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How Cowboys botched Dak Prescott extension in wake of Jared Goff deal

Originally posted on ClutchPoints | By Matthew Schmidt | Last updated 5/14/24

The Dallas Cowboys have been locked in a stalemate with quarterback Dak Prescott in contract negotiation talks, and in the meantime, the Detroit Lions just signed fellow signal-caller Jared Goff to a four-year, $212 million deal.

That’s $53 million annually for Goff, which is probably in the neighborhood of what the Cowboys wanted to pay Prescott.

Key word: wanted, in past tense.

Goff’s deal just provided Prescott with more leverage in negotiations.

For a while now, we have been hearing rumblings that Prescott is aiming to secure a long-term deal that will pay him $60 million annually. Many laughed at this assertion. Sixty millions dollars a year for Dak Prescott? Who is he? Tom Brady? Joe Montana? Johnny Unitas?

Well, no, but he does play in a modern NFL where quarterbacks reset the market almost every year. Would anyone have thought Goff was worth $53 million heading into last season? No, but he had a solid year, took the Lions to the NFC Championship Game, and voila! He gets $53 million per year.

The Cowboys have been trying to play hardball with Prescott, who is preparing to enter the final year of his current deal. There has even been chatter that Dallas could potentially allow Prescott to play out 2024 on a one-year contract and then let him test free-agent waters next March. You can see the strategy the Cowboys were planning to employ. Let Prescott hit the open market, see no one is going to pay him what he wants, and then sign him back on a more economical deal.

But that scheme may be out the window now that Detroit just upped the ante with Goff.

Prescott just finished second in MVP voting after leading the NFL with 36 touchdown passes, so he obviously feels he is worth big bucks. And who could blame him? For all of his warts and in spite of his 2-5 playoff record, Prescott is a good quarterback. A very good one, in fact. He is probably top 10 in the league, and that’s being conservative.

Plus, he is just 30 years old and turns 31 in July. No, he isn’t young, but you have to figure that he has at least five good years left in the tank. It’s not like he’s asking for an extension at 34 or 35. He is two years older than Goff, and the Cowboys may try and use that in negotiations, but it probably won’t matter all that much.

Here is the question, though: how much flak should we be giving Jerry Jones and Dallas’ front office for not extending Prescott when they had the chance?

Can we really blame the Cowboys here?

August 10, 2019; Santa Clara, CA, USA; Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott (4) and owner Jerry Jones (right) before the game against the San Francisco 49ers at Levi's Stadium. August 10, 2019; Santa Clara, CA, USA; Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott (4) and owner Jerry Jones (right) before the game against the San Francisco 49ers at Levi’s Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Let’s be honest: most people didn’t think Prescott was worth $60 million annually before Goff landed his new deal, so there is going to be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on now that Goff just got paid.

It’s an easy thing to do. Wait until something happens, and then either adjust your opinion and act like nothing ever happened or state your opinion for the first time as if you held that belief all along when, in fact, you really didn’t.

And you know what? An argument can still be made that Prescott shouldn’t get $60 million. Is he $7 million per year better than Goff, who just quietly had back-to-back really good years in Detroit and has had much more playoff success than Prescott?

Goff led the Los Angeles Rams to the Super Bowl back during the 2018-19 campaign, and this past year, he guided the Lions to their first division title in three decades and their first playoff win since January 1992. That’s something.

Meanwhile, Dallas has still not made it past the Divisional Round since January 1996 and has collected just four postseason victories in total since then. Obviously, that is not all Prescott’s fault. He made his debut in 2016, and there were plenty of Cowboys signal-callers who failed before him.

But it does matter here, because it makes you wonder if Goff would have been able to take Dallas where Prescott hasn’t.

Personally, I don’t believe that Goff is a better quarterback than Prescott, but at what point are we going to stop making excuses? It’s not like Prescott hasn’t had plenty of talent around him. Yes, Goff has Amon-Ra St. Brown, but Prescott has CeeDee Lamb. Prescott also has the luxury of having an elite defense backing him up, something Goff does not possess in Detroit.

Also, from a financial standpoint, you can understand what the Cowboys are trying to do.

For all of the criticism Dallas has taken throughout this offseason, people tend to forget that the team had virtually no cap space heading into free agency. That’s why linebacker Eric Kendricks was the only real free agent the Cowboys signed. Jones and Co. are also trying to save money for the future so they can extend players like Prescott, Lamb and Micah Parsons.

This isn’t Monopoly money. It’s real. Dallas can’t just fling cash around willy nilly without suffering repercussions. Jones is a businessman. He knows what he’s doing. He has stated numerous times that he sees Prescott as his quarterback for the future. He just wants to make sure he gets the best deal possible.

In the end, the Cowboys and Prescott will probably agree to a long-term contract. Whether that happens this offseason or next spring is anyone’s guess. But while Goff’s deal may make Dallas look bad at first glance, it doesn’t invalidate what the Cowboys’ blueprint has been all along.

This article first appeared on ClutchPoints and was syndicated with permission.

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