The 2025 offseason is shaping up to be Spring for Ducks in the NFL. Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott is in the final year of his four-year, $160 million contract, but he has not yet signed an extension with the team. Additionally, superstar WR CeeDee Lamb and EDGE Micah Parsons will (of course) demand big contracts, contracts commensurate with their status in the league.
What was the reaction from Cowboys brass? Well, it was slow, to say the least. According to Clarence Hill Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Cowboys Vice President Stephen Jones said before the season that signing Prescott and two other superstars was the team's top priority. He said he hopes to sign a contract. But everything about this process came very poorly from the Dallas front office. A lack of urgency can lead to missed opportunities to “take it all in.”
According to OverTheCap, the Cowboys currently have just over $5 million in cap space in 2024, but that number will skyrocket to near the top of the league in 2025 and beyond. There's enough space to get all three deals done, but the Cowboys' penchant for waiting will come back to bite them. Let's use his Dak contract and his QB contract as an example. If he's a QB as talented as Dak, a top-10 QB, he's going to end up resetting the market every time he gets paid. QBs Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert and Lamar Jackson all received paychecks before the 2023 season, but the timing of their paychecks affected their guaranteed amounts and annual numbers. Jackson got an extension in April, followed by Herbert and eventually Burrow.
You can probably guess in what order the contracts stack up when looking at annual averages.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25440354/Screenshot_2024_05_09_at_11.52.53_AM.png)
With this in mind, considering Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence is getting a big contract extension, Lions QB Jared Goff is looking for more money, and Packers QB is as well. , it would be wise for the Cowboys to move forward with a deal with Prescott. QB Jordan Love. Lawrence and Love are set to compete for the NFL's highest-paid quarterback position in their next contracts, leaving Dallas in a very precarious position with Prescott.
But this isn't something the Cowboys can throw up their hands and say, “We've got a price.” Dallas had every opportunity to pay Dak, whether it was an extension right after the season or a deal now. The Cowboys chose to be patient in a sport that needs to hurry when it comes to contracts. No one in the NFL wants to be the team that has to pay their QB top dollar, so Dallas has an incentive to sign the QB before his price increases significantly.
But it sounds like Dallas doesn't want to pay them. They are a reactive team and are waiting to see how the league goes before making any deals. They accomplished that with Prescott in 2019, putting him on the franchise tag and giving him the highest cap hit in the NFL at the time. For Cowboys fans, this lack of activity is nothing new. The 2024 offseason was marked by that. However, if they are reluctant to actively give Dak a contract, they could not only lose Prescott's contract, but also be forced to hold off on Lamb and Parsons.
Lamb's signing would be very interesting, as contemporaries like Justin Jefferson, Ja'Marr Chase, and Brandon Aiyuk could reset the wide receiver market. Jefferson could earn the richest contract ever given to a receiver in the NFL. By not extending Dak's contract and giving him some flexibility, they are losing time to win a deal for Lamb, who could reset the market on his own, whether it be with Dallas or another team.
If the Cowboys are “all in” as they say, Dak's contract extension would give them flexibility to work together in 2024 and bring in more free agents at positions of need. However, their lack of urgency could cost them their franchise QB and leave them out in the wilderness looking for a QB again.
