After trading for wide receiver George Pickens this month, Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said that the team does not view the former Steeler as a No. 2 receiver.
The Cowboys’ incumbent No. 1 receiver doesn’t see Pickens that way either. CeeDee Lamb and Pickens were both in attendance at Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray’s charity softball game over the weekend and Lamb addressed how their partnership will work during an interview with DLLS Sports.
“Now we both ones,” Lamb said. “It ain’t no A, B, none of that. It’s one. You look over there, you see one. You look over here, you see another one. So do what you gotta do with that.”
Amari Cooper led the Cowboys in catches and receiving yards during Lamb’s rookie season in 2020, but Lamb took over both spots the next season and has been the unquestioned top dog in the Dallas passing game the last three years. Pickens may not match his numbers, but it’s clear that the Cowboys see their offense taking on a new look in 2025.
A social-media dustup (not the Del Rio kind) broke out on Thursday regarding the question of whether the Cowboys and linebacker Micah Parsons have a “handshake deal” on a new contract.
Clarence E. Hill, Jr. of All City DLLS reports that a handshake deal exists. However, Parsons disputes it.
It doesn’t matter.
Handshake deals are meaningless. They’re unenforceable. They’re not worth the paper they’re not printed on.
The NFL has a specific procedure for executing player contracts. The document must be reduced to writing. The player’s NFLPA-certified agent must be involved. The deal must be approved by the NFL.
No informal agreement matters until the final deal is done. And if, as it appears, owner/G.M. Jerry Jones threw an arm around Parsons’s shoulder and spouted off a few numbers and Parsons nodded along, it doesn’t mean jack diddly squat.
Even if they capped it with a handshake.
The law of every state requires certain types of contracts (e.g., real estate transfers) to be reduced to writing. The law of the NFL, as set forth in the Collective Bargaining Agreement and by the mandates of the NFL’s Management Council, requires every player contract to be in writing. And signed. And approved.
Even if Parsons verbally agreed to every single term of the deal, it does not matter until the contract is signed, sealed, and delivered to 345 Park Avenue for final approval. Until then, the player can change his mind. The team can change its mind.
The entire issue of whether they shook hands on it obscures the deeper problem with the Cowboys’ way of doing business. Why dick around with a handshake deal when it’s fairly simple to sit down and hammer out a formal agreement?
The Cowboys love to wait for a ticking clock. Maybe they think it makes things more interesting. It definitely doesn’t make things cheaper. And it doesn’t create cap space that can be used on other players.
Again, we’re not saying there was or wasn’t or is or isn’t a handshake deal. We’re saying that it doesn’t matter, one way or the other. All that matters is whether the Cowboys and Parsons’s agent agree on the key terms, print out the paperwork, sign it, and send it in.
In the time it took me to hunt and peck this blurb, they could have gotten half of the work done.
Once upon a time, every team played at least once in prime time. More recently, every team played one — and only one — Thursday game after playing on Sunday.
While it forced fans to hold their noses and watch (or not watch) games like Titans-Jaguars on a Thursday night in December, it created some degree of equity and balance when it came to the demands placed on the various teams.
In recent years, that’s gone out the window. And for good reason. Better prime-time games featuring more attractive teams lead to bigger audiences. Bigger audiences allow broadcast partners to justify the massive rights fees they pay — and it seeds the soil for even larger rights fees the next time packages are available for bidding.
The new approach, with certain teams being overloaded by prime-time and other standalone games and multiple teams (this year, the Browns, Titans, and Saints) being treated like Michael Scott’s neon beer sign, creates a competitive imbalance.
“Certainly the better teams probably end up finding themselves more widely represented in the television windows, and therefore get out of the routine,” NFL V.P, of broadcast planning and scheduling Mike North said during a Thursday conference all with reporters. “The Chiefs, for instance, have been playing five, six, seven prime-time games, playing seemingly every day of the week. It doesn’t seem to have hurt them. So, yeah, that’s what comes with success.
North attributed the dynamic to a “constant balancing act” of “trying to figure out [how to] feed the fans, feed our broadcast partners with the games and the teams they want to see.” He said there’s “always . . . an eye towards competitive inequities, but it doesn’t seem to have hurt to the Chiefs.”
But the selection of prime-time games isn’t only about imposing on the teams that have been good. The process entails making a guess as to whether a team will be good, or at least interesting, regardless of whether the team has a history of playing well enough to deserve the burden.
Last year, for example, the Jets had seven standalone games in the first 11 weeks, including two Sunday-Thursday short weeks. The Jets got the chronically short straw, even though they haven’t been to the playoffs since 2010. At the time, North justified giving the Jets the scheduling business by explaining that the Jets “kind of owe us one” after Aaron Rodgers’s Week 1 season-ending Achilles tear made their 2023 prime-time games far less attractive.
In 2024, Rodgers started every game during the gauntlet, and beyond. And the Jets went 5-12.
This year, the Cowboys have six prime-time games (and a record four Thursday games) despite not making the playoffs in 2024 and, given their schedule, unlikely to do so in 2025. Likewise, a pair of non-playoff teams who aren’t currently regarded as short-list contenders — the Dolphins and Falcons — have been tabbed for FIVE prime-time games each. (Both teams also have an early-morning standalone European game.)
The league apparently is making a bet that Miami and Atlanta will be good. Having six standalone games could help make that a self-defeating prophecy.
The league also expects that the Titans, Browns, and Saints will be not too good. And it will be not bad for them to have the routine and normalcy that comes from playing most of their games at 1:00 p.m. ET on Sundays. (The Browns will play a standalone game in London.)
Two years ago, the Texans played 16 games at 1:00 p.m. ET, before landing on Saturday night for the de facto AFC South championship game against the Colts. Houston parlayed their low profile into a very unexpected playoff berth.
This year, don’t be surprised if the Titans make a run at the same accomplishment. Overlooked and disregarded (just like No. 1 overall pick Cam Ward was during the draft), the Titans can quietly go about their business, stack wins, and get themselves into postseason contention.
And then pay they’ll pay the piper with plenty of prime-time games in 2026. It’ll be better to do it that way, than to play well enough to not make the playoffs, but to catch the league’s eye when it’s time to make out next year’s schedule.
The Cowboys will become the first team in NFL history to play four Thursday games in a single-season. They also will become the first team in NFL history to play six consecutive games against teams that won at least 11 games the previous season, per the Elias Sports Bureau.
The Cowboys face a gauntlet in Weeks 12-17, with their six opponents those weeks having made the playoffs in 2024. The Eagles (14-3), Chiefs (15-2), Lions (15-2), Vikings (14-3), Chargers (11-6) and Commanders (12-5) went a combined 81-21.
The only good news is four of the games are at home, with the only road games to Detroit and Washington.
“We’ve got a spicy schedule at the end when you you compare it to last year’s playoff teams,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said Thursday, via Todd Archer of ESPN. “We have a big run there playing a lot of playoff teams. We look forward to that and Schotty [coach Brian Schottenheimer] is fired up about the schedule, and we’re ready to go.”
There is nothing new to report and not much new to say about where talks between the Cowboys and Micah Parsons stand.
Parsons wants a long-term extension, and the Cowboys are dragging their feet as they have on signing their big-name players to deals.
Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones commented on Parsons on Thursday, using different words to say the same thing: They want a deal with the edge rusher, and eventually they will get a deal with him.
“When the right things come together, and everybody’s ready to do a deal, then it happens,” Jones told Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News. “We want Micah here. He knows we want him here. I think ultimately we’ll get something done.”
It repeated what Jones said Tuesday.
Parsons, 25, became eligible for an extension after the 2023 season, and he now is in the final year of his contract scheduled to make $24 million on the fifth-year option.
The Bengals are paying wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase $40.25 million annually on a deal he signed this offseason. That’s the highest annual average for a non-quarterback, a number Parsons will surpass after 52.5 sacks in his first four seasons.
Parsons has participated in some of the team’s voluntary offseason work — more than in recent offseasons — though it’s unclear how much.
