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Todd Archer, ESPN Staff WriterAug 28, 2024, 06:14 PM ET
- Todd Archer is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Dallas Cowboys. Archer has covered the NFL since 1997 and Dallas since 2003. He joined ESPN in 2010. You can follow him on Twitter at @toddarcher.
FRISCO, Texas — Now that the Dallas Cowboys have signed wide receiver CeeDee Lamb to a deal worth $136 million, where does that leave the team in its contract discussions with quarterback Dak Prescott?
“It’ll remain like it’s been,” owner and general manager Jerry Jones said Wednesday.
The sides have had discussions, but nothing appears close at the moment. Prescott said in the final week of training camp in Oxnard, California, that talks were going in the right direction, and he reiterated he wants to remain with the Cowboys.
With Lamb under a contract that makes him the second-highest-paid receiver in the NFL at $34 million annually, the Cowboys can pivot completely to talks with Prescott, but Jones said the focus of the organization is on the Sept. 8 season opener against the Cleveland Browns.
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Jones said he has had no indication from Prescott’s side that talks would not continue without an agreement in place by the start of the season.
What more does Jones need to see for him to give Prescott, who is entering his ninth year as the Cowboys’ starting quarterback, a new deal?
“You could easily say, ‘If you haven’t seen it by now, you haven’t seen it,'” he said. “I’m such a fan of Dak’s and appreciate all of the great things that we all know that is there. And I appreciate his work ethic more than anything out here. I can’t tell you how proud I am that we’ve got him this year to start this campaign. … When you look at a situation, you’ve got also got to weigh, ‘OK, what are the consequences of the other side of the coin?’ And so Dak’s situation right now for me, from my mirror, has more to do with our situation than it does with the merits of Dak Prescott being the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys.”
If the Cowboys do not reach a deal with Prescott, the club will be looking at next season with no quarterbacks signed for 2025. Prescott, Cooper Rush and Trey Lance are all set to be free agents in March.
The Cowboys cannot place the franchise tag on Prescott, who is in the final year of his four-year, $140 million deal he signed in 2021. If Prescott hits free agency in March, he would count $40 million against the Cowboys’ cap in 2025.
“Contracts isn’t the end-all solution, and some of the best decisions that I’ve been a part of with the Cowboys have been when we didn’t have contracts one way or the other, with a player on our team or some other team,” Jones said. “So I quit a long time ago getting bent out of shape about having anybody under contract or not. And there’s all kinds of other things other than a contract that could change the outcome of him being under contract — injury, the level of play — so you can’t just pick that and say, ‘That should give you a better feeling about our team,’ or me a better feeling. The whole thing has a lot of moving parts.
“Now I can live with that and to live with it. You have to because we play a game that it can change on the next play.”
