“Yeah, right here we go,” certainly.
The Cowboys made headlines this offseason by: (1) claiming they had been all in for 2024; and (2) do completely nothing to show it. This dichotomy helped conceal a a lot greater drawback throughout the workforce, one that might forestall them from going all-in.
They’ve contract points with three of their key gamers: quarterback Dak Prescott, receiver CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons. And so they have proven no inclination to do something aside from delay, delay, and delay.
That’s how they bought into their present mess with Prescott. By not providing him a good contract after his third season as an opening-day fourth-round starter, the Cowboys postponed the deal till his four-year contract expired. Then they used the franchise tag and didn’t signal him to a long-term deal earlier than the mid-July deadline, delaying the difficulty as soon as once more. Confronted with the applying of a second tag and the shortcoming to clear for one more yr (for his third tag he would have gotten a 44 p.c increase over his second tag), the Cowboys panicked, giving to Prescott a four-year, $160 contract. One million greenback contract that assured he would hit the open market with out an extension.
Now they appear content material to let him end the contract and hit the market in 2025. Mainly, he will probably be subsequent yr’s Kirk Cousins.
The Cowboys seem like banking on the truth that no different workforce can pay him what he requested for throughout negotiations to increase the deal final yr and this yr. In addition they seem like daring him to go away, believing that the lure of enjoying for the Cowboys – with the advertising and marketing and post-career alternatives that entails – will lead him to just accept their finest supply, no matter which may be. .
It’s a calculated threat that the Cowboys don’t have any alternative however to just accept, as they’ve put themselves in a bind by dragging their toes early in Dak’s profession.
They do the identical factor with Lamb. 4 years into his first-round contract in 2020, they will squat him for the fifth-year possibility (at $17.99 million) and a franchise tag, or two. Nonetheless, within the meantime, they solely make the eventual contract dearer. Particularly after different receivers (like Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase) bought their second contracts.
The Cowboys may find yourself discovering themselves in a nook once more whereas they wait, and that might result in them letting Lamb hit the open market with out ever giving him a second multi-year contract.
After which there’s Parsons. Some imagine the workforce’s flagship radio station considers his act “put on skinny» was planted by the workforce, with the goal of encouraging them to need much less. If that’s not the case (and we expect it’s not), the Cowboys ought to most likely discover a option to publicly repudiate that opinion, given the breath of legitimacy that the connection between the Cowboys and 105.3 carries. The Fan.
The Cowboys had no qualms publication on their official web site an article that twisted Lamb’s phrases to make it seem to be he gained’t boycott offseason exercises. Why not take 15 or 20 minutes and concoct one thing that pushes again towards the feedback about Parsons?
It’s an odd state of affairs, all issues thought of. And that raises the query of whether or not the Cowboys actually know the right way to handle and appease star gamers within the period of the wage cap and free company.
Their final championship collection got here with a workforce constructed and nurtured at first of free company. Since then, they haven’t compiled a squad for the championship. Their present efforts to attain this have been undermined by misguided delaying ways on the subject of paying their finest younger gamers.
They did it with Dak, they do it with Lamb, and it may include Parsons.
How is it going ? Regardless of every thing Jerry and Stephen Jones have executed to maintain the workforce as massive, profitable and useful as an organization, they haven’t actually been in a position to refine a workforce able to thriving on the sphere – as in testifies TWENTY-NINE YEARS OLD between NFC Championship appearances.
As prompt Tuesday Dwell PFT, the Joneses (for all they do nicely) appear to be three issues on the subject of correctly dealing with younger star gamers: (1) low-cost; (2) myopic; and (3) not as sensible as they assume they’re. (All due respect.) And that retains the Cowboys from being pretty much as good as they are often.
In order that’s what you must be loopy about, Cowboys followers. Don’t be mad at gamers who need truthful contracts. Don’t be indignant on the media for highlighting the dysfunction. Be mad on the Cowboys, who appear to assume that enjoying for the workforce has some type of inherent worth that ought to make gamers take much less of it.
This tactic doesn’t work. And so they don’t appear keen to confess it.
