The Dallas Cowboys had the same ending for the third year in a row. Dallas was one of the most consistent teams in the regular season, going 12-5 and winning two NFC East titles. However, the playoff loss occurred in the wild card or divisional round, extending the NFC Championship drought to 28 years.
Team building has been a perennial theme under Jerry Jones. The Cowboys love to acquire players through the draft, watch them succeed, and reward good players with contract extensions. Jones has had a lot of success with this technique throughout the regular season, but Dallas has fallen short in the playoffs for nearly 30 years.
Those days are over, with Jones insisting the Cowboys are going “all in” for 2024.
“I expect them to go all-in as they look at the important contracts they want to work on going forward,” Jones said. “I think at the end of this year we're going to be all-in… we're going to be all-in with different people than we've been in the past. We've seen some things from our players that we're going to be all in on. And yes, you're going to be looking at us next year instead of building for the future.”
The biggest elephant in the room regarding contracts is duck prescott, He has one year left on his current contract. More importantly, he will take up nearly $60 million in cap space in 2024, a number that will make it difficult for Dallas to go “all in” as Jones suggests.
An extension could resolve the situation or restructure the contract. But doing so would only make the future even more difficult for the Cowboys, and the front office probably isn't that worried at this point.
fellow star Cedee Lamb and Micah Parsons They are expected to receive contracts as well, and are expected to be the highest-paid or near-highest-paid players at their respective positions.
So what does All-In look like? We don't really know, so we'll have to follow the franchise's moves in the coming months. Perhaps Dallas is investing heavily in free agency and adding experienced players at needed positions. They will certainly have to be aggressive with the current cap situation.
All of this with the potential to not only host the NFC Championship Game, but also hoist the Lombardi Trophy. Jones has been waiting to do so since the 1995 season, when Dallas won three championships in four seasons.
