Advertisement
This is member-exclusive content
icon/ui/info filled

sportsCowboys

Cowboys’ slow-motion approach with CeeDee Lamb, Dak Prescott will cost Jerry Jones

As others around the league sign big contracts, the Cowboys’ stubborn sameness continues.

OXNARD, Calif. — Another day, another massive signing in the NFL. Now the Cowboys have made a wealthy young man out of Jordan Love (you think that 48-32 playoff win in Dallas didn’t help?). The Packers quarterback joined Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow and Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence in the 55 Million a Year club (Burrow and Lawrence have one extra year). There are now five quarterbacks from the 2020 draft set to make more than $50 million per season. Lawrence was drafted in 2021.

Meanwhile, Minnesota signed wide receiver Justin Jefferson Last month to a $35 million per season deal, the largest ever awarded to a non-quarterback. The Cowboys watch these things happen, Stephen Jones says negotiations are ongoing and the club had made another offer, Jerry Jones suggests he wants more information (”more leaves falling”) and the stubborn sameness of the Cowboys organization begins to overwhelm you.

The elder Jones said this week, “I’m good with math, I’m very good.” It just so happens that I am too, but you don’t really need to be skilled with numbers to note that the game has changed and being first or at least being quick to sign players is almost as important as the amount of money you pledge to pay. Former Eagles president Joe Banner said on X this week that the Cowboys’ stalling in negotiations was always considered an advantage in Philadelphia, and while it should be mentioned that a lot of former NFL folks like to take shots at the Cowboys on social media, certainly nothing has changed on Dallas’ slow-motion approach.

Take Jefferson, for example. Now, we can have a nice long discussion about how he’s actually had a better career than the Cowboys’ holdout receiver, CeeDee Lamb. Last year was the only time Lamb’s numbers were superior to the former LSU wideout taken five spots after Lamb in 2020, and that’s when both Jefferson and former Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins were injured.

Cowboys

Be the smartest Cowboys fan. Get the latest news.

Or with:

But the fact remains that Lamb is one of the game’s best, he’s enormously important to the Cowboys in an offense that is almost void of other explosive options, so who really even cares if he gets more than Jefferson through the benefit of timing? In two or three years, five other receivers will be making more than both of them, anyway.

The notion that Jerry even suggested he was waiting for more information this offseason is scary, given that the information is never good for those on management’s side. In a league where the salary cap grows 10 percent a year, star players’ salaries are going to jump and rapidly. That’s how Dak’s four-year $160 million a year deal signed three years ago has him tied for 14th on the quarterback payroll today.

Advertisement

There was a time when Jerry was ahead of the curve in this game. He was battling the 49ers’ Carmen Policy in the early days of free agency, fighting to see who could outsmart the new cap rules faster by loading up bonus money and spreading it over years of salary. Other teams were slow or reluctant to catch on. At this same time, Jones was rewriting how the league and individual teams did business, and, following his lead, the money came pouring in. If you didn’t like Jerry then, it was because he was obnoxious but never because he was watching the game pass him by.

What strikes you about this Cowboys’ team — one almost feels sorry for head coach Mike McCarthy for taking this squad into his contract year — is how little there is to excite fans in any kind of new and different way. Stephen Jones can talk up the great fortune of landing Kansas State guard Cooper Beebe in the third round, but 31 other teams have a draft class, too. In fact, this Cowboys’ draft is not regarded quite so highly by national outlets as it has been locally.

So what else is new? This team has a new defensive coordinator in 68-year-old Mike Zimmer, and that only happened because Dan Quinn went to Washington. The Cowboys’ signed Zimmer’s longtime linebacker Eric Kendricks in free agency. Let’s see, what else is there? Oh, Netflix is here to do a docuseries on (who else?) Jerry. Didn’t know the streaming world needed that. And there’s a new parking policy at camp where you have to get a ticket from SeatGeek every night, but that’s only a media deal.

Advertisement

The bottom line: A team that has won 12 games each of the last three seasons will be hard-pressed to get to 10-7 with the roster reductions that management has allowed to take place this offseason. Never heard of a good team so excited by the prospect of starting two rookies in the offensive line to open holes for a running back the team was done with two seasons ago.

The Cowboys of the ‘70s went to five Super Bowls as rivals around the league tried to copy not just Tom Landry’s coaching innovations but Gil Brandt’s computer that spit out projections no one else understood. The Cowboys of the ‘90s picked up three more Lombardi trophies with exemplary drafting by a former college coach and an imaginative front office.

Remember when the Cowboys’ Mike McCoy invented the draft chart everyone now uses for trades? Well, Jimmy Johnson remembers when he invented the draft chart or hired someone to do it for him, but you get the picture. They were a force to be reckoned with.

And today? The Cowboys lead the league in season-ticket renewal percentage, according to the Jones Boys. Said so proudly during that opening news conference. Not something a general manager or director of player personnel would be touting anywhere else in the NFL, but welcome to the 21st century and the ongoing saga of an unserious franchise.

More coming soon on Netflix.

X: @TimCowlishaw

Related Stories
View More
Advertisement

Find more Cowboys coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.