For two years, Dak Prescott bet on himself. And for two years, the Dallas Cowboys sat across the table and bet against their starting quarterback and the growing pay scale that surrounded him.
On Monday, the impasse was broken. Or, if we are looking for a more accurate descriptor, Prescott destroyed it.
The 27-year-old QB managed a four-year, $ 160 million deal that essentially makes him the highest-paid player in NFL history (based on the value of his signing contract) and puts Prescott on the run to make an unexpected fortune by over the course of his career, which could make him the richest player the league has ever seen. That’s what Monday’s deal means for Prescott, who has reached a $ 40 million per season threshold divided by Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson.
What sets Prescott apart from these players is his next window into extension negotiations, which in theory should take place after the third year of this agreement (after the 2023 season). This period is considered significant because it will take place amid an enormous financial fortune from the NFL’s revenues that will include a new television deal and what is expected to be expansive gains related to gambling revenues skyrocketing in the next decade.
Whichever way you calculate, it is an overwhelming victory for Prescott and his team, who have been seeking a top-level quarterback deal for the past two years, with their leverage increasing exponentially with each passing season. Now this has led Prescott to a remarkably profitable intersection of increases in the league’s quarterback pay scale and a robust financial future for the NFL that will drive free agent prices even higher in the next decade. And it all comes in the period of time that Prescott and his team wanted: within a four-year contract, instead of the five or six years of control that Dallas originally wanted.
Prescott is on track to sign up to two more extensions this decade, given the chosen framework of four years of control. If that weren’t enough, Prescott also has a powerful no-trade clause in this deal, along with Dallas having to franchise Prescott this week while working out the details of this extension (which will count as Prescott’s second tag and virtually guarantee that he can never be scored again by any team in the future)
When you look at it all, Prescott earned the money, control, freedom and years he was looking for. Perhaps the only thing he didn’t get was the “D” property rights in Dallas.
Here’s what Jerry Jones, Cowboys have at the negotiating table
Nor is the deal a totally lost proposition for the Cowboys. The franchise not only has its top leader in jail for the next four seasons, but Prescott’s four-year extension is actually a six-year contract that spans four. This is a vital reality for Dallas because it means that the team can technically distribute its hiring bonus over a six-year period. It is a mechanism to lower the limit reached by Prescott in 2021, which the business does by reducing its salary from $ 37.7 million in deductibles to $ 22.2 million. This is a significant change for Cowboys, who will seek to create breathing space when the salary cap is reversed after the 2020 revenue drop due to the impact of the pandemic.
And if we’re looking at this as a half-full scenario for Dallas, it’s also worth mentioning that Prescott’s business comes in the wake of his 2020 franchise brand. Technically, that means Dallas has finally achieved five years of control. who was trying to win in the off-season negotiations – with one year coming under the 2020 franchise brand and four years coming through an extension. If you look at this business from this angle, it means that Dallas obtained the five years of control it sought last year (from 2020-2024) for between $ 191 million and $ 194 million, depending on the incentives. Is that significantly more than Dallas would have paid if he had made a long-term deal before the 2019 or 2020 season? yea. But team owner Jerry Jones can finally point to Prescott having a payment of about $ 38 million over five years and frame that number as nothing more than another market pace deal, rather than a blown-out loss. negotiating table.
Most contract negotiators will say it is a clear sign of defeat if you have to work so hard to find the right framework for your business. But if it makes Jones and his son Stephen sleep better at night, so be it. History will remember that Dallas could have bought Prescott for a much cheaper and much longer price if he had worked to stay ahead of the quarterback’s contract curve after the 2018 season, Prescott’s third year as a starter. It did not, perhaps believing that Prescott’s market would end up well below what it ended up with.
How conversations between Prescott and Cowboys heat up
The result was a negotiation that dragged on through some contentious casualties, while other quarterback businesses that defined the market were being cemented. And while the two sides stayed close to each other in the off-season, it wasn’t until last week that conversations became more productive between Stephen Jones and Prescott’s agent, Todd France. Ultimately, Jones blinked, giving in to the $ 160 million four-year limit for changing a structure that would reduce the immediate impact on wages. And although Jerry Jones appears to have been second to none in these negotiations, it is worth considering that the 78-year-old franchise owner was strongly reluctant to start again in a quarterback position that could turn into a quest that could last for years, if not decades.
This certainly helped to penetrate the impasse that persisted between the Cowboys and Prescott’s camp, although it did not gain momentum until last week. In fact, the situation was uncertain enough coming out of the weekend that a source familiar with the negotiations suggested that a likely scenario would be Prescott being tagged on Tuesday and then the two sides closing a $ 200 million deal in five years. in July. The potential complication with this approach is that Dallas would also be in an even weaker position, with Prescott practically sure to go into free action after 2021 and put his fate in the hands of other teams that would most likely offer his price even higher than the that is now.
Ultimately, Dallas came to his senses and refused to let other teams set the table with Prescott. And the result was the Cowboys absorbing a two-year loss at the negotiating table. Perhaps it was because Dallas had to decrease the maximum number of Prescott in 2021 to avoid putting the team in a difficult corner with its squad. Or maybe it’s because Jerry Jones knows that the next television business and the wave of revenue from the game will cover him (and perhaps because of both).
The resulting result was Prescott reaching surprising salary heights for a player who was picked in the fourth round in 2016 and preparing for the potential story if the next four seasons unfold as he expects.
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