DALLAS – Everyday life in the United States, and especially in the NFL, had to change radically with the new reality that marked the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago.
Almost everything has changed, from the way the teams prepared in the previous offseason, the cancellation of the pre-season games, to the playoff format before reaching the Super Bowl.
Everything has changed, except for one thing: the conversation about the situation between the Dallas Cowboys and defender Dak Prescott.
This week marks three years since Prescott and the Cowboys began talks about giving the quarterback a contract extension for several seasons.
“There is no way to go without the family members of this team. Dak is part of the Cowboys family, so we have to solve it, ”said Jerry Jones, the owner of the team on February 24, 2020, during the NFL Combination in Indianapolis, an event that was canceled in 2021 due to the pandemic.
The deadline for the Cowboys to accept the contract extension or designate Prescott as a franchise player began last Tuesday and ends on March 9th. Most likely, the label has “exclusive rights”, because if Dallas uses the one that gives up this exclusivity, it risks losing the passerby or paying even more than the minimum demands required by its work team.
The vast majority of NFL analysts and former Cowboys players, as well as other teams, agree that if Prescott arrives at the free agency on March 15, he will be the most coveted defender without being available.
Should the Cowboys decide to nominate him as a franchisee without exclusive rights, they would have a chance to match any offer they make to Prescott to stay on the team. If he decides to let him go where he offers the most, the team that hires the passer will compensate the Cowboys with two first-round collegiate picks.
However, the option of leaving his defender unprotected is inconceivable in the Cowboys, or so Jones said a year ago.
“I will not give up your rights in any way for a minute,” Jones said during the 2020 Research Combination, according to the team’s website.
Jones is confident that Prescott will return fully recovered from an ankle and right foot injury that ended at the start of his season in the fifth game of 2020, when he played at his best, despite all the shortcomings he suffered. . on both sides of the ball.
The 27-year-old Prescott has already played for the label of exclusive rights player in 2020, which translated into a guaranteed victory of 31.4 million dollars.
If he plays in 2021 with the same designation, his salary will be around $ 37.7 million, also guaranteed and reflected 100 percent in the $ 180 million salary cap already announced by the NFL.
If the Cowboys label Prescott with exclusive rights, they will have until July to negotiate with him the legendary contract of several years. This contract would help the Cowboys breathe the salary cap, as the money, including the signing bonus, will be split over the life of the deal.
Whatever happens, the Cowboys will have to rearrange or restructure the contracts of different players in order to have a way to label or reach a multi-year agreement with Prescott, because until Wednesday, February 24, 2021, they did not have enough space for the Prescott settlement.
“(The quarterbacks) own the franchise,” Troy Aikman, a former quarterback and Hall of Famer of the Cowboys, said in January. “They have to be the ones who actually establish the culture and the responsibility within the team and if you don’t have the right guy in that position, then you will actually have problems as an organization.
“In my opinion, Dak ticks all the boxes correctly. That’s why I’ve said in recent years that I wouldn’t hesitate to pay him, “Aikman said.