat the offer.
Something like this would be helpful for the Cowboys since they seem to be their own worst enemy in most negotiations and Prescott appears to have them over a barrel at the moment. Prescott, an unrestricted free agent in 2025, has a no-tag and no-trade clause on his current deal. He holds tremendous leverage and will likely require market-setting money to re-sign with Dallas. There’s really nothing the Cowboys can do about it. Pay him +22 percent of the cap or let him walk for nothing. Something like the rumored proposal would save them.
The only problem is this proposal is pure fantasyland. Not only does the current CBA not allow it but teams who have already taken care of their own QB contract situations wouldn’t support it. Teams like the Cowboys, Packers and Dolphins have to figure out their issues on their own.
The NFL Players Association may eventually support something like this because it would slightly disincentivize dumping a veteran QBs for rookie QBs and it would push more money into other positions, thus making more voting members happy. But the current CBA runs through 2030 and there’s no reason to rock the boat with such a wild proposal beforehand.
For something like this to be remotely digestible to other teams, it would have to create two separate caps, one for QBs and one for everyone else, with a clear line of demarcation between the two. In other words, if a team didn’t spend up the cap in one pool, the cap space wouldn’t be allowed to flow over into the other pool. Teams with deals already in place with their respective QBs would be able to instantly divide their rosters into the appropriate buckets. It could be something like a $60 million salary cap for the QB position and a $200 million cap for the rest of the roster.
Such a change would take away many of the strategies of roster building and further manipulate natural market forces, which is never a good thing. It’s not only a long-shot proposal but very likely a harmful one at that.
At the end of the day, the idea floated by Pelissero could help a team like the Cowboys come to terms with Prescott, but it would do little for anyone else and is highly unlikely to ever get supported by the NFLPA.
Dallas’ best course of action is biting the bullet and signing Prescott to a market setting deal. He may make up 22 percent of the cap in 2024, but by 2028 that slice of pie could be down to just 18 percent. By then a new team will be complaining about QBs making too much and this whole debate will repeat just like it does every year.
[affiliatewidget_smgtolocal]
[lawrence-auto-related count=3]