OXNARD, Calif. -- Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones made big waves around the NFL on Thursday.
After the team's joint practice with the Los Angeles Rams, he said he didn't have a sense of urgency about re-signing 2023 NFL receptions leader CeeDee Lamb to a new deal, which would end his holdout.
Jones also failed to clearly elaborate on why he wasn't concerned about getting it done quickly in order to get Lamb to report to training camp. He even said, "take any reason you want" indicating that even Jones himself has run out of gas when it comes to thinking of a new spin for why he hasn't done what's necessary to re-sign his top players. Lamb didn't take those comments well, tweeting "lol."He also removed the phrase "America's Team" from his Twitter bio.
However, Jones' son and Cowboys COO Stephen Jones, also happened to be holding court simultaneously post-practice on Thursday, albeit on "The Doomsday Podcast" hosted by Ed Werder and Matt Mosley. His words were much more direct when it came to discussing the futures of Lamb as well as 2023 NFL MVP runner-up quarterback Dak Prescott, who is also entering a contract year in 2024, and three-time All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons, who became extension eligible this offseason.
"We plan on doing it [re-signing all three of them]," Stephen Jones said,via "The Doomsday Podcast, on Thursday. "We want all three players here. We have the best chance of winning a championship by having those players on our roster."
While Jerry Jones created doubt about Lamb's future with the Cowboys, Stephen Jones stood firm on the idea that he doesn't foresee a future in Dallas without Lamb as their top receiver for the next several years.
"We think the world of CeeDee, and we understand where he's coming from on this and why he's not here," Stephen Jones said. "But we continue to work very hard on getting this deal done. ... Zero. Zero. Zero thought process about CeeDee not being a Dallas Cowboy."
For as reassuring as Stephen Jones' words about Lamb were, his direct comments about Prescott's looming extension provide cause for concern. He doesn't view Prescott's contract negotiation as one where they are having to pay up in a big way to extend him and prevent him from hitting the open market in 2025.
"We look at it like Dak's our partner in this," Jones said. "We're trying to win a championship. No one wants to win a championship more than Dak Prescott; I can assure you that. And we don't look at it like we're trying to, you know, pay him not to go somewhere else."
The problem with that approach is that Prescott's contract talks should indeed be centered around the idea that the quarterback would be signing an extension in Dallas because the Cowboys made it financially worth his while to stick around and not test the open market. The three-time Pro Bowler possesses both a no-trade clause and a no-franchise tag clause, meaning Prescott has ALL the leverage in these negotiations. If nothing happens from now until next March, Prescott will have quarterback-thirsty franchises banging down his door, begging to pay him a minimum of $60 million on an average annual basis ($55 million is currently the highest average per year salary in the NFL). There is nothing the Cowboys front office can to do prevent him from becoming an unrestricted free agent in March of next year outside of backing up the Brinks truck.
Prescott has made it clear that he is both open to the idea of playing the back end of his NFL career elsewhere, and that he won't be taking anything less than market value for a quarterback of his caliber and experience. Therefore, the Jones family needs to be viewing his negotiations as paying him not to go somewhere else. Otherwise, they run the risk of seeing him play for a different NFL franchise following his ninth season as the Dallas starting quarterback in 2024.
For those who are unsure if the Cowboys can pay Prescott, Lamb and Parsons market value, have no fear. Dallas could retain all three and have some cap space left over if they act now and re-sign all three prior to the 2024 season that kicks off in a month. They are projected to have $64.6 million in effective cap space in 2025, the fifth-most in the NFL, according to OverTheCap.com, and they are estimated to have $165.4 million in effective cap space in 2026, the most in the league per OverTheCap.com.
Thanks to the league signing an 11-year, $110 billion media rights deal in 2021 and NFL games accounting for 93 of America's top 100 most-watched broadcasts in 2023, the NFL's salary cap is only going to increase year by year. If the Jones family now moves fast to re-sign their star-studded trio of Prescott, Lamb and Parsons, they could put themselves ahead of the next big rise in NFL player salaries.
If not, they run the risk of spending most of their pre-draft press conference a year from now doing the same thing they did this past April: attempting to defend some questionable salary cap management. Having to do so must get old to Jerry and Stephen Jones at some point right? One would think defending the same song and dance would get to be too much if it leads to Prescott suiting up for another NFL franchise in 2025, thus returning the Cowboys to a place not experienced since the post-Troy Aikman years and the pre-Tony Romo years (2001-2005): quarterback purgatory.
