The Cowboys repeatedly have said that they want to extend the contracts of quarterback Dak Prescott and receiver Amari Cooper. Prescott’s value will be difficult to calculate; Cooper’s won’t be.
With Cooper under contract through 2019 at a salary of $13.924 million for the fifth and final year of his rookie contract, the financial analysis is fairly simple.
If the Cowboys attempt to extend Cooper now or in the offseason, agent Joel Segal surely would request, as a starting point, a full guarantee that matches the $13.924 million already in hand for 2019 plus a 20-percent raise for his franchise-tag year of 2020, which would be $16.7 million. (There’s a good chance the base franchise-tag rate for receivers will be higher than $16.7 million by 2020.) That’s a minimum of $30.6 million fully guaranteed at signing, for any deal done before the start of the 2019 season.
Come 2020, it gets even more expensive, with Segal surely wanting the franchise tag amount for 2020 and 2021 fully guaranteed at signing. If the tag amount is $16.7 million for the first year, the Cowboys would be looking at $36.7 million fully guaranteed.
Then there’s the Le’Veon Bell leverage, which would allow Segal to say something like this, “Amari will play year-to-year for 2019 and 2020, make more than $30 million, and then maybe sit out 2021 and become an unrestricted free agent in 2022, unless you want to pay him quarterback money that year.”
On the heels of a 180-yard, two-touchdown performance in the most-watched regular-season game in two years, Segal has even more reason to apply the kind of pressure that he applied to the Raiders with Khalil Mack -- and that ultimately prompted the Raiders to trade Cooper for fear of Segal doing it all over again.
