New quarterback contracts are acquired by Jordan Love and Tua Tagovailoa while the Cowboys negotiate with Dak Prescott.
The Dallas Cowboys haven’t held back when it comes to it. They’ve been waiting and waiting, and waiting some more, for Dak Prescott, even though history tells us that markets only rise at the superstar NFL positions. Everybody has an opinion about Prescott. You might be willing to let someone else try on the hefty crown of QB1 for America’s Team, or you might think he is the perfect man to wear it. We have been discussing this for months now, always from the vantage point that the Cowboys will eventually pay him.
It’s obvious that they might not, and that they might be okay with him using his free agency to sign with another team come spring. They haven’t done anything for the past two years, so that argument is definitely valid. But once more, the team has handled this in the worst way imaginable if they intend to pay Prescott and keep him on staff (Jerry Jones stated on Thursday that he does not think Dak will be playing elsewhere in the future). The quarterback market rebounded on Friday, largely due to Jordan Love and Tua Tagovailoa.
The Miami Dolphins paid Tua Tagovailoa, and while the Cowboys were having their second practice of training camp, another name took the top spot in the quarterback market. For background, Tua was scheduled to enter the last year of his rookie deal with Miami when he was picked in 2020. The Dolphins paid him to be a reliable franchise signal-caller for many years to come, and he has showed flashes of that ability. Tua was paid $53.1 million annually, which was said to be the highest amount ever given to an NFL player for a four-year contract.
That was only approximately six hours long. The Green Bay Packers and quarterback Jordan Love were reportedly working on a long-term agreement this week, and on Friday night, that report went through the uprights. The largest deal in league history was recently signed by him.
Love recently completed his debut season as a starter and, as everyone knows, was a member of the Packers squad that destroyed the Cowboys in the Wild Card Round, including Dak Prescott. He is the second consecutive franchise quarterback for the Packers who seems to specialize in scaring the Cowboys. Once more, in the event that the Cowboys choose to pay Dak Prescott in the future, they have already granted a contract to anyone and everyone who was probably going to get one before they did. Tagovailoa and Love have signed agreements this offseason, following in the footsteps of Trevor Lawrence and Jared Goff.
The Cowboys, however, had the entire previous year to get ahead of this as well. After Prescott’s interception-filled 2022 season, they could have worked on an extension with him, and they probably could have done so for a lot less money than they will likely end up paying if and when they sign him. As previously mentioned, the Cowboys have landed deals with four players this offseason and this offseason alone: Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, and Joe Burrow; four more joined this offseason and recently.
Given their general lack of activity, it’s possible—even likely—that you’re thinking to yourself that the Cowboys must be determined to move on from Prescott. That’s a reasonable deduction to make, as mentioned.
They have continued to approach this poorly, assuming that this is the case now. Respectfully, Jordan Love has only started one NFL season and just signed this contract. The market is proving that NFL teams will spend mightily for quarterbacks, even the mere idea of one (this is not to say that Love is only the “idea” of a franchise quarterback, he is clearly much more than that, hopefully you get the picture). If the Cowboys were/are intent of letting Dak leave the franchise then why not do anything and everything possible this past offseason to trade him so that they could have received a king’s ransom relative to the return? If Dak does leave they are looking at
Naturally, CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons also require new contracts; the former is still holding out, and the latter has more time left before the Cowboys must make a decision that makes sense. All of these details were known when the Cowboys suffered a road loss to the San Francisco 49ers in January of 2023, but they have allowed time to pass since then.