Not sure why but I am not entirely sold on Dak. But what do I know. If I knew any better, would I pick Jets as my team after living on this earth 27 years without even knowing anything about the NFL or the Jets. Dang it.
The Cowboys wanted a five-year deal last season, and that's effectively what they've gotten counting last year's franchise tag - 5 years for $157 million guaranteed. That's probably not too different from what they offered last year , although maybe a little more. Reportedly this is really a six-year deal with two voidable years, which helps with the cap hit up front. It had seemed to me that they weren't really sold on him, but ultimately, in these strange times, that is actually a pretty team friendly contract. One thing for sure - the Cowboys have by far the best QB in the division (assuming he comes back healthy), now and going forward (Heinicke, Danny Dimes, and Hurts? I don't think so.).
Not just you by any means. Dak's had one of the better rosters in football in his time. Top OL, quality RB, decent receivers and Garrett - while not great - sure isn't Gase. He's put up pretty numbers but never looked capable of taking them all the way to me. Be very interesting to see how this goes, but my gut reaction is Jerry will regret this. I dont think Dak has the talent to elevate a diminishing talent base around him. But what do I know.
It's very possible this deal marks the Jerry Jones moving into the senile Al Davis portion of his ownership. Two decisions Davis made marked his progression from star player to competent owner to incompetent. The first was drafting a K, Sebastian Janikowski with his mid-1st round pick in 2000. The second blunder and last major decision of any significance that Davis made was giving Nnamdi Asomugha, a star CB, a huge contract in 2009. The deal essentially paid Asomugha at the QB level for 3 years at $15M a year. By the end of 2010 the Raiders had released Asomugha, still a very good CB and an All-Pro that year, because their cap had collapsed in the interim. The Dak deal looks a lot like the Asomugha deal in terms of wildly overpaying for value, causing a major cap problem just down the road.
Remember Jones is on almost every committee but the important one is the negotiating committee for TV and now streaming rights. TV rights are being negotiated now and Amazon has offered $1billion for streaming rights for Thursday night games. The Cap is going to go up drastically and Jones has the inside knowledge of just how much higher.
Just as an addendum to this: the Cowboys are currently $10M over the *2022* cap. That's before they draft anybody. That's before they sign any of their existing players to 2nd deals. It's just crazy what they did with Dak. Like full-blown six-eyed nuts.
Dak only counts for $22 million in cap space this year. Even after his new contract Dallas has over $19 million in cap space available. They are not $10 million OTC....
They have a couple potential outs even if they absorb big dead cap hits with Lawrence ($19 million dead cap), Zeke ($10 million), Jaylon Smith ($6.8 million), Cooper ($6 million) before that 2022 season. The Cowboys have at least smartly favored the 5-6 year contracts and spread out a lot of the money. The Lawrence & Cooper contracts were just awful though they've given them enough years to get out of them later into the deal. Dak isn't worth his price tag, but he's still pretty good and as Jeff pointed out, they still far and away have the best QB in a weak division. They also just did this as well.
