DALLAS — Just like that, Dak Prescott is no longer the NFC East’s only $40 million-a-year quarterback. And, no, after a trip to the Super Bowl, Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts has not joined the club. That will happen next year when Hurts more likely blows right by the group.
The division’s new $40 Million Man is New York’s Daniel Jones, which has to come as a surprise to just about everyone, most of all Giants fans. A player so uninspiring (and turnover-prone) in his first three seasons that the club did not even pick up his fifth-year option last season, Jones managed enough of an upgrade in 2022 to guide New York to the playoffs, even if it was a short-lived visit as a 9-7-1 team. For that, his four-year $160 million deal was achieved, although really it was more a matter of exquisite timing. The Giants’ ability to sign him allowed the club to place the franchise tag on running back Saquon Barkley, just as Dallas did with Tony Pollard.
If that sounds like an atrocious amount of money to pay for Jones, that comes in the future. For 2023, his cap hit is $19 million. The Cowboys, meanwhile, pay the piper this season for signing Prescott to his similar deal with a cap hit of $49 million. So while you might prefer the combination of Dak and Pollard to that of Jones and Barkley (you also might not, based on Jones’ play the second half of 2022), the Cowboys’ backfield duo starts the salary cap process at $30 million more than the Giants’ pair.
Now it’s true that the market has arrived at (and, in some cases, surpassed) what we saw as a rather monstrous contract for Prescott when it was signed. Derek Carr, who was benched by the Raiders this season, a move that may have kept him from leading the league in interceptions instead of Dak, just got four years and $150 million from supposedly cash-strapped New Orleans. Arizona’s Kyler Murray and Denver’s Russell Wilson have bigger deals than Dak’s, and you wouldn’t trade Prescott for either one.
At least you wouldn’t unless you believed Dak was going to repeat 2022 when he tied Houston’s Davis Mills for the interception lead with 15. That can’t happen again. If it does, and last year does not prove to be an anomalous blemish on Prescott’s resume, then it won’t matter much what the Cowboys do next week in free agency or next month in the draft.
Prescott’s contract no longer ranks among the top five at his position in average value, total guaranteed money or in average percentage of the salary cap. But this year his $49 million cap hit — unless altered by an extension or restructure — ranks behind only Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes. One of those achieved his enormous payday through an unusual circumstance that produced free agency while the other simply takes the Chiefs to Super Bowls every year.
But it’s the big bite that Dak’s deal takes out of the 2023 salary cap (about 22%) that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was lamenting last week at the Indianapolis scouting combine.
“We want to get all the talent around him, but as you know, when you have a competitive paid quarterback in the NFL, then you’re not going to be able to get the most skill around him. You can’t pay that position in the NFL and then put the exact thing around him,’’ Jones said.
“When Dak first got here, we had one of the best offensive lines, in my mind, that had been out on the field in a long time. We had that and we had the skill offensively.”
That was a line with Travis Frederick at center along with younger, healthier versions of Tyron Smith and Zack Martin, not to mention Ezekiel Elliott playing at the highest level he would reach, rushing for more than 1,600 yards as a rookie. They don’t have that now, and the Cowboys have tough decisions to make at each spot — offensive line, wide receiver, tight end and running back — in the next few days. It’s one thing to compile a list of “wants” or “must-haves.’’ It’s another entirely to fashion a roster when Dak and DeMarcus Lawrence are eating up one-third of the $225 million cap on their own.
It’s no surprise that in the last few years, the Eagles’ Hurts, Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow, the Rams’ Jared Goff and Mahomes himself led teams to Super Bowl on their rookie contracts. That’s really the most favorable way to manage the cap, but it takes possessing a highly talented young quarterback to make it happen.
You can look at the manner in which the offensive talent has been stripped down in Kansas City with the Chiefs now in Mahomes’ second contract. It feels like Mahomes and Travis Kelce and a bunch of guys, but that’s still enough because of the absurdly high levels the quarterback and tight end have reached. The Cowboys missed the boat when Dak was young and cheap. I’ll leave it to you today to apportion the blame between Aaron Rodgers making Hall of Fame throws in the 2016 playoffs or Jones’ decision to strip down the secondary and rebuild in the 2017 draft.
Either way, that’s long gone. Dak turns 30 before next season and the Cowboys must either push his contract into the future, delaying those staggering cap hits into the future, or deal with it in 2023. Winning is still in the cards. Watching how the sausage gets made for the next month might look exactly how that sounds.
