Dak Press Conference: Contract, Recovery, And More
FRISCO, Texas – After multiple years of speculation, debate, and uncertainty, Dak Prescott is officially signed to a multi-year deal with the Cowboys.
On Wednesday, Prescott, Jerry Jones, and Stephen Jones held a press conference to discuss the deal. DallasCowboys.com will be breaking down the contract and its implications for the next few days and weeks, but below are some quick highlights from Wednesday’s press conference.
- Early in the press conference Jerry Jones acknowledged the “conversation” that had formed over the last two years during the contract negotiations among fans and media. He admitted that the Cowboys played a part in that “conversation taking on a life of its own,” but he assured reporters that the decision was made with full confidence. “Don’t confuse that with how right we think this is,” Jones said.
- Jones went on to say that most everything special that he had been involved with had taken time to accomplish. He claimed that he thought they had figured out how to approach the situation before COVID-19 brought uncertainty to the team and league. “I’m going to blame a little bit of that ambiguity [on COVID-19].”
- The size and length of the contract suggested to some that Prescott “won” those negotiations with the Cowboys. Jones had a wry response to such thinking. “If anyone has ever taken advantage of me financially, I’m proud it’s the one next to me,” he said with a smile.
- For his part, Prescott said that when he first put a star on his helmet, he believed he would never wear another jersey. He claims he maintained that confidence throughout the last two years. “There was never a doubt in my mind that I would be a Cowboy for life,” Prescott said.
- As far as Prescott’s health, he certainly had the confidence of someone whose recovery from ankle surgery has gone well. He walked into the press conference with a suit on and no crutches. “I’m healthy,” Prescott said. “I have followed the doctor’s orders the whole time. I’m getting close. I’ll be ready when it matters.”
- Additionally, Prescott thanked former Washington quarterback Alex Smith for giving him inspiration for recovering from an even more significant injury (Smith broke his leg in two separate places in 2018) and winning the Comeback Player of the Year Award. Once Prescott saw Smith return with confidence despite a horrific injury, he knew he could just trust his own doctors to get him back on the field.
- Prescott admitted that, although he enjoys a physical style of play, he knows that he has to be smarter about when he is putting his body at risk. “The best ability is durability,” he said.
- Prescott also took issue with people saying that he “bet on himself.” To him, the results came based on what he accomplished and what he seeked to achieve. “I’m insulted when people say I gambled on myself. You get you what you put in.”
- The Prescott deal will take up the single most significant portion of the team’s salary cap, but Jerry Jones assured reporters that the defense would be addressed in free agency. “There’s [pie] left,” Jones said, referring to the remaining salary cap that the team can use in the offseason.
- Jones also made clear that he had two expectations for the following season: The team will travel to Oxnard, California for training camp and AT&T Stadium will be at full capacity for regular season games. He clarified that both will be done safely. “We’ve gotten better in the NFL at putting on a show with safety in mind.”
- A reporter asked if the Cowboys are the best team in the NFC East. Prescott: “Yes.” Stephen Jones: “Absolutely.” Prescott went on to say the goal was to have a parade in Dallas.
Spagnola: Here’s Setting The Dak Signing Straight
FRISCO, Texas – Been reminded of so many things that just make me go …
Seriously?
For right about 23 months, all we seemingly have heard is why aren’t the Cowboys signing Dak Prescott? Don’t they think he’s a franchise quarterback? What more does he have to prove? Just pay the guy.
So the Cowboys do, signing Dak to a robust, if not historic, four-year, $160 million deal, stuffed with a $66 million signing bonus and $126 million in guarantees. Which also includes additional voidable years just so they can spread out the prorated signing bonus over five years and also give them the right to restructure his $20 million 2022 base salary, turning a portion into bonus money that will prorate over the next five years and lower his salary cap hit.
But first thing we then hear is, well, the Cowboys paid Dak too much. Polls are taken on TV.
Seriously? What about all that pay the guy?
Or, for that much, why didn’t the Cowboys sign him sooner?
Seriously? Takes two to tango as they say, and I truly believe there were some underlying circumstances road-blocking the way.
Then this one, too, strikes my funny chord: Well, for that much money he had better win a Super Bowl.
Seriously? As if Dak alone is out there playing on the grass courts of Wimbledon. Just because he’s signing a huge contract doesn’t mean he will now play even better. Wonder if Patrick Mahomes, after signing his 10-year half-billion extension, took grief for not winning this past season’s Super Bowl.
And finally, always the ubiquitous: Who won the negotiation?
Seriously?
Hey, they both won.
And these are not solely the perceptions of the fans out there. The media, too, is guilty of playing both sides of the pancake on these matters, TV news anchors relying on live call-in polls to giddily shape opinions.
Ain’t it grand to be the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys?
Well, in Dak’s case, it darn well sure is. He will pocket a guaranteed $75 million in 2021, coming off his gruesome ankle injury, with the signing bonus and a $9 million base salary. He also is guaranteed $95 million over the first two years, with a $20 million guaranteed base salary next year.
But when you get caught up in all the bluster about this being the largest signing bonus or the largest guarantee in the history of the football world, look at it this way:
First of all, the $126 million is guaranteed over the first three years. If Dak should bomb, the Cowboys could get out after the 2023 season for $26.4 million in dead money. But again, as I constantly remind, when you marry yourself to one of these franchise-type quarterback deals, divorce is expensive.
Here is another way to look at this entire contract. If you add Dak’s $31.4 million tag from last year to his current four-year, $160 million deal, that comes to five years, $191.4 million, or an average of $38.8 million a year, so right about the going rate for one of these top quarterbacks.
Or how about doing this for the frugal type on what’s the Cowboys’ cost for Prescott’s consistently high level of play? Add what Dak made in 2019 to that above total, all of $2.025 million, coming to now $193.425 million, and divide that out by six years. That would mean the Cowboys are spending an average of $32.23 million a year on what they project as top quarterback play. Not bad, huh?
However you slice it, they both come out ahead.
Win-win, right? Nobody really loses, but then in the media book of obvious angles, that’s probably not one of the chapters. Come on, where is the demanded loser?
Here is another rub in this matter: Many are surprised this deal came to fruition, not just before the start of the 2021 league year, but completed at all.
To that I say, really? While most kept saying that last year Dak was betting on himself by settling for the franchise tag, that he would play at such a high level the price of doing business with the Cowboys would go up. But what didn’t factor into the equation was the possibility of suffering a career-ending injury with no future security. With no $50 million signing bonus from a long-term deal put in the bank the next day or a guaranteed of $110 million over five years.
Nothing to turn your nose up on, for sure.
But, like, what if? What if that injury Dak suffered had been career ending? Betting on yourself is one thing. Betting on your health is another when you have 250- to 300-pound guys chasing after you with frothing mouths 60 snaps a game. And don’t you know that gruesome compound ankle fracture and dislocation that ended his season in the fifth game last year had to be a sobering experience, physically, emotionally and financially.
Did he really want to gamble on his football mortality another year without future security? I’d think not.
And as I’ve previously pointed out, go ask his agent Todd France’s other franchised client from last season, Pittsburgh’s Bud Dupree, who tore his ACL in December. What do you think his free-agent market value becomes on the 17th just three months into his rehab, especially with the Steelers themselves cap-strapped?
Now then, looking at this deal financially, the Cowboys are banking on the new NFL TV contract ballooning greatly, banking on a significant salary cap increase over the next three years. That will help absorb Dak’s increasing base salaries, to the $20 million next year, to $31 million in 2023 that fully guarantees on the fifth day of the league year and then the $29 million in 2024 if that contract even reaches 2024.
Because if he’s playing at an absolutely-keep level then count on these two dancing over another contract after the 2023 season.
But with this contract structure, the Cowboys are counting on no further pandemic impacting attendance that fractures the salary cap again.
And then there is this, too: Harmony in the locker room. Look, these players were pulling for Dak, right? Just go on social media to see their reaction to the deal. He’s the guy. He’s the leader that as Sean Lee has said, you’d run through the wall for. Can’t put a price on creating positive energy in there.
That’s why Dak has become just the third quarterback in owner Jerry Jones’ 32 years who has been inked to at least a second contract, Troy Aikman and Tony Romo the other two, and each having signed a third contract, too.
The Cowboys can only hope Dak is playing at a level qualifying a third deal, Lombardi Trophy or not.
Dak, too.
After contract win, Cowboys’ Dak Prescott could earn more money than any player in NFL history
For two years, Dak Prescott gambled on himself. And for two years, the Dallas Cowboys sat across the table and bet against their starting quarterback and the mushrooming pay scale that surrounded him.
On Monday, the impasse was broken. Or if we’re searching for a more accurate descriptor, Prescott smashed it.
The 27-year-old QB achieved a four-year, $160 million deal that essentially makes him the highest paid player in NFL history (based on his contract value at signing) and sets Prescott in the running to achieve a gargantuan windfall over the course of his career that could ultimately make him the richest player the league has ever seen. That’s what Monday’s deal ultimately means for Prescott, who reached a $40-million-per-season plateau shared by Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson.
What sets Prescott apart from those players is his next window into extension negotiations, which should in theory take place after the third year of this deal (following the 2023 season). That period is considered significant because it will take place in the midst of a massive financial windfall of NFL revenues that will include a new television deal and what is expected to be expansive earnings related to gambling revenues skyrocketing over the next decade.
Any way you calculate it, it’s a landslide of a win for Prescott and his camp, which has been angling for an upper-level quarterback deal for the past two years, with their leverage exponentially increasing with each passing offseason. Now it has led Prescott to a remarkably lucrative intersection of spiking increases on the league’s quarterback pay scale and a robust financial future for the NFL that will drive free agent prices even higher in the the next decade. And it all comes in the time frame when Prescott and his camp desired: Inside a four-year deal rather than the five or six years of control that Dallas initially desired.
Prescott is on pace to sign as many as two more extensions inside this decade, given his chosen frame of four years of control. If that wasn’t enough, Prescott also has a powerful no-trade clause in this deal, along with Dallas having to franchise Prescott this week while it works out the details of this extension (which will count as Prescott’s second tag and virtually guarantee he can never be tagged again by any team in the future)
When you parse all of that out, Prescott won the money, control, freedom and years that he was looking for. Maybe the only thing he didn’t get was the ownership rights to the “D” in Dallas.
Here’s what Jerry Jones, Cowboys got at bargaining table
The deal isn’t an entirely lost proposition for the Cowboys, either. Not only does the franchise have its core leader locked up for the next four seasons, Prescott’s four-year extension is actually a six-year deal that voids down to four. That’s a vital reality for Dallas because it means the team gets to technically spread out his signing bonus over a six-year span. It’s a mechanism to lessen Prescott’s cap hit in 2021, which the deal does by lowering his salary from a $37.7 million franchise tag figure down to $22.2 million. That’s a significant change for the Cowboys, who will be looking to create breathing space when the salary cap is ultimately rolled back after the 2020 revenue shortfall from the pandemic impact.
And if we’re looking at this as a glass-half-full scenario for Dallas, it’s also worth mentioning that Prescott’s deal comes on the heels of his 2020 franchise tag. Technically, it means that Dallas ultimately achieved the five years of control that it was attempting to gain in negotiations last offseason — with one year coming under the 2020 franchise tag and then four years coming via an extension. If you look at this deal from that angle, it means Dallas has gotten the five years of control it sought last year (from 2020-2024) for somewhere between $191 million to $194 million depending on incentives. Is that significantly more than Dallas would have paid if it had done a long-term deal before the 2019 or 2020 season? Yes. But team owner Jerry Jones can ultimately point to Prescott having a five-year payout of around $38 million and frame that number as nothing more than another market-pacing deal rather than a blowout loss at the negotiating table.
Most contract negotiators will tell you it’s a sure sign of defeat if you have to work that hard to find the proper framing for your deal. But if it makes Jones and his son Stephen sleep better at night, so be it. History will remember that Dallas could have had Prescott for far cheaper and a far more lengthy deal if it had worked to get ahead of the quarterback contract curve following the 2018 season, Prescott’s third year as a starter. It didn’t, perhaps believing that Prescott’s market would ultimately settle far lower than it ultimately did.
How talks between Prescott, Cowboys heated up
The result was a negotiation that dragged on through some contentious lows, all while other market-setting quarterback deals were being cemented. And while the two sides got within shouting distance of each other last offseason, it wasn’t until last week that talks again became more productive between Stephen Jones and Prescott’s agent, Todd France. Ultimately, Jones blinked, giving in to the four-year, $160 million threshold for the tradeoff of a structure that would lower the immediate salary hit. And while Jerry Jones has appeared to have taken a backseat in these talks, it’s worth considering that the 78-year-old franchise owner was strongly reticent to start over again at a quarterback spot that can spiral into a search lasting years if not decades.
That sure helped penetrate the impasse that lingered between the Cowboys and Prescott’s camp, although it didn’t pick up steam until last week. Indeed, the situation was uncertain enough coming out of the weekend that one source familiar with the talks suggested that a likely scenario was Prescott getting tagged Tuesday and then the two sides ironing out a five-year, $200-million deal by July. The potential complication with that approach is that Dallas would also be in an even weaker position, with Prescott virtually certain to be heading into free agency following 2021 and putting its fate into the hands of other teams that would very likely bid his price even higher than what it is now.
Ultimately, Dallas came to its senses and declined to let other teams set the table with Prescott. And the result was the Cowboys absorbing a loss at the negotiating table that was two years in the making. Maybe it was because Dallas had to get Prescott’s cap number lower in 2021 to keep from backing the team into a difficult corner with its roster. Or perhaps it’s because Jerry Jones knows that the next television deal and wave of gambling revenues will cover it (and maybe because of both).
The resulting outcome was Prescott reaching astonishing salary heights for a player who was a fourth-round pick in 2016 and setting himself up for potential history if the next four seasons play out as he hopes.
WHO IS DAK PRESSCOTT
Rayne Dakota Prescott (born July 29, 1993) is an American football quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Mississippi State Bulldogs and was selected by the Cowboys in the fourth round of the 2016 NFL Draft.
Intended to serve as a backup in his rookie season, Prescott became the Cowboys’ starting quarterback after starter Tony Romo was injured in the preseason, and earned recognition during the year for his on-field success, which included helping the team clinch the top seed in their conference. Prescott set several rookie quarterback records and was named the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, and also earned a Pro Bowl selection. His career passer rating of 97.3 currently ranks seventh all-time.
Career highlights and awards
- NFL Rookie of the Year (2016)
- Offensive Rookie of the Month – November 2016
- Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Year winner (2016)
- 5× Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week
- 2× Pro Bowl (2016, 2018)
- 2× FedEx Air Player of the Week (2018)
- 2x NFC Offensive Player of the Week (Week 1, 2019, Week 11, 2019)
NFL records
In Week 6 of the 2016 season, Prescott, with 176 attempts, broke the record for most consecutive pass attempts without an interception to start a career; a record previously held by Tom Brady at 162 attempts in 2000–2001. This is also the record for consecutive attempts without an interception by a rookie, having broken the record set by Carson Wentz at 134 earlier in 2016. Wentz and Prescott had been exchanging the rookie record after having broken the Chad Hutchinson record of 95 set in 2002.
Prescott finished his 2016 rookie regular season with a record 11 games with an over 100 NFL passer rating, breaking the rookie record of nine games set by Russell Wilson in 2012. He tied the Ben Roethlisberger 2004 rookie record of winning 13 games as a starter. His NFL passer rating of 104.9 broke Robert Griffin III‘s rookie record of 102.4 set in 2012. His 0.87% interception to attempts (459–4) broke the rookie record of 1.27% (393–5) set by Robert Griffin III. He threw 23 touchdowns and 4 interceptions for a touchdown to interception ratio of 5.75 breaking the previous rookie record of 4.00 (20 touchdowns and 5 interceptions) set by Robert Griffin III, and for a touchdown to interception differential of 19 breaking Russell Wilson’s rookie record of 16 (26 touchdowns and 10 interceptions). His 67.76% pass completion percentage broke the rookie record of 66.44% set by Ben Roethlisberger. In a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on December 18, 2016, Prescott, with an 88.9% completion percentage, broke the rookie single game record of 87.0% set by Mike Glennon in 2013.
Cowboys franchise records
- Most Completions (game): 42 (2018-12-09 PHI)
- Most Completions (rookie season): 311 (2016)
- Most Completions (game, as a rookie): 32 (2016-12-18 TB)
- Most Pass Attempts (rookie season): 459 (2016)
- Most Passing Yards (rookie season): 3,667 (2016)
- Most Passing Touchdowns (rookie season): 23 (2016)
- Best Passer Rating (rookie season): 104.9 (2016)
- Best Passer Rating (game, as a rookie): 148.3 (2016-12-26 DET)
- Most Yds/Pass Att (rookie season): 7.99 (2016)
- Most Pass Yds/Game (career): 245.6
- Most Pass Yds/Game (season): 306.6 (2019)
- Most Pass Yds/Game (rookie season): 229.2 (2016)
- Most 300+ yard passing games (rookie season): 3
- Completion Percentage (career): 65.8%
- Interception Percentage: (career: minimum 16 starts): 1.8%
- Interception Percentage: (season/rookie season): 0.9% (2016)
- Most sacks taken: (season) 56 (2016)
- Most 4th Quarter Comebacks (rookie season): 5 (2016)
- Most 4th Quarter Comebacks (season): 5 (2016, tied with Tony Romo in 2012)
