As quiet as the Dallas Cowboys have been on the open market this offseason, the same is true for their internal order of business. Quarterback Dak Prescott, wide receiver CeeDee Lamb and star pass rusher Micah Parsons are all due for raises on their next deals. The Cowboys have expressed clear interest in keeping all three in Dallas for the long haul, but no extensions have been signed.
What’s the pecking order of importance between the three? Who could be the odd man out? Can the Cowboys end their championship drought with all three on massive deals? We asked The Athletic’s Cowboys beat writers, Jon Machota and Saad Yousuf, to evaluate the situation.
Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox. Sign up
Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox. Sign up
Buy
Between the three big contracts the Cowboys have on deck, how would you rank them in terms of importance?
Machota: Dak Prescott, Micah Parsons, then CeeDee Lamb. Prescott is the team’s leader and plays the most important position. There just aren’t enough franchise quarterbacks available in the NFL. His deal is also going to take up the most salary cap space. Parsons is an absolute game-changer on defense. You could argue that drafting him is the biggest reason Dallas has put together three consecutive 12-win regular seasons. Lamb has become one of the NFL’s elite wide receivers and deserves to be paid like one. However, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to make someone one of the highest-paid wide receivers and not know who will be getting him the ball. And that’s another reason getting Prescott’s deal done is atop this list. To maximize Lamb’s value, the Cowboys need to have a quality starting quarterback.
Advertisement
Yousuf: When one of the players in the group is a franchise quarterback, that will always be at the top of the list in importance. Prescott gives the Cowboys a sense of security. He has a strong presence as a leader in the locker room and is a top-10 regular-season quarterback on the field. Whether you’re a front office or a fan base, Prescott is the type of player you can talk yourself into as the guy, despite all of the postseason shortcomings over the past decade or so.
The Lamb and Parsons situations are a bit more nuanced. Both are among the very best at their positions — elite talents the Cowboys drafted in the first round. However, as mentioned, Lamb plays a position more dependent on his surroundings, particularly the quarterback. He has a good rapport with Prescott, but if there’s an issue with Prescott, it trickles down to Lamb, too. Lamb’s talent is indisputable, but his chemistry with a non-Prescott quarterback is a mystery.
In a league where the quarterback position is the most important, pressuring the quarterback is highly important, too. Few do it better than Parsons. The main reason an extension for him falls to third for me is simply because of the time the Cowboys have, as Parsons still has two years left on his rookie deal.
GO DEEPER
Five key questions regarding Dak Prescott's contract situation
If there was an odd man out in terms of his future with the Cowboys between Prescott, Lamb and Parsons, who would it be?
Machota: Parsons. I believe all three will get re-signed because Jerry Jones rarely lets stars leave in the prime of their careers. It’s one of the reasons the Cowboys are being so cautious with their spending in free agency. They don’t want to put themselves in a position where they might not be able to re-sign all three. Parsons is the choice only because his asking price could get to a level where the Cowboys determine they might be better off going in another direction.
Advertisement
San Francisco 49ers edge rusher Nick Bosa currently tops the NFL as the highest-paid defender at $34 million per season. Parsons is probably going to want to top that number. But by how much? If it’s in that neighborhood, everything will probably work itself out. But what if it’s significantly more than that? If contract talks get ugly, maybe they try to work out a trade. I don’t see it getting to that level, but it can’t be completely ruled out.
Yousuf: The Parsons reasoning is valid. The wide receiver position, relative to pass rusher and quarterback, could be a point against Lamb.
Prescott has eight full years in the NFL under his belt. Even if you throw out his injury-shortened 2020 campaign, seven years is a large enough sample size to form judgments. Prescott, as good as he’s been in the regular season, has fallen short in the postseason. The same can be said for the entire team, but Prescott has generally been more part of the problem than the exception to it when the stakes are highest.
The other consideration is the price point. In recent years, the Cowboys have seen their conference rivals, the 49ers, and their division rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, reach the Super Bowl with quarterbacks on rookie deals. Neither Brock Purdy nor Jalen Hurts was a top-50 draft pick, though both were supported by strong rosters.
History suggests those are the exceptions, but it can be a consideration for the Cowboys, especially with the lack of postseason success under Prescott and if Trey Lance shows anything of substance this summer. The risk of the other side is wandering in the Chad Hutchinson/Quincy Carter/Vinny Testaverde/Drew Bledsoe wilderness.
Do you foresee any of these being an issue when it comes to attendance in offseason practices and training camp?
Machota: It’s certainly possible. Prescott not showing up to offseason workouts or training camp would be the biggest surprise. He’s been in a similar situation before and still showed up. Lamb or Parsons could stay away, considering this might be the biggest contract of their careers. Doing so might provide some pretty good leverage in contract talks. It worked for Zack Martin last year during training camp.
Advertisement
I wonder how Prescott, Lamb and Parsons feel about how little the Cowboys have done through the first three weeks of free agency. The combination of no new contract extensions for their top players, former teammates leaving in free agency and not much being added sounds like the recipe for a frustrated team. But Jerry Jones might be just fine with some frustration among the players after the season ended the way it did.
Yousuf: Lamb would be the one I’d be most concerned about, especially if training camp rolls around and a new extension hasn’t been signed. In public comments, Parsons seemed to be pretty accepting of his place in line and appeared to understand that the Cowboys have an order of business they have to follow. Prescott is the leader of the team. Whether or not he sits out during OTAs — and there has been no indication he would do that — I would fully expect him to be present at training camp. At his position, with everything he’s proven and going into a contract year, Lamb seems to be the one with the best chance of holding out.
What is your confidence level that the Cowboys can win a Super Bowl with all three signed to huge deals?
Machota: About where it’s been for the last decade. Until they advance beyond the divisional round, there’s no reason to believe any of these seasons are going to be better than the last 28. Although those three players didn’t exactly have their best games against the Packers in the wild-card round, they are still too valuable to move on from. It’s a good bet that almost every team in the league would like to have those three decisions to make.
Paying all three will put the Cowboys in a tough spot in terms of acquiring veteran talent, but they haven’t been a major player in that area for over a decade. It’ll come down to drafting well to fill in the gaps. Dallas has been one of the NFL’s better drafting teams over the last 10 years. Not every draft has had great returns, but more often than not, the Cowboys have found useful talent. And it must continue if Prescott, Lamb and Parsons are all re-signed. My confidence level is higher in them getting over the hump with those three than it would be without them on the roster.
GO DEEPER
Cowboys NFL Draft 2024 guide: Picks, predictions and key needs
Yousuf: The answer to this question revolves around two things: these three players and their potential contracts. When it comes to the players, we have a sample to go off of. All three have been front and center the past three seasons, and the results are what they are. I understand the fatigue many fans probably have in hearing the same talking point of 12 wins in each of the past three seasons — but it’s not nothing, even if postseason wins haven’t resulted.
However, this has come with just Prescott on a market deal and Parsons and Lamb on rookie contracts. Even with the salary cap increases, adding substantial dollars to Parsons and Lamb, while keeping Prescott at market value, will heavily limit a Cowboys’ front office that is already averse to spending money, especially on the open market.
The only glimmer of hope is that the Cowboys have been a team that drafts well. If you can hit on draft picks and get players on rookie deals contributing in major roles, like Parsons and Lamb in recent years (and Prescott before them), having a significant amount of the cap tied to a few players can work — if those players perform to their value in the regular season and postseason. Cowboys players just haven’t done that the past three decades.
(Top photo of CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)