The Dallas Cowboys and Dak Prescott are playing a game of chicken. Granted, they’re plodding along rather slowly rather than barreling toward one another at breakneck speed. And they’re still a healthy distance apart, with plenty of time for one or both sides to change course and amicably meet in the middle with smiles and handshakes.
But with exactly one month to go before the July 15 deadline for getting a long-term deal done, the ongoing negotiations have indeed entered the final countdown. Prescott will be the Cowboys quarterback in 2020 and will be well-paid; that much is assured. But if the deadline passes and he plays out the year under the franchise tag, it pushes the extension talks to 2021, when the price tag will be even higher and the feelings on both sides of the table potentially far more contentious.
Several well-positioned experts, though, think that is an unlikely outcome.
Joel Corry is a former agent. These days, he’s an expert on NFL contracts and the salary cap, and a CBS Sports contributor. And he thinks a closer look at the breadcrumbs that have been thrown down to this point give a clear indication that Prescott and the Cowboys will come to terms before July 15.
“I think Dallas will cave and give him the four,” Corry is quoted as saying in The Athletic while referring to the number of seasons on a potential new contract. The team would prefer to lock in Prescott for five years; Prescott is asking for four years in order to get himself back in the payday line that much sooner.
Despite the hardball stance the team appears to have taken with their former fourth-round pick, Corry says it’s simply part of the dance.
“Here’s how you know. As much as some people will say [the Cowboys] don’t really want Dak, if there was ever a year for you to roll the dice on a quarterback, it was this year because you had several quarterbacks available in free agency. If Dallas was lukewarm on Dak, they could have stuck a transition tag on him where they had the right to match, let the market dictate what that deal would have been, and then gone yay or nay. They didn’t even put the non-exclusive franchise tag on him, where they would have gotten two first-round picks for an offer sheet. They obviously like him enough to put the exclusive franchise tag on him to make sure it’s a closed market. I think the deal gets done.”
Longtime Cowboys insider Ed Werder think so, too, despite the glacial pace of the proceedings.
“I was told,” Werder said on ESPN’s Get Up, “that this has not been an extremely active negotiation at this point. And I’m told not to expect a great deal of urgency from the Cowboys until they get about a week from the July 15 deadline. A source close to Prescott did tell me they genuinely believe the Cowboys have faith in Prescott, they value him, and they can get a deal done.”
But so far, a deal hasn’t gotten done. If it’s such a slam dunk for the club to stick with Prescott, and if Dak himself wants to remain a Cowboy, why are the two parties in a silly staredown over the fine print? Every day that passes is just a chance for hurt feelings to fester, for perceived slights to grow into genuine grudges.
Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman spoke to that dangerous possibility recently on Werder’s Doomsday podcast.
“Within the organization, I don’t know if he’s gotten as much credit as he deserves or as much respect as he deserves. His rookie year, he led them to 13 wins, and there were conversations from the owner about what a great story it’d be if [Tony] Romo came off the bench and led them to a Super Bowl! I think there were comments like that than have taken away. I mean, this guy was a rookie at the time. He had played phenomenal. And I think there are comments like that… It’s only human nature, you begin to question, ‘Okay, well, just how respected am I? How much do they truly appreciate what I’ve done?’ And then when you’re going through contract negotiations, no matter who you are, they’re always a little bit contentious.”
“If they can’t come to an agreement,” Aikman went on to say, “I would think that maybe deep down, there might be those feelings that maybe he’s not appreciated or respected as much as he he would like.”
If the Cowboys believe Prescott to be their guy- and comments from ownership as well as cold, hard stats suggest he most certainly is- owner Jerry Jones would be well-served to sew up these loose ends sooner rather than later. So says former league director of player personnel and current ESPN insider Louis Riddick.
“Obviously, there’s only so much money to go around,” Riddick said on Get Up, “but I will say this: if you have a franchise quarterback, I would much rather secure that position and really rely on my ability to identify, draft and develop players around him than constantly be on that hamster wheel trying to look for another quarterback because he got too expensive. I think it’s much easier to build out the rest of the roster than to try and find that franchise quarterback.”
The team signed former Bengals passer Andy Dalton in May. The 32-year-old is still a starting-caliber quarterback, but has been open about being content to serve as Prescott’s backup while playing at home in his native Texas for 2020. Dalton is a fine rental and perhaps the best second-stringer in the league, but this is Prescott’s team. And only ownership can screw that up now.
“I think they view [Prescott] as a franchise quarterback and as a winning quarterback and someone who can lead them to the promised land,” Riddick said. “It always takes two to tango in these situations. It takes someone to be willing to walk away from the negotiation feeling as though they didn’t get everything they want, but they’re satisfied.”
For now, the front office seems content to keep playing this slow-moving game of chicken. And the longer Jones keeps his hands white-knuckled at ten and two, the greater the risk of him running this thing completely of the rails.
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