It's time for the Cowboys to make some decisions.
Four teams will compete on Sunday for a ticket to Super Bowl V, and unfortunately none of them will be the Dallas Cowboys. Over the past 27 years, we have become accustomed to this ritual. So the number 28 shouldn't be that difficult.
It's clear that the goal is for the Cowboys to play in the final game of the season this weekend and a year from now. It feels hard to imagine this being the case at this point, as the team has already decided to bring Mike McCarthy back in 2024 and do so with him in a contract year. Generally speaking, these types of situations don't tend to end well, but Jason Garrett found himself in one in 2014, finishing the season with a 12-4 record. However, his team lost to all coaches Mike McCarthy in the playoffs.
With McCarthy's contract situation established, the next focus will naturally turn to Dak Prescott. Dak carries a $60 million cap hit (rounded up slightly) in 2024, so it makes every sense for the Cowboys to extend him this offseason. But Dallas' loss in the playoffs was incredibly damaging and called almost everything into question.
Either way, the Cowboys need to make a decision, and they need to be confident in it.
An argument could be made that the Dallas Cowboys need to be at full strength in 2024.
The post linked above explains the facts surrounding Dak Prescott and why his extension seems inevitable. Prescott is a quarterback worth paying for, but no one can deny that the current situation is one where it's fair to question everything, including Dak Prescott.
It would be monumental for Dallas to absorb Prescott's entire cap hit next season, but as many have pointed out, the team likely does so in the name of preserving future options. We are ready and willing to do so. Given that McCarthy himself is currently in a contract year, the Cowboys have no choice but to play quarterback from a schedule standpoint, as the new head coach (hypothetically in 2025) will likely want some say in the quarterback situation. It would be natural for the head coach to line up with.
You can check the facts, but it helps to get an opinion from an expert. The incomparable Jason Fitzgerald wrote an article on his OverTheCap.com examining the Dak Prescott situation. Well worth your time.
Fitzgerald touched on all sides of the coin, including Dak's complete cut, complete extension, and rebuild, but he offered something particularly interesting about the 2024 season. Bold emphasis is mine.
Should Dallas extend Prescott?
I think this is a difficult decision, but perhaps the lessons learned from the Romo extension can be applied here. Romo had a great year in Dallas after his contract extension, but then his body deteriorated and he appeared in just five games over two years. In the end, Dallas incurred about $62 million in additional cap charges, the equivalent of a 12-win season and a division-round playoff loss. Dallas ended up getting Prescott's rookie contract perks that offset Romo's cap hit, so they had no problem signing Romo.
Prescott probably has a lower injury risk, but you have to ask yourself what Romo's biggest underlying issue was. If you can't win with Prescott's $40 million salary, why do you think you can win with him at $60 million? 1 year? Really, this comes down to the fundamental issue of having another option because the team isn't looking for other options at the position, but that's a topic for another day.
If Dallas intends to extend Prescott, they will likely need to reevaluate some of the things they are doing in roster construction. Given the size of the contract, Dallas likely puts all its chips in the middle of the table in 2024 and 2025 in terms of salary cap structure and actually takes more risk in free agency to improve its overall roster. You should start taking it. Dallas is usually at the top of the NFL in number of raw players, but when they need reinforcements from time to time, they have to take outside risks and deal with the cap implications later. Extending Prescott and business as usual doesn't seem to make much sense.
At the end of the day, this all comes down to the Cowboys picking one camp to operate in and doing so with all the energy they have. If they think Dak has a future and want to extend him, they need to do it as soon as possible in order to experience salary cap relief around him both now and in the future. . Again, this is if they are committed to him long-term.
But if the Cowboys have any doubts about Prescott being their quarterback beyond 2025, which they certainly have, they can't just put one foot in and throw the other out. It's not ideal in the truest sense of the word, but it does everything it can to run a team as competitive as possible while retaining future freedom and the ability to move forward beyond 2024. You can also build things to do. throughout the season.
But as Fitzgerald has shown, and as we all know well, the idea of going all-in on the season is pretty antithetical to the way the Dallas Cowboys prefer to operate. They don't like chasing big-name free agents or getting involved in the NFL Draft. They like to build teams that can sustainably compete over the long term, but this becomes a more difficult proposition when charging it to a credit card (so to speak).
But then again, if the team really wants to move forward in 2024 with Mike McCarthy in a contract year, they've already taken a step down this path. If they choose to work on the roster building portion of the offseason as usual, they will actually be living in both worlds at the same time, and that is never a path to real success.
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