GettyCowboys QB Dak Prescott
The clock is ticking. The Cowboys open the 2024 NFL season next Sunday against the Browns, and star quarterback Dak Prescott is still sitting on the final year of the four-year $160 million contract he signed back in 2021. Drama is rampant in Dallas, and Prescott is at the center of it.
There is no deadline, Prescott said this week, for a new deal, but it would be unusual for he and the Cowboys to continue negotiations into the season. Despite last year’s postseason flop, the Cowboys still consider themselves Super Bowl contenders, and Prescott’s focus needs to be on the team from week to week, not on his contract.
Thus, each day that we get closer to the season opener is another day we might just be getting closer to the reality of Prescott hitting free agency in March of 2025.
With that in mind, NFL insider Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk put together a slate of teams that will be in line for Prescott’s services and one in particular is an eye-opener: the New York Jets.
Dak Prescott Could Replace Aaron Rodgers
Indeed, the Jets have a pretty good quarterback at the helm already, in 40-year-old future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers, who is entering the second year of a four-year, $112 million contract with the Jets. Rodgers played just four snaps for the Jets last year before tearing his Achilles tendon and missing the remainder of the year.
The Jets constructed the roster around Rodgers, but considering his age and injury, there is a possibility he could flame out entirely in New York. Because the Jets structured Rodgers’ contract to spread his money over the next five years, the team could cut him altogether after this season and withstand the financial hit.
That might mean another opportunity for Prescott and another potential suitor for the Cowboys to fend off in a potential free agency.
Writes Florio: “Aaron Rodgers said it himself earlier this year. If the Jets fail this year, everyone is gone. Well, not everyone. But coach Robert Saleh will be gone. And Rodgers likely will be, too. Possibly of his own volition.
“And the Jets, if they don’t make it to the playoffs again this year, would love to have the kind of one-and-out postseasons the Cowboys have endured. For plenty of teams, consistently failing to get to the conference championship is better than consistently failing to get to the postseason at all.”
Cowboys Showing ‘How People Feel’?
None of this will matter much if the Cowboys and Prescott can come to an agreement on a new contract, one that almost certainly would set a record for average annual value, given the spiraling quarterback market and the production Prescott has put forth in his career.
No, he has not performed in the playoffs. But he remains an MVP candidate, and was Pro Football Focus’s No. 4 ranked quarterback for the 2023 season, throwing for 4,519 yards and a league-high 36 touchdowns.
Prescott said it does matter to him to get a new deal with the Cowboys, and will give him some insight into how the organization views him.
“I think it says a lot if it is or if it isn’t,” Prescott said Thursday. “But ‘however’ doesn’t really matter to me, to be honest with you.”
He was asked what, exactly, it would say if he did not get a contract.
“Just how people feel,” Prescott said.
The “people” in question, no doubt, are Cowboys honchos Jerry and Stephen Jones. If they do not feel Prescott is worthy of a top-level contract, he knows plenty of other teams will.